Tell us about hiring at Everest Recruitment?

We hire registered nurses and healthcare assistants to work temporarily in care homes and nursing homes. We on occasion help our clients with filling permanent positions within their homes.

Referencing is vital for our recruitment process, and we cannot put any worker out into homes without referencing in place. 

Being in the healthcare industry, why are reference checks so important to you?

As we supply registered nurses and healthcare assistants to CQC registered homes, we have a robust recruitment process in place, and we follow the Health & Social Care Act 2008 (regulated Activities) Regulations 2014: Regulation 19: Fit and Proper Person Employed.

Referencing is a vital and integral part of this process, to ensure that our candidates have the relevant experience and knowledge, to act as part of the team at our client's homes during their periods of staff shortages/absence or sickness. 

It also gives us an insight into the candidate's career history within the healthcare sector.  

How long would it take you to collect references before?

Before we used RefNow some references would come back quickly, some we were chasing for 3-4 weeks, even months later, which became frustrating to us, but also the candidates that were eager to commence work, but we require the references completed before they can begin work.

We are a small office team, and due to the amount of chasing this could take 3 of us chasing different references throughout the week. 

Other issues would be people putting the wrong email address down, or not being able to read email addresses or phone numbers correctly, so this would then bounce back or go to the wrong person, which caused more delays in obtaining references. 

Why did you choose RefNow?

Due to the number of references we needed to obtain, the time it was taking us and the backlog we had, we decided to look for an automated referencing process that would help streamline our processes while still ensuring it was robust and supported our recruitment process. 

We Found RefNow which is used by other healthcare providers, and this gave us reassurance and confidence in RefNow.

After getting in touch with Josh at RefNow and talking through what we needed, we quickly got to grips with their platform through a straightforward training session. It's really user-friendly and we could tweak it to suit us perfectly.

Setting up our reference system was a breeze, whether it was for personal or professional references – the platform lets you ask all sorts of questions, which is great. What stood out for us was how seriously they take security and data protection; it gave us peace of mind knowing everything's handled safely.

Plus, whenever we had a question or hit a snag, getting hold of the RefNow team was easy and they were always ready to help. All of this made choosing RefNow a no-brainer for us.

How has RefNow improved or streamlined the referencing process for Everest? 

RefNow has really simplified the way we do reference checks. Once we set up a candidate in the system, they add their referee's contact details directly onto the platform. This cuts out any mix-ups with email addresses or phone numbers, which used to slow us down in getting the references back. 

The whole process of getting references is now much smoother and faster with RefNow. It's taken a lot of the hassle out of our referencing procedures.

How have you benefited from using RefNow as a team?

The biggest advantage of using RefNow is how it slashes the time we spend on referencing candidates right down to the essentials.

We're always in the loop – whenever a reference is added, changed, or comes in, we get a notification. Plus, the timeline feature on the platform is a game-changer; it makes keeping track of references a breeze.

How have you found the process of requesting references and tracking their progress?

Once we've added a candidate to the system, the timeline feature is a real help. It shows us exactly what's happened up to now with their reference request and what's coming up next. This makes it so much easier to keep the candidate updated.

For instance, if a candidate puts in a referee's details but hasn't got a reply yet, we can see straight away how many references are still waiting and how many are done. Also, the audit log feature is crucial for us – it gives us all the proof we need for each step of the process.

Are there any future plans for how Everest uses RefNow?

We're sticking with RefNow going forward – it's already become our go-to method for getting references for our candidates. We've fully integrated it into our company's process.

If you could summarise RefNow in one sentence for any other organisations in the Healthcare industry, what would you say?

If I had to sum up RefNow for other healthcare organisations in one line, I'd say it's an excellent pick to streamline and possibly even strengthen your referencing process.