Reference checks,
without the chasing.
Add a candidate and we take it from there — consent, referees, reminders, the lot. Every referee is checked while we are at it, and your report is issued minutes after the last one replies.
CONSENT · REFEREE OUTREACH · REMINDERS · REPORT
30 Jul 2026
| Referee | Profile | Employer | Dates | Authenticity | Response | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Julia Hartley Meadowbrook Care Ltd | Match | Found | Active | Consistent | Pass | Replied |
Peter Rowe Rowe Domiciliary Care Ltd | Free webmail | None found | Active | Differs | Pass | Replied |
- Match
- Profile
- Found
- Employer
- Active
- Dates
- Consistent
- Authenticity
- Pass
- Response
- Replied
- Free webmail
- Profile
- None found
- Employer
- Active
- Dates
- Differs
- Authenticity
- Pass
- Response
- Replied
- reply from
- peter.rowe1962@gmail.com← not a company address
- dates (candidate)
- Jun 2021 – Dec 2022
- dates (referee)
- Sep 2021 – Dec 2022← three months apart
No customer count and no volume figure, because we are new and do not have one worth quoting. These are the five that are true today.
- 6
- checks run on every referee, on every check
- 3
- reminders, sent over 14 days, by us
- Minutes
- from the last referee’s reply to the finished report
- 0
- accounts for your candidate or their referees
- 4
- public records every result is traced back to
Minutes, not days
The six checks are automated — public company records, domain and mail records, a date comparison, and the message itself. Nothing joins a queue and nobody reads it by hand. The only thing a check ever waits for is a referee.
- last referee replied
- 30 Jul 2026 · 19:41
- report issued
- 30 Jul 2026 · 19:47← 6 minutes
Every result is traced to a record you can look up without us
Companies House
The public register of UK companies
MEADOWBROOK CARE LTD · 05512930 · active
Domain registries
Who owns the address, and since when
meadowbrookcare.co.uk · registered 19 years ago
Mail records
Whether that domain takes company email
mail accepted at meadowbrookcare.co.uk
Message authentication
Whether the reply came from the address shown
reply from j.hartley@meadowbrookcare.co.uk · sender checks passed
We are new, so there is no wall of customer logos on this page and no review score — we have not earned either yet. What we have is a report that shows its own working, line by line, against records you can open yourself.
Four steps. You are only in the first one.
Step through it. Every line on the right is from the same example check, at the time it actually happened.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Three fields, about a minute. This is the only part you are in.
Name, email, role. That is the whole form.
No CV, no date of birth, no identity documents. You never type a referee’s details — the candidate does that themselves.
- candidate
- Aleksandra Nowak
- role
- Care Assistant
- a.nowak@example.com
- raised by
- Susan Bennett · 28 Jul 2026 · 09:14
Six checks on every referee
Each one produces a result and the evidence behind it. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is a score.
How each check works- 01
Referee email
Whether the address belongs to the employer claimed, or a free webmail account. Mail records and domain age.
- 02
Public profile
Whether the referee has a public professional footprint at that employer. A result, never proof on its own.
- 03
Employer record
Whether the company exists at Companies House, is active, and whether they are an officer if they say so.
- 04
Employment dates
Whether the candidate’s dates and the referee’s dates agree. When they do not, we show you both.
- 05
Email authenticity
Whether the reply genuinely came from the address it appears to come from.
- 06
Response
A referee who never replies is recorded as an outcome, with the chase history — and your credit back.
CQC-regulated?
See what Regulation 19 expects from referencesThe work goes away. The evidence stays.
A reference check normally costs you a fortnight of small interruptions. Here is what you are actually buying back.
You stop chasing
We send the request, then remind three times over 14 days. Nobody in your team has to write another “just following up on this reference” email.
The report lands in minutes
The checks are automated, so once the last referee has replied there is nothing left to run. Report issued minutes later, not the next working day.
Referees are checked without you asking
Every referee is put against Companies House, the email domain and the message itself. It happens on every check; there is no box to tick and no upgrade to buy.
Evidence you can put on the file
Each result carries the record it came from, plus a timestamped trail of every contact and reminder. Issued as a PDF, laid out the same way.
The candidate does the data entry
They confirm consent, nominate their own referees and enter their own dates. You type three fields and nothing else.
Nothing to cancel
No subscription, no minimum, no renewal date, no sales call. Your candidate and their referees never create an account either.
One list, and it moves without you
There is one screen to learn. Every check you have raised, what stage it has reached, how many referees have answered and the report when it exists. No pipeline to configure, no workflow to design, nothing to switch on.
- Three fields to raise one
- Candidate name, work email, role. You never type a referee’s details — the candidate nominates their own and gives their own dates.
- The row fills itself in
- Consent, each referee, each reminder. You look when you want to; nothing needs you until the report appears on the row.
- A balance, not a bill
- Credits sit in the corner and go down by one per check. No seats, no subscription, no renewal date, and no invoice to approve.
| Candidate | Status |
|---|---|
| Aleksandra NowakCare Assistant2 of 2 replied | Completed |
| Daniel OkonkwoSupport Worker1 of 2 replied | In progress |
| Priya RamanSenior Care Assistant0 of 2 replied | Awaiting consent |
| Tomasz ZielinskiNight Care Assistant2 of 2 replied | Completed |
Example account · every candidate shown is fictional
Three minutes, on the phone in their hand
Most referees answer on a phone, between other things. So the questionnaire is built for one — the reason they were contacted first, the factual half second, and their own view of the person last. The faster that is, the sooner your report exists.
- A link, not an account
- The referee gets an email with a link. There is nothing to download, no password to set and no account created — for them or for the candidate.
- About three minutes
- The estimate is on the first screen because it is the thing that decides whether they start. Half the questions are already filled in from what the candidate told us.
- A way out that stops the chasing
- Wrong person, or would rather not? One tap ends it, the reminders stop immediately, and the candidate is asked for a replacement.
Aleksandra Nowak has given you as a referee
She has applied for a Care Assistant role, and named you as her referee from Rowe Domiciliary Care Ltd. We check the answers against public records; the employer sees what you send.
No account, no password. Privacy notice
Example questionnaire · every name here is fictional
Most references are never checked. Yours take one click.
A form comes back, it reads fine, it goes on the file. Nobody running a small team has the afternoon it takes to do more than that — so the reference gets taken on trust, and what it is worth is never established either way.
of more than 1,000 UK companies surveyed by the BBC with the Federation of Small Businesses found employees whose references did not stand up when checked.
buys a commercial reference service with a live operator, a working website, and a phone number that answers in the company’s name. A returned form looks the same either way.
companies get registered at Companies House with a reference as the only thing behind them. Confirming a company exists is not the same as checking the reference.
A phone call or a two-line email reply tells you a form came back. It never establishes who answered it. If you are a team of twelve, one hire you cannot stand behind is not a statistic. It is your quarter.
We report what we found. You can check every line of it.
PreHire never tells you a reference is false and never rates a candidate. It states what we did, what came back, and what we could or could not confirm — with the record attached, named, and open to you. We are new and we have no wall of logos to show you. What we have is a report that shows its own working.
Every result comes from one of these
Companies House
The public register of UK companies. Whether the employer exists, whether it is active, and whether the referee is listed as an officer when they say they are one.
MEADOWBROOK CARE LTD · 05512930 · active
Domain registries
Who owns the email domain the referee replied from, and how long ago it was registered. A domain registered three weeks ago is a fact you should have.
meadowbrookcare.co.uk · registered 19 years ago
Mail records
Whether that domain is set up to receive company email at all, or exists only to look like an employer in an address bar.
mail accepted at meadowbrookcare.co.uk
The message itself
Sender checks on the reply as it arrives, which establish whether it genuinely came from the address shown rather than being sent in its name.
reply from j.hartley@meadowbrookcare.co.uk · passed
These are public, independent records — not our opinion of them. The report names the source behind every result, so anything we tell you can be looked up without us.
The safest data is the data nobody holds
A reference check does not need a candidate’s life history, so we do not ask for one. None of the following is collected, at any point, by anyone.
- CVs
- Dates of birth
- Home addresses
- Identity documents
- Criminal-record data
- Health data
- Bank details
- Consent comes first
- The candidate agrees before anything is sent, and nominates the referees themselves. No referee is contacted until they do.
- Referees are told why
- Every referee is told who nominated them, what it is for and how long it takes, and is offered a way to say they are not the right person.
- UK-based
- Built and run in the UK, for UK employers and UK company records.
- Deleted on a schedule
- Personal data is removed on a fixed schedule rather than kept indefinitely. The schedule is in the privacy notice.
And you can settle it without believing a word of this
Every claim on this page is either a public record you can open yourself or a line in a report you can read in full. Start with the report.
It works with your hiring process today, because it asks nothing of it
There are no integrations to switch on, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. A check is raised in a browser and the report comes back by email — which is exactly why it works alongside any applicant tracking system, spreadsheet or shared inbox without a single setting being changed.
- Nothing to install
- PreHire runs beside whatever you already use. There is no plugin, no connector to configure and no IT ticket to raise.
- Nobody else needs an account
- Your candidate and their referees are emailed a link. Neither ever signs up, signs in or is added as a user anywhere.
- The report goes wherever your files go
- Every report is issued as a PDF. Attach it to the candidate record in your ATS, drop it on the recruitment file, or send it to the inspector who asked.
On the roadmap
None of these are built yet
- TeamtailorApplicant trackingPlanned
- WorkableApplicant trackingPlanned
- PinpointApplicant trackingPlanned
- GreenhouseApplicant trackingPlanned
- HiBobHR platformPlanned
- PersonioHR platformPlanned
- Direct access for your own systemsA documented interface for raising checks and receiving results programmatically, for teams who would rather wire it in themselves.Planned
Nothing on this list ships today, and nothing here should be read as a date. If one of them decides it for you, tell us which and it moves up.
Neither of the big two will tell you what they charge
You have to book a call to find out. If you hire a handful of people a year, that is the whole problem. Three rows decide it:
| PreHire | RefNow | Zinc | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy without talking to sales | Yes | No — book a demo | No — book a demo |
| Verifies the referee is real | Yes, with evidence | Not stated | Not stated |
| Refund if a referee never replies | Yes, automatic | Not stated | Not stated |
Your next hire’s reference is either checked, or taken on trust
Run a real check on a real candidate and keep the report. The first one is on us.