Referoo has proved a valuable solution for Castle Employment Group, allowing the agency to automate its reference-checking process and ensure easy compliance. Fast turnaround times and ease of use have led to increased productivity and buy-in from the team, allowing the firm to manage a high volume of candidates far more efficiently.
Castle Employment Group is a UK-based recruitment agency that supplies temporary and permanent workers across 9 specialist divisions. The team is incredibly busy, with 50 per cent of the business coming from temporary contracts and interim work. Teachers and educators account for 30–40 percent of Castle’s temporary placements, meaning compliance, thorough background and reference checking and speed are critical.
Overall responsibility for compliance sits with Castle Employment’s experienced Financial Controller, Jo Revett.
“In this market, we need to move fast to secure candidates and get them into roles, but with manual processes, it was taking significant time to get them cleared and ready to start,” she says.
And if the time and productivity losses weren’t enough, Jo acknowledges that manual reference and background checking wasn’t a popular job amongst her team, either.
“Manual reference checking was just about everyone’s least favourite job,” she says. “The process itself was time-consuming and, let’s face it, a bit of a drag. It was clear that finding a solution that would maintain compliance and quality while increasing speed was going to be key.”
“Referoo offered us a free trial in late 2022, just before Christmas,” Jo recalls. “I wasn’t sure if it would work for us, but I thought, let’s just bang some references through and see what happens. The first reference came back in just 45 minutes, so we were impressed.”
Castle Employment signed on once integration with their applicant tracking system went live.
I liked how easy it was to send a reference on the free trial, but it was even easier once the integration was available. Just one button in our ATS and a reference check was in progress.
Jo also noted that the ease of use and quick response from Referoo has led to increased buy- in from the team, noting that they have been impressed with the speed and accuracy of the process.
The speed and simplicity of the process have also improved productivity, even in peak times, such as the UK school holidays from July to September each ear.
“Over the summer, we are really focused on getting teaching candidates through the door, checked and ready to start in September. It’s a big job, and we typically need all hands on deck,” Jo says.
However, since commencing with Referoo, Jo has been able to move a previously full-time role to three days.
“I had someone returning from parental leave who wanted to join the compliance team in a part-time capacity. I was able to reduce an existing full-time role to three days a week because we don’t have the same level of manual work.” Jo says.
At the end of the day, Jo says Referoo has provided the ideal solution to increase speed, improve productivity and maintain compliance.
“We’re very happy with Referoo. We like how automated it is, but also how simple, too. It’s not all singing and dancing with all these complicated features. It just works how it should and does what we need it to do,” she concludes.