Hired Partner, Zinc: Transparency for Candidates & Privacy in Background Checking

Zinc believes in transparency for candidates and true respect for privacy in background checking. With an opportunity to redefine background checks and bring credibility and value back to references, Zinc was created to be a cost-cutting and time-saving referencing and background platform that prioritizes the candidate experience.

Welcome! Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers?

Hello, I’m David Hayes, and I manage partnerships here at Zinc. Prior to that, I worked across startups in Ireland, the UK and Australia – covering everything growth. My reasoning behind joining Zinc felt like an obvious one, the technology, goals, and ambition excited me greatly and I wanted to be a part of their journey as they shape the way that people prove their identity for work.

Zinc turns weeks of manual candidate background checks into a fully automated, one-click process. Our goal at Zinc is to work with like-minded companies to create a network by partnering with organizations that are progressing Talent and HR with modern technology.

So how does Zinc impact the overall efficiency of a company’s hiring process?

Great question. Essentially, referencing and background checking is broken. It’s risky, time-consuming, and terrifying for candidates. The status quo is to insecurely hand over heaps of personal data, add unnecessary manual processes, then wait too long. Huge corporations have sucked the life out of checking by delivering an outdated service – all with a dangerous disregard for your privacy.

Our founders and the early employees at Zinc spent careers in Talent and came up with a radically different take on referencing and background checking. We believe individuals should keep their work data. This sounds like a simple right that we should all be entitled to but the background checking industry has chosen a different path, to keep individuals in the dark.

At Zinc we believe checking isn’t something companies should throw away just because it’s painful and slow. Getting that validation is something to treasure and should remain an integral part of the interview process. We believe checking deserves modern tools to bring it up to date and we’re driven to fix this.

We’re all for using technology to modernize hiring. With that in mind, how do Hired and Zinc work together? 

The Hired <> Zinc partnership is the first of its kind for us. Historically we’ve partnered with applicant tracking systems (ATSs) by integrating directly into their system. For us, by introducing Hired into the mix, we’re working to help our clients further up in the hiring funnel. On the opposite spectrum, this partnership helps Hired clients with a necessary step in their hiring process further down the funnel. 

If you’re interested in getting started on Zinc you can sign up for a demo here! 

Great note about applicant tracking systems. For those of you reading this that have yet to integrate an ATS into your stack, we’d recommend Greenhouse, Lever, or Workable as all three offer bi-directional integrations with both Hired and Zinc. 

David, we’d love to hear more about Zinc’s current initiatives.

This year we’re working hard to deliver the fastest, easiest, and most delightful checking experience. We can already boast industry-leading turnaround times and soon we’re going to take it a step further by launching a way for candidates to verify work instantly, rather than the norm of days or weeks.

We’ve been able to launch reusable right-to-work and identity checks, alongside our references and education checks, which the UK government has brought out legislation in support of. This means if you get verified on Zinc once, you can reuse these checks when you next need to prove your identity for work. 

Reusable checks seems really helpful, what a great idea. 

A quick question for those specifically in the UK. RecFest is coming up this week, will we see you there?

Yes! Come and get some free coffee and swag at our stand. We’ll be in the Technology Zone by the Disrupt Stage.

For those not attending, we’d still love for you to stay in touch with Zinc’s upcoming offerings on our website, zinc.work.

Fabulous, thank you for sitting down with us David, we’re glad to be partnering with Zinc.

Hired is the largest AI-driven marketplace matching ambitious tech and sales talent with the world’s most innovative companies. Backed by global HR leader, The Adecco Group, Hired combines intelligent job matching with unbiased career counseling to help people find a job they love and reach their full potential.

By providing accurate, real-time information, access to equal opportunity, efficiency, and transparency, the Hired platform serves as the backbone for hiring managers, recruiters, and C-level executives to surface the best talent and build amazing, diverse teams around the world.

Hired is committed to building equity in the hiring process through a more representative talent pool, using bias reduction features, customized assessments, and salary bias alerts to help remove unconscious bias when hiring. 

Want to see other Hired partner spotlights? Click here to browse our other interviews.

Interested in learning more about Hired partners? Click here to see Hired’s network.

Are you hiring? Click here to learn more about how Hired helps reduce time to fill. 

Are you looking for a new role? Click here to learn how the Hired platform works for candidates.