Anyone who’s worked in high-volume hiring knows that background checks can quickly become a bottleneck, pulling your team into time-heavy admin right when you need to keep things moving.
For Sportsbet’s talent acquisition (TA) team, those time bleeds had become the norm. It wasn’t because of a single failure but rather friction that had built up over time thanks to a clunky platform, slow response times and confused candidates. All of these little issues had combined to create a big problem.
Sportsbet is one of Australia’s leading online wagering platforms and part of Flutter Entertainment, one of the world’s largest sports betting and gaming groups. Operating in a fast-paced, highly regulated industry, Sportsbet employs a sizeable workforce and recruits continuously across customer operations, technology and corporate functions.
Hiring volumes can fluctuate significantly. Customer service intakes alone can attract over 200 candidates, while specialist and leadership roles require a higher- touch process.
The TA team doesn’t have the luxury of a slow, inconsistent screening process. They need something that can keep up and flex with the business at speed.
Before adopting Referoo Hub, Sportsbet’s TA team was juggling background checks through one provider and reference checks through a separate, largely manual process. Neither was working well.
Their previous background check provider was slow to complete checks and even slower to respond when issues were raised. For contractors joining the TA team during peak periods, just getting access to the platform in the first place was a whole ordeal, often falling to other team members to sort out.
They were super slow to conduct the checks to begin with,’ recalls Maria Corral, Sportsbet Talent Acquisition Partner. ‘And if we did query it, they were quite slow to respond.’
The candidate experience wasn’t any better. The previous platform they were using wasn’t intuitive, and a steady stream of confused candidates meant the TA team was fielding avoidable queries right at the point they should have been wrapping things up.
Candidates didn’t find the platform that easy to use,’ explains Michelle Magness, Sportsbet Talent Acquisition Partner.’ I often had people pushing back, going, I couldn’t get where I was supposed to, or this didn’t work, or that didn’t work.’
And then there was the consistency problem. Reference checks weren’t being applied uniformly across the business. Some business units completed them routinely, others skipped them or applied different rules depending on role seniority. There was no single view of where candidates were up to and no clean reporting as a single source of truth.
‘When you add that to the other little things that we’re doing, the little things become big things that turn into a big admin nightmare,’ adds Michelle. ‘It just adds to the admin-heavy aspect of our roles.’
After comparing providers, Sportsbet chose Referoo. The decision came down to three key factors: a stronger service offering, a more intuitive platform and noticeably better support.
‘It just ticked most boxes for us,’ says Maria. ‘It was easier to navigate. And the support was a lot better than the other provider we were potentially considering.’
What stood out about Referoo was how Referoo Hub consolidates reference checks, police checks and Right to Work checks into a single platform. Candidates receive a single request and complete everything through one platform.
The TA team gets a real-time, unified view of every candidate’s check status. For the team, onboarding was fast and without the delays for contractor access they had previously experienced.
Sportsbet onboarded Referoo Hub just before Christmas, with five Talent Acquisition Partners set up from day one. The team was immediately recruiting across a range of roles, including Customer Service Advisor, GBP Program Analyst and Workplace Tech Specialists.
Adoption was straightforward and smooth. The platform’s design meant minimal hand-holding was needed and candidate queries dropped noticeably from the start.
‘Historically, having to conduct reference checks manually, separate to the background check, that was really clunky,’ explains Maria. ‘But now it’s a lot smoother and quicker.’
Since going live with Referoo Hub, reference checks have been embedded as a mandatory step in Sportsbet’s pre- offer workflow. This is something that would have been much harder to enforce under the old system.
Given that we’ve had a bit of a refresh with our internal recruitment processes, reference checks are a mandatory piece prior to offering the candidate,’ says Maria. ‘Moving forward, that would have been really tricky to navigate if we had to do it ourselves.’
In the weeks since launch, the numbers tell a clear story:
70 hours and 30 minutes saved across the TA team since onboarding.
The platform’s 24/7 accessibility means candidates can complete their checks at a time that suits them, reducing delays at the final hiring stage, without any manual follow- up from the TA team.
A single source of truth. Having everything in one place means no more toggling between platforms or wondering which check came back when. The dashboard gives the whole team real-time visibility, which matters when multiple people are working on the same candidate pipeline.
Standardised pre-offer process. Reference checks are now a non-negotiable part of every pre-offer workflow, removing the inconsistency that had existed when different team members applied different practices.
Flexible user management. Adding or removing users, including contractors who come and go with hiring peak periods, is quick and simple, with none of the delays the team dealt with before.
Better candidate experience. Candidates receive one request and have one place to respond, leading to far fewer moments of confusion. With 30% of check responses coming in outside business hours, the team is progressing offers even when offline.
‘Ever since I’ve been using Referoo, I feel like we’re hearing less noise,’ says Maria.
‘It’s all in one place,’ adds Michelle. ‘It’s user-friendly for the candidates. It’s user-friendly for the team. It’s easy.’
In a short time, Referoo Hub has helped Sportsbet’s TA team reclaim more than 70 hours, reduce candidate friction at the checks stage and build a hiring process that’s more consistent and more compliant.
As hiring continues to scale across the business, Referoo Hub gives the team a reliable foundation that will grow with them. With automated check renewal notifications on the product roadmap, the platform is already thinking ahead to the problems Sportsbet hasn’t hit yet.