Technology firm puts a high price on friendship

If money can't buy you friends, it seems friends can buy you money.

To tackle the growing skills shortage in the Irish technology sector, one technology company is calling on its staff to help it out. All employees need is a bunch of talented friends.

Dublin-based Ebeon is offering employees a host of perks - including bonus payouts, a brand new BMW, and £1,000 holiday vouchers - if they manage to recommend a suitable candidate to join the firm.

Employees will receive a bonus payment of £3,500 for each referral hired by Edeon. Employees who manage to do this three times get an additional £3,000 bonus on top of their net £10,500.

And for the extremely popular employee who manages to originate 10 successful appointments, a three-series BMW is waiting. The BMW prize was introduced in June, and already competition is heating up. One UK employee is leading the field on this side of the Atlantic with four successful applicants.

Over at the New York office, however, two employees clearly have access to an impressive pool of acquaintances, recommending five and seven employees respectively.

Meanwhile, Ebeon is extending its carrot-and-carrot approach to the student population from October. Similar incentives will be offered to final-year students signing up to the company on completion of their exams, and recruits will be sent on an all-expenses-paid trip for two to Bali before they dstart their new jobs.

Ebeon, which specialises in implementing electronic business systems for companies, has hired 15 people since its employee's friends referral scheme was launched six months ago. Even employees whose friends let them down and don't get past the interview stage are rewarded with an entry in a monthly draw for a holiday voucher valued at £1,000.

According to Mr Bill Donoghue, Ebeon chief executive, the benefits of the scheme outweigh the costs, and it is proving more successful than traditional advertising and professional recruitment services routes.

"It may sound an expensive way to do things, but the reason it is cost-effective is the people we meet through this scheme have already been sold the Ebeon story by their friends, and they want to work for us," Mr Donoghue says.

Ebeon has noted that Java technology developers - a scarce commodity within the IT industry - can be difficult to target because they tend to have very different interests. However, their shared interest in the technology means many developers socialise with each other, and potential recruits can often be contacted through word of mouth.

Next month Ebeon will launch a cinema recruitment campaign, following research showing that many software developers are avid cinema-goers.

"We want to attract the best people in the world, and our experience shows that talent attracts talent," Mr Donoghue says.

The tightening jobs market looks set to come under further pressure following Central Statistics Office figures just published showing that the unemployment rate has fallen to 4.4 per cent, its lowest level in 18 years.