Your own criminal record check, without the police station. Skip the appointment, get the record today.
Run my check
Every reference you run puts you in front of a working professional at a company that hires. Smart Referrals asks two optional questions at the end, and tells you who is hiring and who is open to a move.
Every staffing agency in Canada has access to the same candidates. The same job boards, the same professional networks, the same profiles with an open to work banner. You are all looking at the same people, competing on speed and on fee.
But the banner is the whole point. Those are the people who are actively looking. Post a role and you reach them, along with everyone else who posted one.
The much larger group is everyone else. Employed, reasonably content, not scrolling job boards on a Tuesday night. They are not unreachable. Nobody has asked them a question worth answering.
Those are the people who would move for the right thing. Better pay. A shorter commute. A manager who is not the one they have now. They are not looking, but they would listen.
There is no search filter for "would consider it if asked."
Nothing to build, nothing to send. You run the reference check you were running anyway.
Everything about the reference itself is already done and submitted. What follows is separate, and they are told so.
Are you currently hiring, and are you open to hearing about opportunities. They can answer both, one, or neither. Skipping is one tap and it is not reported to anyone. A referee who is open to a move is asked for a personal email and phone number, so the conversation happens on their terms and not through their work inbox.
Whoever requested the reference gets an email with who the referee is, where they work, which of the two applies, and the personal contact details they chose to share. Some answer both. You do not have to log in or check a queue.
That is the entire feature. No campaign to build, no list to buy, no sequence to write.
Think about who a referee is at the moment they answer, and what has just happened to them.
They have spent 5 minutes writing about someone who used to work with them, and in most cases that person recently walked out the door. A question about hiring arrives at the exact moment they are thinking about a gap on their team.
A question about their own future arrives while they are reflecting on a former colleague who left and, presumably, moved up. Nobody can time a cold email to that. You can, because you triggered it.
They are contactable. They respond. And they have just had a positive interaction with your process. Compare that to a name on a purchased list.
Phone reference checks have an obvious problem with the second question. Nearly every company phone system records calls. So does every meeting platform.
Ask someone on their work line whether they are open to leaving, and consider what you are asking them to do. Say out loud, on a recorded company line, in the middle of a workday, that they are thinking about going. Almost nobody will. They will say no, politely, and mean something else.
You have not learned they are happy. You have learned they are careful.
Written, digital, and answered on their own time changes the calculation completely. It is optional, no interviewer is waiting on the other end, and nobody at their company sees it. That is when people tell you the truth.
The hiring question works better in writing too, for a simpler reason. On a call it feels like being sold to. In a form it is a checkbox.
A staffing business runs on new candidates and new clients. This produces both.
A referee who says they are open is a passive candidate. Not on a job board, no banner on a profile, not in anyone's search results. You did not pay to advertise for them and you did not pay to source them. For an agency, that is a person your competitors cannot see.
They also tell you how to reach them. A personal email and phone number, given by choice, so your first call does not land on a company line.
A referee who says they are hiring is a manager telling you they have a need, at a company you may never have called. They already know your name and your process already worked for them. That is not a cold call, it is a warm introduction you generated by doing your job.
Internal talent teams get the same mechanism working differently: a pipeline of people who have already engaged with your company once and had a good experience doing it.
You are running these checks anyway. This is the difference between screening as a cost line and screening that pays for itself.
Smart Referrals is a setting, not a default you are stuck with. You choose which of the two questions are asked, and you can turn either or both off.
Some clients want both. Some keep only the hiring question, because they are building a client pipeline and have no interest in recruiting from it. Internal talent teams often want the opposite. Some turn it off completely for a sensitive search.
The control sits in your account and you can change it whenever you want.
Every screening provider will collect references for you. None of them tell you that the person who just completed one is hiring, or is thinking about their next move. The information exists in every reference check ever run. It has just never been asked for.
Reference checks are $9 CAD per candidate, whatever number of referees they list. Smart Referrals is part of that. No separate charge, no add-on tier, no per-lead fee.
No subscription and no minimum. You are charged for checks that complete.
Registered non-profits pay $4.50 per candidate. Eligible Canadian startups get reference checks free for their first 6 months. Full reference check pricing
No. Credibled is a background screening platform. Smart Referrals asks two optional questions at the end of a reference check and passes the answers to the person who requested it. There are no campaigns, no purchased lists, and no outreach sent on your behalf.
By email, as soon as a referee responds. Whoever requested the reference gets the referee's name, where they work, and which of the two questions applies.
Because they are employed and not actively looking, which is exactly the group you cannot reach through a job board. They have also just proven they are contactable and that they respond.
No. It is included in the $9 CAD per candidate reference check, alongside the automated reminders, the integrity alerts, and the co-pilot.
Yes. You choose which of the two questions are asked, and you can turn either or both off in your account at any time.
Yes. The same mechanism builds a pipeline of people who have already had a positive interaction with your company, and many internal teams turn off the hiring question and keep only the opportunities question.
No. Both questions are optional and clearly separated from the reference itself. The reference is complete whether they answer or not, and how they answer never affects it.
Yes. Before they answer, the referee is told that their response goes to the organisation that requested the reference.
Run your next reference check with Smart Referrals switched on. Included at no extra cost, $9 per candidate, no subscription.
Get started