Automated reference checks
Send a structured reference request in under a minute. Your candidate supplies the referees, Credibled chases them, and you get written responses with integrity alerts on every one. $9 per candidate, however many referees they list.
What is a reference check, and how is it different from employment verification?
Most employers need both, and they answer different questions. A reference tells you whether someone was good at the job. A verification tells you whether they held it at all. Credibled runs both from the same dashboard.
Reference checking guides on the Credibled blogReference check
A former manager's or colleague's assessment of how someone worked: their strengths, how they handled pressure, whether the referee would hire them again. Gathered under a structured set of questions.
Employment verification
Job title, employment dates, and whether the person actually worked there. It goes to the employer's HR department or payroll provider, not to an individual.
More on employment verificationRun references before the first interview, not after the offer
Most teams run references at the end, as a formality before an offer goes out. By then you have spent hours interviewing, and a bad reference means starting over.
Running them early changes what they are for. Instead of a final rubber stamp, references become interview material. You walk into the first conversation already knowing what a former manager said about how this person handles deadlines, and you can ask about it directly.
It also means you find out early. A candidate who cannot produce a single contactable referee is telling you something, and it is cheaper to learn that in week one than in week three.
Four steps, and only one of them is yours
Send it, then forget it. We will tell you when it is done.
Glowing. Detailed. Convincing. Same IP as the candidate.
Anyone can collect references. The harder question is whether the person who filled it in was really a former manager, or the candidate's flatmate with a spare email address. Credibled checks the reference itself, not just the answers in it.
Collect references,
or verify them.
Not the same thing.
next reference
References you can actually trust
Integrity alerts
Credibled raises an alert when a response looks questionable:
Alerts do not block the reference, because there are innocent explanations for all three. A referee working from home on the same office VPN. A retired manager who no longer has a work address. The alert surfaces it, you judge it, and your decision is logged permanently in the audit trail.
That last part matters more than the alert. If a hiring decision is ever challenged, the record shows you saw the flag and why you accepted it.
Bounce alerts
If a referee's email bounces or fails validation, you are told immediately. A reference request that quietly dies on a typo costs you four days you did not know you were losing. Loud failure beats silent failure.
Duplicate detection
If someone else on your team already requested references for this candidate, Credibled stops the request before you are charged and shows who ordered the first one and when. You can proceed if the duplicate is intentional.
For an agency with several recruiters working the same market, this is money back every month on candidates who are in play with more than one desk.
Every reference check is a business development opportunity
This is the part no other Canadian screening provider offers.
Think about who a referee actually is. A manager, at a company that hires, who has just spent five minutes proving they are contactable and responsive. That is a qualified lead sitting inside a workflow you are already paying for.
After a referee finishes the questionnaire, Credibled asks two optional questions: are you currently hiring, and are you open to new opportunities yourself. Answers come back to you by email as leads.
For staffing agencies: a referee who says they are hiring is a warm prospect who already knows your name and has already had a positive interaction with your process. A referee who says they are open to opportunities is a passive candidate you did not have to source or pay to advertise for.
For internal talent teams: the same mechanism builds a pipeline of pre-qualified people who have already engaged with your company once.
You are running these checks anyway. This is the difference between screening as a cost line and screening that pays for itself.
Build it with the co-pilot, or build it yourself
Reference questions carry more legal risk than most hiring teams realise. Canadian human rights legislation prohibits hiring decisions based on age, disability, family status, religion, ethnic origin, and other protected grounds. A question to a referee like "did she take much time off for family reasons" invites an answer that becomes evidence in a complaint.
Most managers writing a reference questionnaire from scratch do not set out to ask those questions. They ask them anyway, because they are trying to be thorough.
Describe the role and what you need to find out, and the Credibled co-pilot writes the questionnaire. The questions it generates stay on job performance and conduct, and avoid protected grounds such as age, disability, family status, and religion.
Nothing is locked. Before you save, edit any question, reword it, reorder them, delete the ones that do not apply, and add your own. What the co-pilot produces is a first draft, not a finished form.
If your legal team has already approved a question set, or you have a house questionnaire you have used for years, build it question by question. Nothing is generated unless you ask for it.
The co-pilot is a drafting aid, not a compliance check and not legal advice. It writes questions that stay on job performance. It does not review questions you write or edit yourself, and final responsibility for what you ask remains yours.
per candidate. However many referees.
Reference checks are $9 CAD per candidate. Not per referee, per candidate. If your candidate lists two referees you pay $9. If they list five, you pay $9.
That is the whole price. No subscription, no minimum volume, no platform fee, no annual contract, no charge for the automated reminders, the integrity alerts, the co-pilot, or the lead notifications. You add a payment method when you run your first check, and you are only charged for checks that complete.
Both programme rates are applied automatically during sign-up, with no application form and no approval wait. Accounts with a United States billing address are priced in US dollars and see their own rates at sign-up.
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Fits the stack you already have
ATS integration
Trigger reference requests from the workflow your recruiters already use.
REST API
Send requests, pull results, and receive status webhooks directly in your own product.
Read the API documentationBundle with other checks
Run references alongside criminal record, identity, education, and employment checks from one dashboard and one invoice.
See all check typesReference check questions, answered
Find out who they were to work for, before you find out the hard way.
Create your account today. Pay per candidate, no subscription, no contract.