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Practitioner · Chapter 2 · 11 of 24 in the series
Manage Referrals & Internal Moves in Quelixa
Follow employee referrals and internal applications through a consistent hiring process. The Northwind Group scenario includes a referral invitation, a bonus after 90 days, a family conflict flag and an example six-month tenure rule for internal applicants.
01Lesson notes
Step by step#
Recruitment › Settings › Internal Mobility & Referrals
- The internal job board — Switched on; the current manager is told.
- Six months first — Nobody applies for a move before six months in the company.
- The referral bonus — 1,000 by default, due once the hire has stayed ninety days.
- Family — Off: a family referral is recorded, flagged, and earns nothing.
Recruitment › Job Posts › Customer Success Specialist
- Everyone — Public careers page and the staff job board.
- Its own bonus — 1,500 for this post, above the default.
- Staff only, if needed — A post can be kept off the public site entirely.
Self-service › Internal Jobs › Sofia Lindqvist
- Six months first — Internal moves open after six months.
- Greyed out — The rule James set, applied to her.
- Her tenure — Zero months, from her employee record.
Self-service › Refer a Candidate
- Refer someone — Opens the referral form.
- Open jobs — With the bonus each one pays.
- The deal — Up to 1,500, paid once the hire has stayed ninety days.
Self-service › Refer someone › Family
- Before sending — A family referral is recorded as a conflict of interest.
- How they know each other — Asked of every referral.
Self-service › Refer someone › Layla Haddad
- Who — Name, email and mobile.
- Former colleague — Not family.
- Why she fits — The recruiter reads this — unless the review is blind.
- Only once — Layla gets one invitation, and nothing more unless she applies.
Self-service › Refer a Candidate › Sent
- Invited to apply — Her referral, with its reference and status.
- What Sofia sees — Where Layla is in the process — never marks or rankings.
Self-service › Internal Jobs › Karim Mansour
- The Dubai post — Open to staff, with its skills and closing date.
- Thirty-one months — Well past the six-month rule.
- Your department — Operations, the department it sits in.
Self-service › Internal Jobs › Apply
- His employee record — The profile the panel sees comes from HR, not from a new CV.
- Why this role — Shared with the recruiter.
- His manager is told — The setting James chose.
Self-service › Internal Jobs › Applied
- My internal applications — Its number, stage and a way to withdraw.
Email › Layla Haddad
- From Northwind — The company's address — sent the moment Sofia pressed send.
- Who recommended her — Sofia, by name.
- Her own link — Straight to the job, carrying the referral with it.
Careers › Customer Success Specialist
- Apply — The same form every candidate fills in.
- The post — Customer Success Specialist, Dubai.
Recruitment › Applications
- Layla's application — Shown by its blind code.
- Karim's — The same — an internal candidate is not singled out.
Recruitment › Applications › Blind review
- Blind review — Name, photo, contact details and family data hidden.
- The referral, masked — It is a referral; who made it, and why, stays hidden.
- Where it came from — Employee Referral, recorded on its own.
Recruitment › Applications › Internal candidate
- Internal, record hidden — The employee record stays hidden during blind review.
- Internal Candidate — The source, recorded when he applied.
- A code, not a name — Candidate C-8A462.
- Skill match 100% — His languages came across from his employee record.
Recruitment › Referrals › REF/2026/0052
- The referral — Referrer, person and note hidden while the application is blind.
- Outcome and bonus — 1,500, due ninety days after she starts — if she is hired.
- A code here too — REF/2026/0052 · Candidate C-01E13.
Activity › Amara Okafor
- A to-do for Amara — Karim Mansour applied for an internal move.
Self-service › Refer a Candidate › Status
- Applied — Layla's status moved on by itself.
- What she sees — Progress, never scores.
Open Recruitment › Settings › Internal Mobility & Referrals and read the rules your company set: the internal job board, the months before a move, the bonus and the family rule. Then open Refer a Candidate in the self-service portal and read the terms shown before sending.
Transcript
The best people may already know us
Lina: Monday the eighteenth. The Dubai advert went live at nine this morning — four seats.
Elena Novak: Somebody on our own staff probably knows the right person already.
James Whitfield: Or is the right person. Let's make both of those easy — and fair.
Lina: That is this chapter: referrals, where staff recommend someone, and internal moves, where staff apply themselves.
Lina: A referral and an internal move are two doors into the same process. Nobody who comes through them skips a step — and the chapter is about keeping it that way.
Two doors, one process
Lina: Keep four ideas in mind.
Lina: A referral: somebody on the staff recommends a person, and that person is invited to apply.
Lina: An internal move: somebody on the staff applies themselves.
David: And neither gets a shortcut?
Lina: Neither. Both go through the same blind scrutiny, the same test, the same interview.
Lina: And the rules around them are set before anyone applies — not argued over afterwards.
The rules, set once
Lina: James sets the rules in Recruitment Settings, once, for the whole company.
Lina: The internal job board is on — and the current manager is told when someone applies.
David: Some companies keep that confidential.
Lina: They can: one switch. Northwind decided openness works better for them.
Lina: Six months with the company before anyone can apply for a move.
David: So a new starter settles in before looking elsewhere.
Lina: A default referral bonus of a thousand dollars — due only after the new hire has stayed ninety days.
Lina: And family: allowed to be referred, but flagged as a conflict of interest, with no bonus.
Who can apply for this job
Lina: Then Elena, on the Dubai job post itself.
Lina: Who can apply: everyone — the public careers page and the staff job board.
Lina: A post can also be staff only. It then never appears on the public site, in the sitemap or the job feeds.
David: Why more than the default?
Lina: Four hard-to-find people in a new city. Fifteen hundred for this post.
Two weeks in
Sofia Lindqvist: I know exactly who should be in Dubai. Layla — we worked together at Kvarn Pay.
Kenji Sato: Then refer her properly. The portal has a page for it.
Lina: Sofia joined Northwind two weeks ago. She opens her self-service portal.
Not yet — and it says why
Lina: Curious, she looks at Internal Jobs first. The Dubai post is there.
Lina: But Apply is greyed out,
Lina: and the banner says why: internal moves open after six months. She has been here for none.
David: The rule from Monday, on her own screen.
Lina: Worked out from her employee record. Nobody had to explain it to her.
Recommending someone
Lina: So she opens Refer a Candidate.
Lina: The terms are stated up front: a bonus of up to fifteen hundred, once the person has stayed ninety days.
Lina: The open jobs, with what each one pays,
David: And nothing is paid just for sending a name.
Lina: Nothing. One button, and a promise that only pays for a hire who stays.
Family, said out loud
Lina: Every referral asks how the two people know each other.
Lina: Choose family member, and the form says what happens before anything is sent: welcome, but recorded as a conflict of interest — the referrer takes no part in the selection and no bonus applies.
David: Better than finding out afterwards.
Lina: Much better.
Layla, in Sofia's words
David: Layla isn't family, though.
Lina: No — a former colleague.
Lina: Her name, her email and her mobile,
Lina: and why she fits, in Sofia's own words: three years together at Kvarn Pay, the merchants who renewed because of her, and Arabic and English.
Lina: The note underneath asks Sofia to check Layla is happy to be contacted. She gets one invitation — and nothing more unless she applies.
Following along
Lina: Sent.
David: And Layla hears from Northwind, not from Sofia's personal inbox?
Lina: From the company — we will see the email in a moment.
Lina: Layla appears in Sofia's referrals: invited to apply.
David: Will Sofia see how Layla does in the test?
Lina: No. She sees where Layla is — applied, interviewing, hired. Marks, rankings and panel comments stay confidential.
Asking to move
Karim Mansour: Amara, I grew up speaking Arabic. I'd like to help open Dubai.
Amara Okafor: Then apply. I'll be told when you do — that's the rule here, and I'm fine with it.
Lina: Karim Mansour has looked after Toronto customers for two and a half years.
The same page, a different person
Lina: Karim's Internal Jobs page. Thirty-one months with Northwind.
David: So the six-month rule is no obstacle for him.
Lina: The same Dubai post, marked as his own department,
Lina: and his Apply button is live.
Two clicks, stated plainly
Lina: He applies.
Lina: The dialog says where his profile comes from: his employee record — his role, his department, his qualifications on file. And that he is assessed like every other candidate.
Lina: A line on why he wants it,
Lina: and a plain warning: his current manager will be told.
David: No surprises for Amara, then.
Lina: None.
An application like any other
Lina: Sent: an application number, the stage it is in — new — and a way to withdraw if he changes his mind.
One invitation
Lina: Wednesday evening, Dubai. This is what Layla received at lunchtime on Tuesday.
Lina: From Northwind Group's own address,
Lina: saying that Sofia, who works there, recommended her,
Lina: with a link to the job that is hers alone. Applying through it ties her application to Sofia's referral.
The same job page as everyone
David: Where does the link take her?
Lina: To exactly the job page any candidate would see.
David: No special route?
Lina: None. The same form, the same questions. The only difference is invisible: her application knows it came from a referral.
Two new applications, no names
Lina: Thursday, just after ten. Elena's list of applications for the Dubai post.
David: Which one is Sofia's friend?
Lina: Two new ones at the top — Layla's,
Lina: and Karim's. No names, only codes: Northwind runs blind scrutiny, and an employee is no exception.
Lina: By five past ten she has already passed both through scrutiny — each meets every published requirement.
Referred — by whom stays hidden
Lina: She opens the first one.
Lina: The source was recorded on its own when Layla applied through her link: Employee Referral.
Lina: Elena can see that it is a referral. She cannot see who referred her, or what they wrote.
David: Because Sofia's name, or her note, would give the person away.
Lina: And because a warm word from a colleague is exactly the kind of thing that should not decide scrutiny. It stays hidden while the application is blind.
An employee, treated the same
Lina: Karim's application reads the same way.
Lina: Its source: Internal Candidate.
Lina: And the note says his employee record — his job, his department, his manager — stays hidden while the review is blind.
David: And his skills?
Lina: A hundred per cent: the languages HR holds on his employee record came across when he applied — English, Arabic, French.
The referral record, masked too
Lina: Could Elena just open the referral itself and read the names there?
Lina: No. The referral is masked for as long as the application is blind: a code instead of a name,
Lina: the referrer hidden, no email, no note.
Lina: What she can see is the deal: fifteen hundred, due ninety days after the person starts — if she is hired and stays.
David: And if she leaves in month two?
Lina: The bonus closes, and the record says why.
His manager, told
Lina: Meanwhile, in Amara's activities: the to-do that arrived on Tuesday — Karim Mansour applied for an internal move.
David: Two days old, and still open.
Lina: Amara has not acted on it yet — but she cannot say she was not told.
Sofia, two days later
Lina: And Sofia's page on Thursday: Layla has applied. Sofia did nothing to update it.
Lina: She follows the progress. She will never see a score.
What happens at the end
Lina: Suppose both are chosen in March. The endings are different.
Lina: Karim keeps his employee record. His job and department change; he is not hired a second time.
David: So his years of service carry on unbroken.
Lina: His Toronto seat ends the day before his Dubai one starts,
Lina: and there is no onboarding to run — he already works here.
David: And Layla?
Lina: Layla is a new hire like any other. And Sofia's bonus falls due only ninety days after Layla starts.
Three things to take away
Lina: Three things to take away.
Lina: Referred or internal, everybody passes the same blind scrutiny and the same assessment.
Lina: Everything that could be awkward is said out loud: the manager is told, family is flagged, the bonus terms are on the page.
David: And nobody is paid for a name alone.
Lina: Only for a hire who stays.
Silver medallists
Elena Novak: Two good applicants in three days, and the advert has barely started.
James Whitfield: And Claire Beaumont was a close second for the Singapore job in October.
Lina: Next chapter: the people who nearly made it last time — talent pools and job alerts.
Lina: That was referrals and internal moves. See you in chapter three.