How Lannick uses Xref to offer clients a premium service.

Interview with Scott Asselstine, Lannick's Senior Operations Manager

Let’s start by hearing a bit about yourself

I have spent the majority of my career working in an operational capacity, starting at Rugby Canada then transitioning out of the non-profit sector into the staffing and recruitment industry. It was in conversations with our Managing Partner, Jim Dimovski, that I really learned what the recruitment industry was and how Lannick was making an impact on their clients and candidates lives on a daily basis. I was sold on how Lannick did things differently than the typical staffing and recruitment firm and I wanted to be a part of making an impact in their strategic growth objectives. 

Tell us a little more about Lannick

Lannick is the premier professional recruitment and staffing firm in the Greater Toronto Area. Founded in 1985, Lannick provides best-in-class finance, accounting and technology professionals at all roles and levels through its three divisions: Lannick Finance & Accounting, Pro Count Staffing, and Lannick Technology. We differentiate ourselves from other firms by operating under a ‘dedicated’ (rather than ‘360’) model; Our Dedicated Service Model ensures our Sales Associates focus on serving clients, our Recruiters focus on cultivating relationships with candidates, and our Researchers focus on tracking professionals proactively throughout their careers. We’re doing this to help eliminate the inherent bias that can be found at other firms and to ensure that clients receive only the best matched candidates. 

What recruitment challenges are you facing?

I would say one of the biggest challenges in the staffing industry is being able to give time back to clients. It’s an incredibly competitive industry, so to win we need to be the first to market and be able to offer great candidates at the same time. In order to do this effectively, our administrative functions need to be fast, reliable and provide the information needed by our clients.  

How did you do things before bringing in Xref?

One of the major reasons I was hired by Lannick was to review their back end operations and help introduce technology to automate and streamline their processes, ultimately helping the business become more cost efficient. Our recruitment and administrative teams were previously taking references by phone, which took at least 15 minutes per reference. It was time consuming and was taking time away from our clients that could be used more productively. 

Why did you make the decision to go with Xref?

The general principle that we follow here internally at Lannick is that we want to automate as much as possible to alleviate the time that our administrative teams  spend on highly repetitive. We wanted to find a partner that could not only improve our administrative function from a technology and automation standpoint, but ultimately help us to provide a better service to give back to our clients. 

There are a number of technology companies that over promise and under deliver on exactly what they can do with their product and we have learnt from our past experiences to ensure that we only partner with companies that offer a premier product and top of the line service. Lannick prides itself in being an industry leader, and seeing the big firms that had already made the decision to trust Xref during the vetting process made the decision very easy for us to do the same. We’re confident that the business is well-established and we could see that some other big firms had made the decision to trust Xref, so we did too. 

How quickly can you now provide references to your clients?

Before Xref, collecting references was a laborious task. 

Making contact with a reference would take an average of 48 hours and was typically conducting by trying to contact the individual over the phone. By all accounts this wasn’t a terrible turnaround time - Xref informs us that similar firms report periods of two days to two weeks to collect references - but this didn’t provide the level of service we wanted for our clients.

Since implementing Xref we’ve reduced the time to collect the reference to less than 28 hours; that’s from the second we ask the candidate for contact details, to the time we see the completed report. ‍

How has Lannick benefited since using Xref?

We’ve benefited in a number of ways:

• We’re using Xref within our ATS, Bullhorn, which has made things even quicker and easier. Our team can select a candidate and send off for an Xref in a couple of clicks.
• We’ve been able to tailor our reference questions for each client, giving them the exact information they need. When you reference over the phone, you can’t always guarantee you’ll get this.
• Most importantly, Xref has helped our administrative team gain back more time and really think about other ways we can become more effective and improve our practices; so, Xref is indirectly improving our overall recruitment function. 
  

One thing that we weren’t expecting, as you don’t see it too often with other tech companies is that the team has been so easy to work with. The customer service that Xref has provided has been fantastic and we’re super happy with the product. 

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