No rewards? Use it for FREE

It's completely free to use Zao to create jobs, distribute them on your social networks and manage and track applicants. If you don't want to offer rewards to your employees or their networks, you can still open as many jobs as you want, and hire as many people as you like. You get to use our applicant tracking system for free too.

Set your own reward, pay only when due

With Zao, you choose the reward you want to offer. Once you've successfully hired an applicant that came in through Zao, you only need to pay Zao the reward, plus 30% so that we can keep the lights on. We'll distribute the reward to the appropriate referrers in the hiring chain.

We trust you: we don't make money until you make a great hire

You can take up to 30 days after you hire an employee to pay out the reward you set. We recommend paying quickly because we can then distribute payments quickly to the people that helped you find your candidate. This builds trust with referrers and motivates them to continue helping you the next time you hire.

How we distribute payments

If there's only one referrer in the chain, it's easy - that referrer gets the entire reward, whether that person is your employee or someone outside your company.
If there's more than one referrer, then the person who refers the candidate that gets hired receives half the reward, and the other half is split between the other referrers in the chain. Why split the reward this way? While we appreciate the efforts of everyone in the chain, we want to keep the incentive high for the person that keeps the chain going.

Example #1 - One referrer

Let's say you want to hire an account manager. You enter the job into Zao, set a $1,000 reward and distribute it to your employees, former employees and business colleagues you trust. Alex, a former employee, recommends Jane for the position, and Jane is hired. You pay Zao $1,300. Zao pays Alex $1,000.

Example #2 - Two referrers

You set the same reward - $1,000 for a successful hire. This time, Alex doesn't know anyone relevant, but forwards the job to his sister Brenda. Brenda is in college, and sends the job to a few of her friends she thinks might be interested in the job. Brenda's friend Joe applies for the job and is hired. You pay Zao only $1,300. Zao pays Alex and Brenda $500 each.

Example #3 - Three referrers

You still set a $1,000 reward for a successful hire. You forward the job to Referrer A (Alex). Referrer A forwards the job to B (Brenda), B forwards to C (Charlie), and Charlie recommends someone that is ultimately hired. In this case - Referrer C is the last one in the chain, and gets half the reward amount - $500. Referrers A and B get $250 each. The whole process doesn't cost you more, even though three referrers are now involved - you still pay Zao only $1,300.