How it works

The process in three steps

1. Raise a check

You enter the candidate's name, email and role, and spend one credit. The candidate receives an email asking for their consent.

2. Candidate consents and nominates referees

The candidate reviews what will happen, consents to us contacting their referees, and provides up to ten referee contacts. Once they submit, we invite each referee.

3. We verify and deliver a report

Each referee receives a link to complete a reference. Behind the scenes, we run up to five automated checks on each referee — how many depends on the kind of reference they are giving:

• Referee email — Whether the address belongs to the employer's own domain, or is a free webmail account.
• Employer record — Whether there is a registered company at Companies House matching the employer named, and whether it is active.
• Employment dates — Whether the dates the referee gave agree with the dates the candidate stated, within 45 days.
• Email authenticity — Whether the referee's domain publishes the sender checks that stop mail being sent in its name.
• Response — Whether the referee answered using the link we emailed to them. A referee who never answers is recorded as an outcome.

The report is delivered to you as a link, and we keep the report for 12 months. Each referee gets one headline result and each check gets its own; the report defines every result word it uses, and so does Reading a report.

Reference types

Not every check makes sense for every referee. A university tutor is not confirming an employer, and a friend is not confirming a job title — so each referee is given a reference type, and the type decides which of the five checks run at all. You pick it when you enter a referee yourself; the candidate picks it when they nominate their own.

Reference type	Checks we run	Checks that do not apply
Professional reference	Referee email, Employer record, Employment dates, Email authenticity, Response	—
Academic reference	Referee email, Email authenticity, Response	Employer record, Employment dates
Personal reference	Email authenticity, Response	Referee email, Employer record, Employment dates

A check that does not apply is not a gap and is not a failure. On the report those rows are uncoloured and carry a dash, and the report's own key says what the dash means.

Who does what