Candidate claims, checked against records

Yes. Payroll and super checks run only with the candidate's recorded consent, and you confirm you hold that consent before the check will run. Court and social checks follow your screening policy through the same flow.

The consent evidence itself is yours to obtain and retain. The check trail records that consent was confirmed for a given check, not what the candidate was shown and agreed to. Screening checks are auditable, so keep the signed authority with the candidate file.

Capturing it per check, not once at application, has a real benefit if a finding is later contested. The record then shows which specific checks the candidate authorised and when, instead of resting on a clause in a document they signed weeks earlier.

References describe how someone was liked. Records describe where they were paid.

A reference list is chosen by the candidate, which makes it a curated sample, not evidence. It is genuinely useful for judgement questions (how someone works, how they handle pressure) and close to useless for factual ones.

Employment claims are easy to make and, until recently, difficult to test. Payroll and superannuation records show which employer paid the candidate, over which period, in what role. That is a different category of information from a former manager's recollection, and it is the category most CV fraud lives in.

Per-field results, not an overall verdict. Employer, period and role each return MATCHED or UNMATCHED.

This is what makes the check usable in a hiring decision. A candidate who worked for the right employer in the right role but misstated their finish date by a month is not the same as one who invented the position, and a single pass or fail would present them identically.

You see which specific claims the records support, and you decide which discrepancies are material for the role. Most are not.

Australian civil and criminal court listings, more than 40 million records, each returning the court, the matter type and the listing date.

An important limit: a court check is not a police check and does not replace one where legislation requires a police check for the role. They draw on different sources and answer different questions, and a role that requires a nationally coordinated criminal history check still requires it.

For regulated roles, banned and disqualified registers are usually the more relevant check, particularly for finance, legal and director appointments, where disqualification is a direct bar, not a judgement call.

Only public profile data is returned, and it is licensed for screening, not marketing.

The more significant limits are the ones you set. Most employers restrict use to role-relevant findings under a written policy, and that policy should exist before the first check runs, not written after something awkward surfaces.

The reason is straightforward. Public profiles reveal a great deal that has no bearing on someone's ability to do a job, and some of it (religion, political views, health, family status) falls into categories where acting on the information creates discrimination exposure. Defining scope in advance is what keeps the check defensible.

Every finding carries its source and its date, so it can be re-checked directly against that source instead of argued about in the abstract.

Per-field results help considerably here too. They isolate the single claim in question (one employer, one period) instead of putting the candidate in the position of contesting an entire screen.

This matters more than it might seem. Screening findings affect someone's livelihood, and a process that cannot show where a finding came from is one that cannot fairly be challenged.

Identity and payroll checks return in seconds once consent has been captured. A full screen including court and social review typically completes the same day.

Compare that with reference-chasing, which routinely takes weeks and frequently produces nothing usable at the end of it.

The commercial effect is direct: good candidates hold competing offers, and a screen measured in weeks loses them. Offers go out while the candidate is still interested, or they go out to someone else.

Identity first, then history, in that order, because the history checks are meaningless until you know whose history you are checking.

• Identity — a DVS document check confirms the candidate is who they claim
• Payroll and super history — claimed employers matched against contribution records
• Court records — civil and criminal listings
• Social profiles — public accounts, within your written policy

Running the identity step first is not a formality. A payroll match against an unverified identity confirms only that somebody with that name was employed somewhere, which is not the question you were asking.