Your name goes on this, so here's what we promise about how they'll be treated.

A reply inside a week — Always, and from a person. Silence is the commonest way a referral scheme damages somebody's friendships, and it costs nothing to prevent
A real reason if it's a no — Specific enough to be useful and honest enough to be repeated — because it will be repeated, to you, over a coffee
A named person they can ask — Whose email they get on day one. Not a shared inbox, and not you: you shouldn't have to be anybody's account manager for six weeks
Nobody is told you referred them — Unless you both want that. Some people would rather be considered without it attached, and that is their call rather than yours or ours
We tell you where it got to — Whatever happens, so you don't find out from them first. The stage only — never anything they said
What we won't tell you — Nothing from their interviews, nothing about salary, nothing about their reasons. You referred somebody; you don't get a file on them

A read by a person — Rather than by a filter. That is the whole of the advantage, and it is a real one worth having
Feedback whatever happens — Which most applicants never get anywhere. That's the second real advantage and the one people remember
The same process afterwards — Same questions, same stages, same bar. Anything else would be unfair to everybody who applied cold, and it would make your recommendation worth less rather than more
What it does not buy — A skipped stage, a guaranteed interview, or the benefit of the doubt. Say that to whoever you're referring, so the over-promise isn't yours to explain later
It doesn't expire — If they're not looking now, refer them anyway and they'll hear from us when something fits. Nobody is chased in the meantime and nothing goes on a nurture sequence

Referrals make a company more like itself — People know people like themselves. Run without a limit, a scheme will over a few years produce a narrower organisation than the one that started it. That isn't a theory, it's arithmetic
So they're capped at a third of hires — Measured across the year and published internally. When the cap is reached the scheme pauses for new referrals rather than for anybody already in a process
It is a real constraint on you — Sometimes a good referral arrives after the cap is met. The honest answer then is that they go through the normal route, still with a read by a person, and no bonus is paid
What the cap is not — It is not a quota about any person or group, and nobody's application is judged by who else applied. It limits a hiring CHANNEL, and that distinction matters enough to write down
Why we say it out loud — Because a scheme that quietly stops working is worse than one with a stated limit — and because you're entitled to know why your third referral this year got a different answer from your first

The same for every role — One number, senior or junior. A scheme paying more for senior hires is quietly telling everybody whose network is considered valuable
Paid at their three-month mark — In the next pay run after it. Not on their start date, and not at twelve months — three is long enough to mean something and short enough that it still feels connected to what you did
If they leave before then — You still get it where they were made redundant, where the role changed, or where they left for reasons that weren't about them. You don't where they resign inside three months, and that is the only clawback there is
If you leave — You still get it. Referring somebody good was a good thing to have done, and the date on your own contract has nothing to do with it
Tax — Say plainly how it's treated where you are. A bonus that arrives a third smaller than advertised is a small betrayal, and it is the detail people repeat for years
No leaderboard — No internal ranking, no prize for volume, no monthly nudge. A scheme with a leaderboard reliably produces referrals nobody actually believes in

When you wouldn't want to work with them — You probably will. The bonus is a small fraction of a year of sitting near somebody, and no amount of it improves that arithmetic
When you're doing them a favour rather than us one — It's kind, and it usually ends in a no that you have to explain. Offering to read their CV properly is a better favour and costs you the same evening
When they don't know you're doing it — Ask first, every time. Being contacted about a job you never applied for, at a company where your friend works, is a genuinely awkward position to put somebody in
When they'd report to you, or you to them — Raise it with whoever runs this before referring. It isn't automatically a no, and it is never a thing to sort out after an offer
When you're not sure — Refer them and say you're not sure, in the box. "I don't know if this is quite right, but she's the best I've worked with" is a genuinely useful thing to read