Referrals account for between 30 and 50% of hires in the US. In a paper published earlier this year, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and MIT studied data from a financial services company, and found that while referrals only made up about 6% of total applications, they resulted in more than a quarter of hires. That’s more than the number hired via online job boards, even though those job hunters accounted for 60% of applications and 40% of interviews.
In fact, a referral who gets an interview has a 40% better chance of getting hired than other candidates.