RefAssured, a company at the forefront of providing automated reference checking and invaluable performance insights for the dynamic staffing industry, recently celebrated a significant milestone: the successful close of an oversubscribed seed funding round, securing an impressive $3.3 million. This substantial financial backing was primarily led by Dogwood Ventures, with additional crucial support from HighSage Ventures. The investment round also attracted a diverse and strategic group of investors, including prominent names such as Bullhorn Ventures, LocumTenens.com, and several influential individuals, including Jeff Bowling, Dan Campbell, Jeff Harris, and Belal Badat Ventures.
From its very inception, RefAssured has been committed to creating a truly comprehensive system for understanding talent performance within the complex staffing industry. Imagine it as a detailed baseball card for an athlete, but instead of sports statistics, it offers extensive performance data for job candidates. The platform has already processed an astounding number of references, gathering a vast and unique dataset—about 20 million organized data points, to be precise. This rich data encompasses critical soft skills, key professional attributes, demonstrated team collaboration abilities, and various other essential performance indicators. For staffing agencies, this means RefAssured can provide an all-encompassing scorecard that directly answers two fundamental questions: can the individual perform the job, and can they do it effectively?
This continuously updated and meticulously structured data holds immense promise for future applications. It is poised to actively enhance the intelligence, trustworthiness, and empathy of artificial intelligence systems. Upcoming product releases from RefAssured are designed not only to expand the sheer volume of data collected but also to unlock even more sophisticated functionalities and insights. In today’s rapidly evolving job market, where specific skills can quickly become more or less in demand, this deep and nuanced understanding of performance is quickly becoming the new standard for employability. It not only aids in making immediate and informed hiring decisions but also plays a vital role in defining the jobs of tomorrow and identifying the talent best equipped to thrive in an increasingly complex and uncertain global landscape.
RefAssured’s automated reference checking platform has been specifically engineered to cater to the unique needs of the staffing industry, offering distinct and powerful advantages to the agencies that rely on it daily. Its roster of prominent clients includes industry leaders such as Vaco, Kelly Services (SETT), Soliant, LRS, Ingenovis Health, Triage, and Fusion Medical Staffing. By leveraging RefAssured, these customers gain a significant competitive edge. They are empowered better to understand the true quality of their talent pool, effectively combat candidate fraud, and dramatically accelerate the often time-consuming placement process. Furthermore, the platform helps them achieve sustainable growth within their talent pipelines. The company proudly boasts an unparalleled 100% customer referenceability score, which signifies that every single one of its customers reports deriving substantial value and a strong return on investment from the platform, and they would readily recommend it to other staffing agencies seeking similar benefits.
A substantial portion of RefAssured’s new funding will be strategically allocated to hiring across all departments within the company. RefAssured has an ambitious product roadmap, carefully shaped through ongoing conversations with customers and valuable collaborative feedback. This roadmap is firmly centered on developing innovative new features, cutting-edge products, and novel functionalities that are genuinely designed to improve the professional lives of staffing industry professionals. It focuses on creating solutions that truly address their most pressing needs and challenges.
The company’s plans encompass several key and exciting initiatives. Post-hire performance evaluations, currently in a successful testing phase, are experiencing high demand among RefAssured’s existing customers across various industry segments. These evaluations will enable agencies to collect objective data from third parties and gather essential exit feedback on an individual’s performance in a specific role. This invaluable information can then be used to power more effective redeployment efforts and help bridge the crucial gap between client expectations and actual on-the-job performance.
RefAssured also plans to enhance its advanced identity verification and fraud mitigation capabilities significantly. While the platform already incorporates sophisticated fraud detection features, the company intends to launch an innovative new solution specifically designed to provide advanced identity verification smoothly, at scale, and in a consistent manner, ensuring even greater security and reliability.
Another significant upcoming development is the creation of universal candidate profiles. By establishing a shared talent ecosystem and providing candidates with the autonomy and security to share their reference information confidentially, RefAssured can significantly accelerate the speed and consistency of candidate submission packages. This will also substantially simplify both the onboarding and redeployment processes for candidates and agencies alike. Ultimately, this benefits both sides of the hiring equation—recruiters and candidates—leading to greater overall success for all involved and effectively reducing friction and unnecessary complications in the hiring journey.
RefAssured is also actively developing job-to-match templates. These templates, which will draw on the structured insights gathered through post-hire performance evaluations, will enable RefAssured to more accurately assess talent, specific skills, and overall job fit. A preview of this exciting upcoming functionality is already conveniently available within the platform for its existing customers, offering a glimpse into the future of precision talent matching.
KEY QUOTES:
“I don’t take for granted the position that we’re in as a business that led us to this moment. We are financially disciplined entrepreneurs who are dedicated to our customers and exceeding their expectations. Once we reached cash-flow breakeven, we wanted to raise a responsible amount of capital that would allow us to accelerate our operating and product development capacity. We also wanted to partner with investors who would lock arms with us and complement the culture and organizational values that we’ve worked very hard to build.”
Brian Vesce, CEO of RefAssured
“We are thrilled to partner with Brian and the world-class team at RefAssured as they solve a large problem in the talent acquisition market,” said Aaron Hurst, Founding Partner at Dogwood Ventures. “Vetting high quality candidates is an ever-increasing challenge as companies are flooded with bot-generated applicants and fraudulent references. Artificial intelligence is accelerating this low trust environment. RefAssured has already demonstrated their leadership within the high-volume staffing industry, and we are excited to explore how their unique capabilities and dataset can evolve to solve new critical challenges in hiring.”
