Xref Brings Ease of Use, Speed and Insights to Konica Minolta

What drove you to switch from manual to automated reference checks?

Konica Minolta is a globally recognized technology brand, delivering a consistent standard of service that has been developed and honed over the last 144 years. In order to maintain this, we have a stringent multiple-stage assessment process for every new hire, to ensure we bring the best people into the business that will complement the culture. An important part of this screening process is reference checking.

Our previous approach to reference checking was inefficient and costly - most notably, our solution provider was unable to customize the questionnaires we were using or offer a method for handling bulk requests. Given the majority of our staff are in sales roles, hiring can be cyclical, and on occasion, we were required to reference a large number of candidates individually which would take a huge amount of time and significantly slow down the overall hiring process.

Given the previously, purely phone-based approach to reference checking, we were also reliant on being able to catch references at a good time during their working day. When the pressure was on to fill a role, reference checking would fall down the priority list due to the perceived process delays it might cause, and we would therefore be making uninformed hiring decisions.

When an IT company owned by Konica Minolta started using and recommended Xref, we were keen to see if it could help us to overcome these issues and quickly realized that the quality of references we would be able to collect, the ease of use and the turnaround times were light years ahead of the solution we were using at the time.

What was your brief for Xref?

One of my greatest fears is that we hire someone on the basis of what they’ve told us and not done our due diligence to confirm that they are who they say they are, and can do what they say they can do.

We value and rely on references to verify candidates’ claims. Given the vast majority of our roles do not require a specific qualification, reference checking is critical to ensuring a candidate is the right fit and will be able to fulfil the role required. We needed a service that would guarantee a certain level of quality in terms of questions asked and feedback collected, and offer a cost effective and clear pricing approach to make resource planning and budgeting more simple and effective.

What has been the outcome of using Xref?

Xref has offered a number of benefits, including usability, custom questionnaires, speed and insightful analytics.

It is particularly easy to introduce new users to the platform, without any significant training requirements or interruption to their existing workflow, and the user-friendly dashboard means the team can quickly and easily get up to speed with the status of any outstanding references.

We have also been able to introduce custom questionnaires and, given a large part of our recruitment is required to be bilingual, we needed a questionnaire that could be adapted for use in multiple languages. The fact that we can request as many references as we feel we need, is also hugely beneficial, particularly when it comes to hiring for high-level director roles where the minimum two references really isn’t enough.

Speed has, of course, been a critical success factor since introducing Xref. Turnaround times are especially important when it comes to reference checking, since it is usually the last step we take before making an offer. Now, our hiring managers are able to make informed decisions based on a robust and reliable process that delivers feedback verbatim within a maximum of two days.

The insight derived from something as simple as the word count that Xref provides, is also a massive benefit as you can assess, at a glance, the quality of the reference. The difference between a five word response and a 30 word response to a question is significant and tells you a lot about the engagement of the reference in the process and their desire to provide the information required.

Finally, Xref opened our eyes to the importance of ensuring security in the reference checking process. We have been able to identify potentially fraudulent activity by candidates, and ensure that it’s not as ominous as it may first seem, before making a potentially risky hiring decision. The security aspect of the service offers great peace of mind for my team, the hiring managers and the organization as a whole.

To me, Xref is the future of reference checking. It is a user friendly, cost effective method for a very important part of the talent acquisition process.

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