## Recommend Someone for a Role

A referral records who recommended someone and why. Saving it creates no candidate profile or application and sends no email. The person decides whether to apply.

## Add a Referral as a Teammate

1. Open a published role in [Hiring > Job Postings](/hiring/job_postings). In **Referrals**, choose **Add referral**.
2. Enter **Their name** and **Their email**. Add a short recommendation if useful; leave out sensitive personal information.
3. Confirm that the person agreed to share their details and your recommendation with the hiring team.
4. Choose **Save referral**, then **Copy application link**. Share that link with the person yourself.

The link is the role’s existing career-portal application link. Ask the person to apply for that role using the same email address you recorded. Applying for another role or with a different address does not link the application to this referral.

The job’s **Referrals** list shows whether the person is awaiting an application or has applied. Once they apply, the hiring team can open the linked application and see the referrer’s recommendation.

You cannot add a second referral for the same email and role. If the person has already applied, add your recommendation as a note on their application instead. Paused and closed roles accept no new referrals; existing referrals remain available.

## Invite External Referral Partners

Account admins can open [Referral partners](/hiring/referral_partners) and expand **Invite a partner**. Enter a **Partner name** and **Partner email**, then choose **Send invitation**. Kit emails the partner a sign-in link. This gives access to the partner portal without making the person a member of your team.

- **Copy partner portal link** gives you the portal address to share with invited partners. They still need to sign in with the email you invited.
- **Send a new sign-in link** sends another email. Wait a minute between requests; a new link replaces the previous unused link.
- **Remove access** immediately ends the partner’s access, including existing sessions and sign-in links. Referrals already shared remain with your team.

## Use the Partner Portal

Open the invitation email and its sign-in link, then choose **Continue to portal** on the confirmation page. Opening or previewing the email link alone does not complete sign-in, so an email security scanner can open it without using it up.

Each sign-in link works once and expires after **20 minutes**. If it expires, request a new link using the invited email address. A signed-in session lasts up to **30 days**; signing out or having access removed ends it sooner.

In **Open jobs**, choose a role and **Refer someone**. Enter the person’s name, email, and optional recommendation, confirm their permission, and save. Then use **Copy application link** and send it to them yourself. Saving a partner referral also creates no candidate profile or application and sends no email to the person.

Partners can refer people only to public roles that are accepting applications. Restricted, paused, and closed roles are unavailable for new referrals.

**Your referrals** contains only the partner’s own referrals and recommendations. It shows two statuses:

| Status | Meaning |
|--------|---------|
| Awaiting application | The referral has no linked application yet |
| Applied | The person applied for that role with the recorded email |

Partners cannot see applications, hiring stages, decisions, internal notes, or other people’s referrals. Existing referrals remain visible when a role stops accepting applications.

## Privacy and Removal

Referral details and recommendations are available to teammates who can access the job. Partners can read only the recommendations they submitted. Confirm permission before saving and keep recommendations relevant to the role.

A teammate can remove their own referral; teammates who can edit the job can remove others. **Remove referral** deletes the referral details and recommendation while leaving any application in place.

Referrals awaiting an application are deleted after your account’s configured Hiring retention period, counted from when the referral was saved. Linked referrals are removed when the application is deleted or anonymized; candidate anonymization also removes referrals for that email. See [Candidate Privacy and Consent](/docs/candidate-privacy-and-consent) for retention settings.