Write a Referral Request That Employees Act On
When to use it
Get real referrals instead of a Slack message everyone scrolls past.
The prompt
Write an internal referral request for a {{Job Title}} role at {{Company Name}}, to be sent to {{the engineering team / the whole company / a specific team}}. THE ROLE IN PLAIN TERMS: {{what this person will do and why it matters now}} WHO WOULD DO WELL: {{the kind of background, in a sentence}} REFERRAL BONUS: {{amount and when it pays out, or "none"}} CHANNEL: {{Slack / email / all-hands slide}} HOW LONG OUR PROCESS TAKES: {{the realistic elapsed time}} Give me: 1. The message, short enough to read without scrolling, ending with exactly what a referral involves on their side. 2. Two or three memory-jogging prompts that surface actual names instead of "do you know any backend engineers": the person they'd want on their team again, who they solved a particular kind of problem with, who they learn from on a specific topic. 3. A one-line description of the role they can forward to a friend as-is. 4. A short update I send referrers at each stage, so they're never left wondering what happened to their friend. 5. A version for the hiring manager to post in their own voice. Don't lean on the bonus. Most people refer for the role and the friend, not the money.
Tip
Ask 'who did you most enjoy working with at your last job?' rather than 'do you know any engineers'. The first question retrieves a name; the second retrieves a shrug.
How to use it
Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or whichever assistant you use, then replace every {{bracketed}} part with your own detail. The more specific and messier your input, the better the output — a model given raw notes has more to work with than one given a tidy summary you wrote first.
More Sourcing prompts
Open the full tool for all 87 prompts, the glossary, and the JD decoder.