From Multiple Systems To One: How Port Stephens Council Simplified Screening Across 60+ Business Units

The Customer

Port Stephens Council is the local government body for the Port Stephens region on Australia's NSW coast, a community of beaches, bushland and holiday towns. With 500+ employees across more than 60 business units, the council delivers everything from waste and infrastructure, community  services, Tourism services such as Holiday Parks, through to community programs, development and building services, and environmental teams.

The Challenge: One council, dozens of check types, no single source of truth

Port Stephens Council's Talent Acquisition team runs the full recruitment lifecycle, from the initial hiring request through to onboarding. With an average of 120 roles a year, with candidate volumes ranging from 20 to 250 people per role, managed by just two Talent Acquisition Advisors.

Each role also carries its own compliance and due-diligence requirements. Working With Children Checks and police checks for compliance based  roles, ASIC and insolvency checks for finance, and right-to-work verification for every hire.

Brooke Tisdell, Talent Acquisition Advisor, explains that reference checks, compliance checks and medical assessments each ran through a different provider or platform, making day-to-day recruitment processes disjointed:

"We'd have to log into one system, then get another email from a different one — each with its own timeline — and sometimes a phone call on top of that. The process was clunky and all over the shop."

That much volume and variety, managed by a two-person team with no single system to tie it together, is where the cracks started to show:

• Hours lost to manual admin – Manual chasing and re-checking was costing 2–3 hours a week, enough that they'd hired dedicated admin support just to keep up.
• Disconnected systems, no single view – Reference checks, compliance checks and medical assessments each ran through separate platforms or manual processes — meaning multiple logins, multiple emails, and no way to see where anything stood.
• Compliance risk hiding in the gaps – With no reliable way to track things like visa expiry dates for overseas hires, the council carried real risk against strict entitlement-to-work obligations solely relying on manual reminders in Outlook or other internal databases.
• A confusing candidate experience – The separate systems were hard to navigate, making it unclear what candidates needed to provide and differing levels of support for the candidate depending on the system, slowing them down at every step.

The Solution: One dashboard, pre-built bundles, real-time visibility

Checkmate replaced all of that fragmentation with one platform. Reference checks, compliance checks and verifications, running through a single process for every candidate, no matter the role.

• Pre-built bundles by role type. Standard bundles cover reference checks, employment and qualification verification, and entitlement-to-work — no more manually ticking boxes.
• Checks that adjust to the role. Financial checks for leadership positions, Working With Children Checks for services roles — layered on automatically.
• One dashboard, real-time status. See exactly where every candidate sits  — and whether a delay sits with Checkmate or the person actioning it — without digging into individual profiles.
• One clear ask, every time. Candidates get a single email spelling out exactly what's needed, instead of piecing it together across separate systems.
• Automated compliance tracking. Visa subclass and expiry information visible from day one, with recurring reminders so nothing falls through the cracks.
• Built-in fraud detection. IP address matching and CV-to-employment cross-checks flag discrepancies worth a second look.
• Real humans, real fast. 24/7 support from an actual team, not a queue.

The Results: From hours of admin to seconds, and better candidate experience

Since making the switch to Checkmate, the TA team have cut hours of admin time down to minutes, gained a documented audit trail to back their decisions, and given candidates a noticeably better experience.

For Katarina Currey, Talent Acquisition Advisor, the time savings were obvious immediately: 

"Before Checkmate, processing a candidate might have taken two to three hours a week, but now it takes us a few seconds. I often have to stop and think if I'm missing a step, because it's so easy.”

With real-time notifications on every check, the team no longer needs to chase status updates themselves either. 

"We can almost set and forget, because we know if anything comes up, Checkmate will tell us," Brooke adds. "It's not a guessing game — we're not sitting there wondering if we haven't heard anything in a couple of days. We know exactly where things stand."

That time has gone straight back into the parts of hiring that matter; more focus on phone screening earlier in the process, and contracts ready to go the moment checks come back. Brooke explains that reference responses have improved too, with structured, tailored questions measurably lifting the depth of what referees provide compared to the team's old approach.

"We've found a big difference in the quality of feedback we get now. Asking something specific. like the candidate’s top three strengths, means referees actually sit down and think through their response, rather than giving something broad and generic like they used to." 

There's also a new layer of confidence behind every decision. Documented evidence gives the TA team clear, informed conversations to have with hiring managers whenever something's worth a closer look. And when something feels off about a candidate, the system's own data often confirms that instinct.

For Brooke though, the biggest improvement has been the candidate experience: 

"Checkmate is a complete one-stop-shop. Having one consistent process across every business unit means we're never worrying about what candidates are seeing or experiencing. Whether they're applying for a role in our holiday parks or in finance, they get the same simple, consistent experience."

Why it matters for local government

For other local government teams juggling the same mix of compliance complexity and limited resourcing, Port Stephens Council's experience makes the case: one platform, built to flex across every role type a council hires for, can turn hours of manual admin into minutes, without compromising on compliance.