Fletcher Building introduced Xref for online reference checking to standardised referencing, reinforce consistency, and to make the overall process more efficient for their recruitment team in New Zealand.
“We now have time to focus on tasks we’re passionate about.”
48% of references are completed outside traditional business hours
It takes, on average, just 27 hours to turnaround references
Average word count of feedback provided
Fletcher Building operates in more than 40 countries, so a large percentage of our recruitment team’s time is spent identifying talent on a global scale. Our team will often be liaising with referees in Canada, the USA, South Africa and the UK at any given time.
As such, our recruitment team was often working late or arriving at the office early to catch overseas referees during their business hours.
In addition, we operate across construction, manufacturing and retail, so “business hours” are not the best time to reach a referee, when they’ll likely be on a construction site, in a manufacturing plant, or on a shop floor. Our recruitment team was working above and beyond their own “business hours” to be effective in their roles.
Prior to Xref, liaising with a referee based in another country – or even hemisphere - meant the reference checking process for just one candidate could as long as three weeks.
We needed a standardised reference template to be able to recruit a broad range of roles, from C-Suite positions through to truck drivers and distribution centre staff.
We also wanted to reinforce consistency in the responses coming in from countries all over the world, and to make the overall process more efficient for our recruitment team.
The time saved on conducting the reference checking process is by far the greatest benefit we’ve witnessed, especially given the lack of “back and forth” we now have to do with referees.
Using Xref circumvents the coordination time that was once required just to secure a time to complete the reference check. Now we’re completing and reporting on checks within 36 hours - something that often took weeks in the past.
Our recruitment team has more time to refocus on the elements of their roles that they’re truly passionate about: proactively sourcing talent, understanding their place in the business and how they add value, and strengthening the selection process in line with the organisational goals.
We are operating more efficiently now, given the speed and ease with which Xref can develop and issue a standardised reference template. The fact that Xref also ensures responses are consistent - and can be benchmarked - gives our recruitment team confidence in the data, which is important when you are chasing candidates across time zones and a huge variety of roles.
But, most importantly, we now have more scope to continually improve our recruitment processes in the future.
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