The Problem

When placing technical talent, your first mistake could be your last when it comes to client retention. Fully aware of the critical importance of quality, Ursus had long considered reference checking a mandatory part of their placement process.

However, they conducted them manually. “Our reference checks and subsequent reports were not standardized by any measure and certainly didn’t reflect the professionalism of our team.” Additionally, a manual process introduced risk, especially given how difficult it is to assess whether the skills on a candidate’s resume match their actual capabilities.

Beck, a longtime technology executive prior to founding Ursus, managed the evaluation process for reference checking solution providers himself. It was after a thorough assessment and comparison that he selected RefAssured.

“RefAssured’s workflow is extremely well thought out,” said Beck. “It’s obvious when you look at the interface that the people who designed this have worked in staffing before and really understand how to deliver the type of value and ROI that staffing firms need. It’s intuitive for both candidates and recruiters, really user-friendly, and just makes a ton of sense.”

The Result

With RefAssured, Ursus has been able to save thousands of hours of recruiter time and generate almost $70,000 in labor cost savings in just six months. Yet another benefit of using RefAssured has been immediate ROI from sales and talent lead generation and the revenue growth that results from it.

“I think some agencies think candidate quality seems like a nice-to-have. We’ve grown 29% in the past year during a down market because we consider it a need-to-have, and our clients know we only place the best people with them. With the leads we generate automatically from RefAssured, we can grow our pipeline easily and authentically, and increase revenue without a ton of pain or manual effort. Having access to a qualified lead pipeline makes a huge difference in this market.”

Beck continued: “We also use RefAssured reference reports to proactively market our candidates to hiring managers. The earlier we do it, the more they want to talk to us, the bigger our numbers. And because we can customize the reference process based on our client’s needs, culture, core values questions and other things, we know we’re delivering something that they’ll absolutely want to read and consider.”

True to form, the company has been able to advance several candidates, who were previously not in serious consideration, to finalist stage with three customers based almost solely on the strength of their reference reports. These creative, out-of-the-box approaches to candidate marketing are hallmarks of how Ursus innovates to outperform competitors.

Ursus is excited for RefAssured’s upcoming product expansion, including post-hire insight from performance evaluations.

“It’s such an interesting problem to solve,” said Beck, “connecting how you expect a candidate to perform to how they actually perform. It is huge for retention and redeployment and as we look to further differentiate ourselves by moving upmarket into more SOW and consultative work, having the advantage of data that proves our talent is the best is really compelling. We overcome so many hurdles by having that intelligence at our fingertips.”