The warmest list you own, and the one nobody works
Everyone you placed took your call once, trusted you with a career move and got a job out of it. They know what good looks like in their discipline, they know who was good at their last two employers, and they have a reason to help you. No list you can buy is warmer than that.
Almost nobody works it. Referrals arrive when a placed candidate happens to think of you, which is rarely. Asking properly means pulling the placements, checking who is still where, choosing the right role to ask each person about and writing forty short personal notes. It is a job nobody gets round to, so it does not happen.
This play does that job. You read the drafts and press send.
What you get back
A table of placed people worth asking: name, the client and role you placed them in, whether they are still there, the live role matched to them and why, the personal email or LinkedIn profile to use, and the drafted ask. Separately, the people who were filtered out and the rule that removed each one. Drafts are staged and idle.
Variations worth knowing
Start with the leavers. People who have moved on since you placed them carry two networks and have left an open seat behind them. The job-change play covers that conversation in full.
One discipline at a time. Referrals work best where the role and the person's background match closely. Run it per desk, and skip anyone with no live role near their field.
Add your referral terms. If you pay for referrals, say so in the prompt and it goes in the note. The play does not invent an incentive you did not give it.
Where this goes wrong
Asking for their current colleagues. They work at your client. The ask is about people they rated elsewhere, and any name that comes back gets screened against your off-limits list like anyone else.
Asking too soon. Someone a few weeks into a job you found them is still settling in and still inside your guarantee. The filter takes them out. Leave it on.
Using the address on the placement record. Many CRMs hold the work email at the client, added after the start date. A referral ask sent through your client's mail server is a bad look. Personal email or LinkedIn only.
Records without a profile. The employer check works from a LinkedIn profile, and placements from years back often lack one. Resolve those first, or accept that those rows go unchecked.
