How Bonnier News benefits from Refapp Insights in their data-driven recruitment process

Bonnier News, Sweden's leading news provider and the largest media group in the Nordic region, is committed to working data-driven and using innovative methods to optimise the recruitment process. Vilhelm Berggren, Team Lead Talent Acquisition Partner at Bonnier News, shares his experience of using Refapp Insights to collect relevant and reliable candidate insights.

A fast-growing organisation with a data-driven focus

With over eight thousand employees and rapid growth, Bonnier News is focused on being strategic and data-driven throughout the recruitment process. 

"We know that a data-driven approach helps us to more accurately match candidates with specific role requirements and to gain a good understanding of candidates' potential. Despite our rapid growth, the entrepreneurial mindset remains and allows us to be quick to adopt new initiatives, tools and methods that improve the way we work."

Digital tools to gain insight and make time for human interaction

For several years, Bonnier News has been using Refapp's digital reference checking solution integrated with their applicant tracking system, Jobylon. For a time, the team has also been using Alva Labs for testing and now our new product update, Refapp Insights, with evidence-based and role-specific questionnaires in their reference checks. 

"Before implementing Refapp, we found it difficult to make reference checking effective and to draw valid conclusions from the information we received. We wanted to save time to spend on other activities, such as face-to-face meetings and creating the best possible candidate experience". 

"After switching to digital reference checking, we are saving up to 1 hour of work per candidate. The next step was to see how we could collect even better data and use it to improve the quality of our hires. We saw Refapp's new initiative Refapp Insights as an exciting way forward.”

Predicting job performance with role-specific reference checking

Refapp Insights is a plug-and-play solution based on science with role-specific questionnaires and a reference report with aggregated data for easy interpretation. 

"The tool helps us capture relevant behaviours and predict the candidate's job performance for the specific role we are hiring for, which is of great value to us. We simply select the template that matches the position and start the reference checking, which is carried out automatically. We receive the reference responses neatly presented in the form of aggregated data, making it easy to compare candidates and draw conclusions".

"The solution also works very well with the rest of our process, for example, as we are comparing the personality test results with the Refapp Insights answers to see how they correlate. It all boils down to the fact that we want the highest quality recruitment possible, and it's great to see the possibilities of gathering reliable data and how it can be used throughout the process when we combine really good tools like this!