CRN IMPACT Awards: Xref takes pre-employment reference checking tool global

IT recruitment specialist Lee-Martin Seymour was frustrated with the way pre-employment reference checking was being done, so came up with a new concept to improve that.

Seymour partnered up with IT industry veteran Tim Griffiths to help materialise the concept in 2009, eventually founding the company Xref in 2011.

Xref’s flagship SaaS platform helps streamline a company’s recruitment process by reducing its recruitment team’s time spent on the reference checking process.

The company claims the Xref platform can collect 60 percent more data five times faster than traditional methods, and allows recruitment personnel to have more time to identify, attract and onboard top recruits with the required skills and expertise.

“Xref puts candidates in the driving seat, offering full transparency and the opportunity to manage the progress of their references,” Xref said.

“This, coupled with the online nature of the solution, improves the efficiency of the process, while collecting more data, protecting clients from fraudulent candidates and reducing the risk of data and discrimination breaches.”

The platform constantly evolves, including two new features introduced last financial year, an algorithm-based feature providing graphical interpretation of written references and further insight into referees’ responses, while People Search allows users to filter historic referee data to prevent passive candidate sourcing opportunities.

Fast forward to 2016, Xref went public on the ASX to bring the platform global, later expanding to Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America with new offices in London, Toronto and Oslo.

Some of its customers include building materials and aggregates company Holcim, Krispy Kreme, Konica Minolta, Westpac, Qantas and Snapchat parent Snap Inc.

The platform now supports more than 1000 active customers across 195 countries, with integrations with other HR technology platforms. These include JobAdder, Bullhorn, Checkr, Equifax, Expr3ss!, iCIMS, Lever, Oracle Taleo, SmartRecruiters, SnapHire, Talent App Store, Workday and Zapier.

JobAdder head of digital Christina Knock said the company’s integration with Xref has “always been extremely positive”.

“As companies, we have similar growth stories having launched in Australia and expanded overseas, so we have shared common ground from day one,” Knock said.

“We now have more than 40 mutual customers benefitting from the integration of our platforms. Because of this partnership, the JobAdder/Xref integration is the number one performer and as a team we have celebrated this success and we a have great opportunity for further growth as a partnership.”

Xref is a finalist in the 'Exporting Innovation' category in the 2019 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.