Talent Tag, a recruitment web application, launches today in the marketing and advertising space.

Talent Tag is a way for employers to discover hidden talent, and for everyone else to share in the success of helping a friend or colleague land a great job.

Talent Tags are an invitation to make referrals. Once an employer generates a Talent Tag, they can live within job ads, social media networks and even direct messaging. Talent Tag is the most holistic approach to referral recruitment in the world and is exclusively available to employers in the marketing and advertising industry.

Individuals can refer a friend for any job carrying the Talent Tag for their chance to claim a referrer’s fee if their suggested candidate gets the job. Employers can set the monetary reward, usually between $1,000 and $3,000 – or the same as their internal staff referral programs – with 100% of the fee paid to the referrer. Talent Tag charges a flat fee of $79 per tag.

“This is the biggest innovation in recruitment advertising since job boards appeared,” said Talent Tag founder and CEO Roy Stapleton. “Research confirms that employment referrals are recognised by business as the quickest and most effective way to recruit people and most companies provide some incentive to employees to refer candidates. Talent Tag simply takes it to another level, thanks to the power of social media.”

The purpose of Talent Tag is to create a community of trust, based on referrers, applicants and employers that mutually benefit from one another’s success. Referrers are rated on their effectiveness at finding great talent – therefore creating a measurable platform. Successful referrers may be invited to refer directly by an employer.

To recommend someone, a referrer simply clicks on a Talent Tag wherever they see it to enter a candidate’s name and contact details. The proposed candidate will receive an email or notification through Linkedin or Facebook alerting them to the job.

“We have chosen to focus on the advertising industry because employers in this space have always been strong users of recruitment referrals. The average person has 69 personal connections, and this can be higher in the advertising industry,” Stapleton added.

“By being able to tap into those connections through collaborative recruitment, employers can harness the trust in existing relationships.

“Another benefit for employers is that great people know great people, so a referral by a proven expert is likely to be less risky that recruiting through traditional channels.”