Operating for over 100 years, Deluxe Enterprises knew needed to transform their business model in response to a changing marketplace. As the company moved into new lines of business, they wanted to recruit a forward-looking workforce equipped with today’s skills was identified. As part of their updated hiring process, Deluxe selected SkillSurvey Reference® for their reference checking solution, as it offered a quick and easy way for their team of in-house recruiters to assess and hire candidates for every role, as well as help to build their talent pipeline.
New Roles Meant New Sourcing Methods
Any company that hopes to survive and thrive for more than 100 years must change with the times. For Deluxe Enterprises, that meant transforming their business model from a direct-to-consumer check printing company to an organization that included marketing and business services.
As the company made this transition, the roles managers were hiring for had to change as well. Many of these positions, such as UI designer, ecommerce director, or SEM manager, were new to the organization, so they faced the challenge of how to find people with these skills in a challenging job market.
The Deluxe team knew they needed to modernize their recruiting process and adopt new sourcing tactics to attract a workforce with the latest skillsets. At the same time, the recruitment organization was looking to change its own role from “order takers” into something more consultative by bringing hiring managers a greater understanding of the market and the latest in best in class hiring practices.
“SkillSurvey Reference is an excellent tool to get past performance information to help assess the skills that are really needed for each role and to gather the depth of data that ultimately results in a better hiring decision. All of the capabilities in SkillSurvey Reference are allowing us to successfully transform at the speed the Deluxe organization is moving at today.”
Making the Switch to a New Online Reference Solution
Deluxe selected SkillSurvey Reference in 2015 to gain more detailed insights into their candidates. Having previously used a different online reference checking solution, Deluxe made the switch because they wanted a solution designed specifically to assess the job-specific soft skills each position needs. With hundreds of surveys to choose from, getting appropriate feedback from references is easy. Because of the variety of positions they are now hiring for, Deluxe has used over 80 job-specific surveys, including for roles as varied as sales, customer service rep, software engineer, marketing manager, accountant, and skilled trades specialist.
Since the individual survey responses are confidential, references tend to be very candid. And, the way SkillSurvey presents the responses in report format provides a detailed view of the data to help hiring managers make more informed hiring decisions. In a few instances, feedback provided from references caused them to pause a hiring decision as they learned more about their candidates. Deluxe’s talent acquisition team feels that “SkillSurvey Reference is an excellent tool to get past performance information to help assess the skills that are really needed for each role and to gather the depth of data that ultimately results in a better hiring decision.”
To date, Deluxe has requested reference feedback on over 1,400 job candidates, with an average of 3.5 references per candidate, and typically an average of 3.1 references respond for each candidate. Over 70 percent of the candidate references are ready to be reviewed in under 24 hours, helping Deluxe reduce time-to-fill by obtaining insightful feedback on their candidates in a very timely fashion.
3.5 References
respond for each candidate on average
70% reference responses
received in less than one day
Over 100
different job-specific surveys use for candidates
500+
references have opted into their passive candidate pipeline
Recruiting for Future Positions with Sourcing
Deluxe also utilizes the SkillSurvey Source® service, offering them new avenues to find candidates for hard-to-source positions by providing a means to ask references if may be interested in being considered for future job opportunities. As individuals complete a reference check request, they can opt-in to receive notifications of open positions at Deluxe. Within the first few years of using SkillSurvey Reference, over 500 references have opted-in to their private talent network – and of those, 59% have manager-level titles. This serves as a pipeline for future talent.
The detailed reference feedback report as well as a feature which allows Deluxe to compare candidate based on their reference feedback makes it easy to determine which candidates has the best skillset match and will be the best fit for the open position.
According to Deluxe, “All of the capabilities in SkillSurvey Reference are allowing us to successfully transform at the speed the Deluxe organization is moving at today.”
About Deluxe Enterprise
Founded in 1915, Deluxe Enterprise is America’s best-known brand of bank checks, with over 50% of the market share. Today, the Shoreview, Minnesota-based company employs over 6,000 employees in more than 70 locations and offers marketing and business services to 4.5 million small businesses and more than 5,100 financial services firms.
Here’s what to do next
Use this calculator to see how you can improve your hiring process
Take a look inside our patented solution in this quick video demo
Create a free trial account and access our solution for 30 days