Case Study: Stripe achieves 40% of hires from employee referrals with Greenhouse Software

How Stripe Created a Referral Culture Without Monetary Reward

Stripe, a payments technology platform, faced the common recruiting challenge of getting employees to tap their networks for hires without using monetary rewards. As the company scaled, earlier informal tactics lost effectiveness and referral percentages began to dip, so Stripe needed a repeatable, non‑cash approach to keep quality referrals flowing.

Stripe built a referral culture from day one by introducing "Spin Up" onboarding sessions, defining and prioritizing "strong referrals," and giving those candidates white‑glove treatment (including the referrer in interview debriefs and pairing candidates with executives). They also adopted the Teamable sourcing platform to automate outreach as they grew and secured leadership buy‑in—resulting in roughly 40% of hires coming from employee referrals.

Stripe