Should you call referees yourself or let a digital tool do the work? We compare time, cost, quality and objectivity — so you can pick what fits your business best.
Time spent: hours vs minutes
A manual reference check typically takes 30-60 minutes per referee — you have to call during business hours, wait for callbacks, take notes and write a summary. With three referees per candidate that quickly adds up to 2-3 hours per hire. Digital tools send the questionnaire asynchronously, so the referee answers when it suits them, and you get a structured report ready minutes after the last response.
Cost and scaling
Manual reference checking has a low per-unit cost if you only do one — but it eats a lot of time for HR teams that recruit at volume. Digital tools have a monthly subscription (typically 299-999 NOK), but the cost per reference check drops below 100 NOK as soon as you do more than 3-5 a month.
See our pricing overview to estimate the cost for your volume.
Quality and objectivity
Manual conversations have one big advantage: you can ask follow-up questions live. But they also suffer from recency bias (the last thing the referee said colours the whole impression) and confirmation bias (you hear what you want to hear). Structured digital questionnaires with the same questions for every referee deliver fairer comparisons and reduce unconscious bias.
Candidate and referee experience
Referees are usually busy managers. Many prefer to answer in writing in 5-10 minutes rather than block out a half-hour phone slot. That increases response rates — typically from 60-70% (phone) to 85-95% (digital forms). The candidate also gets a faster process, which matters in a tight labour market.
GDPR and documentation
Manual notes in Word or on paper are notoriously hard to GDPR-clean. A digital tool gives you automatic consent logging, encrypted storage in the EU and easy deletion when the retention period ends. More on this in GDPR and reference checks in Norway.
Which option fits you?
Pick manual if:
- You make fewer than one hire per month.
- You only recruit for top-level roles where deep conversation is essential.
Pick digital if:
- You make 2+ hires per month.
- You want fair, structured comparison between candidates.
- You need GDPR documentation out of the box.
- You'd rather spend time on real interviews, not admin.
