By Vinda Souza, Chief Marketing Officer, RefAssured
Quality has fallen by the wayside as a priority in staffing. It’s time we place it front and center.
Recruiting has always been about the power of connections. Making the match, finding the fit, relying on wisdom that can only come from people. Even in the earliest days of staffing, the resume had limited utility: a single piece of paper that took a lot of time to prepare but said very little. And interviews, while valuable, favored the naturally charming—irrespective of their competence. That’s why reference checks were critical: those conversations with close connections who could vouch for a candidate’s ability to do the job.
The process of calling references on the phone is a bit like using elbow grease to crank open a car window on a hot day. Something that was once ubiquitous, inescapable, but felt awfully mundane no matter which seat you were in. Nevertheless, it was an important motion. We as recruiters made sure we slowly cracked the window a notch to confirm that whatever we let in was cool air and nothing more. And in the absence of rain we felt, okay…we’re good now.
But times have changed. Recruiting has changed. While it’s always been a people business, by people, for people, the proliferation of technology and new operating models incorporating vendor management systems and rules-based automation tools have made it both untenable and unprofitable to slow down. The need for speed dominates our work lives, and to quote the inimitable Ricky Bobby, in the world of recruiting, “if you’re not first, you’re last.”
The question we need to ask ourselves is: have we sacrificed something of greater importance in this quest to operate at a breakneck pace? Is speed an objective, or the objective? Can we sustain our businesses and competitive advantage on speed alone? Was it ever really enough?
The Hidden Cost to Your Business
For growing SMBs, a bad hire isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s expensive. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the cost of a bad hire can reach up to 30% of that employee’s first-year salary. That’s before accounting for lost productivity, damaged team morale, and the time your managers invest in addressing performance issues instead of driving growth.
Here’s the reality: not all staffing firms are equal in their vetting processes. Some prioritize speed over quality. Others conduct cursory reference checks that barely scratch the surface. When you’re a mid-sized company competing for market share, you can’t afford to be someone’s testing ground for unvetted talent.
Here is yet another stark reality. Simple platitudes about the job market never mattered. It’s convenient and makes for a good headline to say that we’re perennially in a “war for talent” but the truth is more nuanced. Market disruptions have normalized rapid transformation, and organizations increasingly operate lean. In many sectors, there are substantial pools of qualified candidates actively seeking opportunities—which makes thorough vetting even more critical to identify true top performers.
In other words, change is accelerating, labor pools are both glutted and gutted simultaneously, and your comfort as an employer should never be viewed as expendable. So what’s the solution?
Enter, again, the humble reference check.
Why Reference Checks Matter More Than Ever
The flaw of manual reference checking isn’t just that it’s a deeply uncomfortable process, requiring awkward phone calls to people who may struggle to organize their thoughts and memories on the spot, or that it takes way too much time and isn’t scalable. It’s that reference checks are an analog for candidate quality—the best one available—and doing them manually or through some transactional lightweight process doesn’t let that truth shine in any way.
A properly conducted reference check is an educated showcase of someone’s professional aptitude. It’s credible, third-party vetting of the quality of candidates’ work product, their ability to adapt to change, how they work with others. With a rating scale that’s designed to do more than just put someone in the category of “good” versus “bad,” we can create a comprehensive assessment of a candidate’s ability to excel in a role and their most important professional behaviors and attributes.
And when we ask reference givers the right questions, in a way that is designed to elicit honest but kind feedback, it paints a complete picture of not just whether someone can do the job they’re applying for, but where their career could go in the future, how to engage and retain them, and how to maximize their productivity in current and future roles. It can unlock incredible insight that can be used for strategic workforce planning—from team building to succession planning.
The reference is a window to the world of candidate quality. When conducted thoughtfully and systematically, reference checks create a standard formula for hiring intelligence that protects your investment in every new employee.
The Lloyd Staffing Difference
This is why your choice of staffing partner matters. Lloyd Staffing has made a strategic commitment that many firms haven’t: they use RefAssured, an advanced platform that automates and standardizes the reference checking process without sacrificing depth or quality.
What does this mean for you as a Lloyd client?
Every candidate Lloyd presents to you has been thoroughly vetted through a consistent, objective process. Reference givers complete detailed assessments at their convenience, providing candid feedback they might hesitate to share in a rushed phone call. The platform generates comprehensive reports that give Lloyd’s recruiters—and by extension, you—genuine insight into how a candidate performs, collaborates, and adapts to challenges.
You’re not gambling on talent. While other staffing firms might be pressured to fill positions quickly with minimally vetted candidates, Lloyd’s use of RefAssured means speed and quality aren’t mutually exclusive. Reference checks that once took days of phone tag now turn around in approximately 26 hours, giving you faster access to better-qualified candidates.
You gain a competitive advantage in retention. The detailed insights from RefAssured’s reference reports don’t just help Lloyd match you with the right candidate—they provide intelligence on how to onboard, engage, and retain that person effectively. Understanding a candidate’s work style, communication preferences, and professional motivations before their first day gives you a roadmap for success.
You work with a partner who invests in quality. Lloyd’s adoption of RefAssured demonstrates their commitment to being more than a transactional vendor. They’re investing in technology and processes that prioritize your long-term success, not just the speed of the next placement.
In an industry where many firms treat reference checking as a checkbox exercise—or skip it entirely when speed is prioritized—Lloyd Staffing chose to invest in this platform.
They’ve recognized that the most valuable service they can provide isn’t just filling your open positions, but filling them with candidates who have been rigorously vetted through objective, third-party validation.
The Bottom Line
For growing SMBs, every hire matters. You don’t have the luxury of absorbing the cost of multiple bad hires, and you can’t afford the productivity drain of managing underperformers. When you partner with Lloyd Staffing, you’re working with a firm that has made quality assurance a competitive differentiator.
RefAssured is the tool that makes this possible—seamlessly integrated into Lloyd’s workflow, providing the deep candidate intelligence that transforms staffing from a volume game into a precision process. But the real differentiator is Lloyd’s commitment to using it consistently, to investing in technology that benefits you, and to refusing to compromise on the quality of talent they place with you.
In a world where recruiting often prioritizes speed over substance, Lloyd Staffing proves that you don’t have to choose. You can have both—but only when your staffing partner is willing to invest in the tools and processes that make it possible.
That’s part of the Lloyd difference. That’s what thorough reference checking delivers. And that’s why, when it comes to building your team, the question isn’t whether reference checks matter—it’s whether your staffing partner takes them seriously enough to do them right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vinda Souza is the Chief Marketing Officer at RefAssured, a provider of automated reference checks and candidate past performance insight for the staffing industry, where she manages all aspects of marketing and thought leadership strategy. Prior to RefAssured, Ms. Souza spent fifteen years in various high-tech corporate marketing roles, including almost ten years at global recruiting software company Bullhorn leading communications, content and events, and industry marketing. She started her career in technology public relations at boutique PR agency fama PR, where she spent five years serving multinational brands across numerous sectors including information security, industrial design, and data management. In addition to her role at RefAssured, Ms. Souza serves on the Leadership Board of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and on the Board of Directors of Seeding Labs. She also recently rejoined the board of the Massachusetts Staffing Association after a previous five-year tenure and serves on the ASA’s IDEA Group Council.
Connect with Vinda on LinkedIn
More reading on Reference Check process:
/https://www.lloydstaffing.com/whats-the-hiring-process/
*********
Are you in need of recruitment support to help solve your organization’s hiring challenges? Trust our process.
Let us help you find the right person for your role. Hire Now.
Are you working, but unsatisfied and ready for a new role?
Visit our Job Board to apply for one of our employment opportunities. Have a conversation with one of our recruiters.