How it works
You add a candidate. We get their consent, contact the referees — the ones they nominate, or the ones you entered — remind the ones who go quiet, and run up to five checks on each referee. The report reaches you minutes after the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed — with the evidence behind every result, so you can judge it yourself.
2 minutes
from the closing date to the report, in the example check.
There is nothing to wait for except the referee
All five checks are automated: the Companies House record, the domain and mail records, the comparison of two sets of dates, and the sender checks the referee’s domain publishes. None of it queues, and none of it is read by hand. So the report is not a next-morning turnaround — it is issued minutes after the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed.
- last reply received
- 3 Aug 2026 17:03
- closing date reached
- 11 Aug 2026 12:02
- report issued
- 11 Aug 2026 12:04
Four steps, and you are only in the first one
- Step 1
You raise a check
Candidate name, email and role. No CV — and referees only if you already hold them.
- Step 2
The candidate consents
They confirm who we may contact, and nominate up to ten referees unless you named them.
- Step 3
Referees respond
A short mobile questionnaire. The five checks run behind it.
- Step 4
The report is issued
Minutes after the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed. Each result with its evidence, plus a timestamped activity trail.
Five checks, and the evidence under each one
The kind of reference decides which of them run on a referee, and each one produces a result plus the line of evidence it came from. The lines below are real evidence from the sample check.
Read the whole sample report- 01
Referee email
Whether the address belongs to the employer's own domain, or is a free webmail account.
The address is compared with the employer given, and a free webmail address is reported as such. We also look up the domain’s mail records and when it was registered, and show both beside the result.
- domain
- meadowbrookcare.co.uk · registered 19 years ago
- 02
Employer record
Whether there is a registered company at Companies House matching the employer named, and whether it is active.
Checked against Companies House. A dissolved company, or a company that cannot be found, is reported with the record attached. Companies House knows about companies, not employees: we do not check that the referee works there.
- Companies House
- MEADOWBROOK CARE LTD · 05512930 · active
- 03
Employment dates
Whether the dates the referee gave agree with the dates the candidate stated, within 45 days.
The candidate supplies dates at consent; the referee supplies them independently. Where they differ, the report shows both values side by side and states nothing further.
- dates
- Jun 2021 – Dec 2022 (candidate) · Sep 2021 – Dec 2022 (referee)
- 04
Email authenticity
Whether the referee's domain publishes the sender checks that stop mail being sent in its name.
Read from the referee’s own domain when they are nominated, before they have sent anything: the published records that say which servers may send in that domain’s name. Reported in plain terms — passed, or an anomaly worth knowing about.
- sender checks
- Pass · j.hartley@meadowbrookcare.co.uk
- 05
Response
Whether the referee answered using the link we emailed to them. A referee who never answers is recorded as an outcome.
Up to three reminders in the first week. If there is still no reply the report is issued with the non-response recorded and the reminders we sent shown. If nobody replies to any of your referees, we still send the report and return your credit.
- reminders sent
- 30 Jul 2026 12:03 reminder sent · 3 Aug 2026 17:03 replied
What we will not do
- We do not tell you whether to hire someone. We report evidence; the decision is yours.
- We do not state that a reference is false. We state what we found and what we could not confirm.
- We do not rate or score candidates.
- We do not collect criminal-record, health, or identity-document data, and we do not run DBS or right-to-work checks.
Common questions
- How long does a reference check take?
- The report is issued minutes after the references you asked for are in, or the closing date has passed. The closing date is 14 days after the candidate consents. The checks are automated, so referee response time is the only variable; the activity trail shows exactly when each was contacted and reminded.
- What does the employer have to provide?
- The candidate’s name, email address and the role. No CV, and no other personal data. If you already hold referee details you can enter them yourself, but by default the candidate names their own.
- Does the candidate have to agree?
- Yes. Explicit consent from the candidate is the lawful basis for the check, and no referee is contacted before it is given.
- What happens if a referee does not reply?
- We remind them up to three times in the first week. Then the report is issued either way, with the non-response recorded as an outcome. If nobody replies to any of your referees, we still send the report and return your credit.
All the questions we get asked →
Run one on your next candidate and see for yourself
Your first check is free — one free check per company email domain. What it produces is a real report on a real candidate, and it is yours to keep.
PreHire reports verification evidence. Hiring decisions rest with the employer.