Reference checks are happening faster than ever before because they're not being done by the Career Counsellors any more.
Recruiting has hired a civilian company to do the reference checks and report back to us.
According to the contract, they have less than a week to report after Recruiting has forwarded the paperwork to them.
This will in no way improve the processing speed of the remainder of the process ... we still have to wait for Criminal Record checks, Previous Service documents, Previous Medical Documents, Family Doctors reports, etc etc and then merit list and wait for a spot to open in the selection list for any given applicant / trade / BMQ.
I know that waiting is difficult, but there's a lot of variables to line up to get any specific applicant into a specific spot ... not ALL of which are controllable for the CFRC. Multiply that by thousands of applicants.
And I'm not looking for sympathy for the CFRC's ... just some understanding of the process ... everyone WANTS to do a good job and we try our best.
If you've been waiting a long time, feel free to give a quick call to your centre. As long as you're not calling every day or every week it's not bugging.
I personally HAVE picked up a couple of mistakes that were accidental holding up files and got them moving simply because an applicant called and asked what was happening with his application. It can't hurt.