How the City of Stockholm streamlined its hiring process with digital reference checking
Industry
Municipal operations
Head office
Stockholm, Sweden
Employees
40 000+
Client since
2016
“Reference checking used to be a bottleneck. It could take days to reach the referee, schedule a time, and receive feedback. With Grade, we’ve eliminated the manual work, while improving quality.”
Karin Toll Lane, avdelningschef rekrytering, Stockholm Stad
Background
The recruitment unit within the City of Stockholm’s Service Administration has a clear mission: to deliver high-quality recruitment services to the city’s departments, professionally and cost-effectively. With over 40,000 municipal employees, expectations are high—but so are the opportunities. When Karin Toll Lane, Head of Recruitment, recognized how much time was being consumed by conducting reference checks over the phone, it became evident that a change was needed.
The process wasn’t just inefficient—it could extend the hiring timeline by up to two weeks. A pilot project for digital reference checking was launched in 2019, and by the following year, the city had fully implemented Grade’s digital reference solution.
Solution
Since August 2020, the City of Stockholm has used Grade for all digital reference checks in central recruitment. The process is now fully digitized, featuring competency-based question sets and complete traceability. Referees verify their identity via BankID and respond at their convenience—boosting both efficiency and response rates.
“The best part is that every candidate is assessed on equal terms. The questions are standardized, objective, and directly aligned with the competencies we’re seeking. That eliminates subjectivity and personal bias,” explains Karin.
Today, reference checks are a seamless part of the city’s broader competency-based recruitment strategy. The tool is used extensively—especially for managerial and specialist roles, as well as in high-volume hiring. Departments can still request traditional phone references—but now at an added cost.
Results
With digital reference checking, the City of Stockholm has not only saved time—it has professionalized a process that was once time-consuming and inconsistent.
Candidates benefit from a smoother experience, managers receive faster decisions, and taxpayers benefit from smarter use of public resources.
The impact is clear:
- Customer satisfaction score: 9.57 out of 10
- Over 1,000 recruitments completed in 2022 alone
- Reference checks now take days instead of weeks Digitalization has also allowed the recruitment team to focus on what truly matters—skills, potential, and selection quality.
- One initiative, recruiting without cover letters, led to over 70 recruitments launched without requiring a single free-text application.
“Our goal is to create a more objective, equitable, and precise hiring process. By eliminating noise, we reduce bias—and increase accessibility. That benefits both our organization and our candidates.”
Karin Toll Lane
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