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October 30, 2008
Automation Can Help Ease the Pain of Reference Checking

By Adrienne Fox, October 2008



Reference checking is getting a whole lot easier—and some say more accurate—thanks to web-based automation. Recruiters view reference checking as a critical step in the hiring process, but the time involved in tracking down contacts on the phone and the difficulty getting them to say more than dates of employment and title takes away much of the value.

Online automated reference checking, however, offers anonymity for the reference, efficiency for the recruiter and a more comprehensive report on the candidate for the hiring manager.

“It’s simply automating one of the last elements of recruiting that used to be heavily manual,” said Yves Lermusi, CEO of Checkster in Mill Valley, Calif., which offers a product called Reference Checkup. “Because it is confidential, people are more forthcoming. And because it’s online, the process goes faster.”

Drawbacks noted with such systems include the inability of a recruiter to follow up with a reference for clarification or to hear the reference’s tone of voice. Also, these survey tools don’t assess the candidate’s technical skills.

But for assessing behavior, automated reference checking offers many benefits to recruiters and their companies.



Time Efficiencies

In traditional reference checking, a recruiter will spend 30 minutes to over an hour calling roughly three references supplied by the candidate over a period of three or four days. “Reference checks are very time-consuming and intrusive to the reference,” said Babek Dehnad, vice president of human resources at Phoenix Technologies in Milpitas, Calif., and a client of Checkster. “You can lose the candidate during the time it takes to make a telephone reference.”

With automation, the recruiter takes about two minutes to send an e-mail link to the job candidate. It is then that the candidate, not the recruiter, takes the initiative to contact five or more references to fill out a tailored questionnaire online. The vendor collects the surveys and creates an analytical report for the recruiter and the hiring manager.



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Automation Can Help Ease the Pain of Reference Checking