UniLodge provides purpose-built student accommodation on campus or close to major educational institutions, including universities, colleges and TAFE, across Australia and New Zealand. With more than 80 properties under its management, UniLodge continues to grow, adding new properties to its portfolio.
With over 620 employees across Australia and New Zealand, the hiring team at UniLodge generally brings between 15 to 30 new employees on board every month. However, when they open a new building, this number will jump to as high as 70 or 80. With two references required before hiring, UniLodge could easily spend up to a week chasing one referee.
“Prior to using Referoo, we were manually calling and recording each reference. This meant we could spend up to a week chasing a referee before we even spoke to them. When we interview them, this could take anywhere from 10 minutes to 40 minutes, depending on what the referee has to say,” said Sam Smith, Recruitment Advisor, UniLodge.
Completing reference checks manually was a lengthy process and we would have lists of referees to call each week. Reference checking was not only time-consuming, but it was slowing down the hiring process.
As part of UniLodge’s HR process improvement reviews, reference checks were identified as a significant administrative burden.
“We had anything from 15 to 60 roles on at one time and were completing all of our phone screening manually, as well reference checks. When we looked at cutting down our administration time and speeding up our end-to-end recruitment process, we saw online reference checks as an opportunity to help improve our process.”
UniLodge trialled two online reference checking providers. “Referoo offered us a free trial. We had nothing to lose. We gave it a try to see whether it was right for us, and now we would never go back.
Out of the two providers, Referoo just suited us better. With Referoo, the product was easy to use, with no superfluous features that we wouldn’t use and it integrated with JobAdder, our Applicant Tracking Solution. It was exactly what we needed.
In addition to electronic reference checks, UniLodge uses Referoo to complete verbal references when recruiting senior roles.
“We are very thorough with our reference checks. We use Referoo to request reference information, keep track of the process, verify information as well as complete verbal and electronic references.
“What we also found useful was viewing the status of our references and monitoring how the reference is progressing. If we can see it has stalled, we will use the SMS function in Referoo to send a reminder to the referee.”
Referoo set up UniLodge’s reference templates with their branding and continue to update these as UniLodge’s requirements change over time.
For UniLodge, the efficiency gains from automating its reference checks have been significant, but it has really made a difference during its peak hiring times when opening a new property.
“We’re currently opening ten new properties with 60 new headcounts, so we were very busy recruiting. For example, in December 2020, we had completed 70 references as a part of our recruitment process. Having to reference check those roles manually would have been difficult and significantly slowed down the recruitment process.
“One of the biggest reasons we stick with Referoo is its customer service. We use the chat function, and Referoo always responds quickly. More importantly, they actually listen to your questions, requests and responses. Even for larger changes to its system, they will take on feedback and look for ways to make it happen.”
Overall, Referoo has dramatically improved UniLodge’s efficiency, taking a cumbersome, time-consuming administration task and automating it to improve its end-to-end recruitment process. “I can’t even imagine doing reference checks manually anymore. We wouldn’t go back,” concluded Sam.