This is a pre-release notification that from Wednesday 8th of April, you’ll have a clearer way to understand candidate history through references, without extra follow-ups. Find detailed information about this release here. 

What you need to know

Zinc will now guide candidates to explain any gaps in their timeline as they complete their reference check.

They’ll choose from structured options: education, seeking work, travelling, or other.

If a candidate was in education during the required period, we'll ask them to submit an academic reference automatically.

You can view the questions they’ll be asked.

What’s new

Clearer gap explanations from candidates
Candidates will now select a category for any gaps in their timeline, making it easier to understand their history without chasing additional details.

Academic references, built for education periods
If a candidate was studying, they’ll submit a tailored academic reference instead of trying to fit this into an employment reference,  improving completion and relevance.

More context, where you need it
For other gaps, candidates can:

• Add a short explanation, and
• Upload supporting documents (optional)

If enabled in your package, candidates may also be asked to provide a character reference for these periods. If you previously enabled ‘accept character references’ for regulatory references, this will now be applied automatically.

The Impact

Providing you a clearer candidate story upfront means you have fewer follow-ups, but more intel to make faster decisions.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or feedback, have a lovely day!

Platform

Hello!

From 24 March 2026, new users will set up two-factor authentication (2FA) when creating a Zinc account. This adds an extra layer of security and helps keep your data and your candidates’ data safe.

What you need to know

• New users: Anyone signing up from 24 March must set up 2FA during registration
• Existing users: No change for now — we’ll share a rollout plan soon
• Login methods: 2FA applies to all standard logins (email and password, Google, LinkedIn)
• SSO users: No change if you use Okta, Google Workspace, or Azure AD

What’s new

We’ve designed 2FA to balance security with a smooth experience:

• Recruiters and customers: Choose an authenticator app or SMS
• Candidates: SMS
• Flexible recovery: Clear options if something goes wrong

Common issues, solved:

• Didn’t get a code? Use Resend
• Entered the wrong number? Select Edit and update it (check the country code)
• Lost access to your device? Contact Support — we’ll verify your details and help you regain access

You can find more detailed guidance in our new help centre articles below.

Learn more

Warm regards,

Self-certification forms are now fully customisable. Collect the information you need during pre-employment, including SM&CR details, Fitness and Propriety, or any other information you need to make onboarding smoother for candidates.

Whats new

• When you add a self-certification check to a package, you can now choose Create your own form in the package editor.
• Start from a pre-built template or create your own form.
• Choose from these question types: yes/no, multiple choice, free text, and scale(1-5).
• Set which response will mark the check as clear.
• Review candidate’s answers in the candidate report, just as you do today.

What you need to know

• If you’re using SMCR self-certification form previously, we’ll automatically move you to a customisable questionnaire with the same question set.
• There’s nothing you need to do. You can jump in and tailor the questions whenever you like.
• If you want to utilise one of the new templates, you can simply edit your package and update your questions to the latest version.

You can now run credit checks for candidates based in the United States. This check uses data from Equifax and must be enabled by your Zinc account manager.

What you need to know

• This feature is opt-in. Nothing will change unless you ask your account manager to enable it.

• Before enabling the check, we’ll confirm that:

  • You’re hiring candidates with a current address in the U.S.
  • You have a legitimate business reason for running credit checks (for example, financial responsibility roles or due diligence requirements)

If either of these conditions isn’t met, the check won’t be enabled.

What’s new

Once enabled, the US credit check includes data from the Equifax Credit Bureau, with nationwide record verification for citizens and lawfully residing foreign nationals aged 17/18+ with credit activity.

Results may include:

• Insolvency and bankruptcy records - provides a comprehensive view of financial distress, including insolvency filings, bankruptcy registers, debt-related legal actions, and relevant court or official gazette records. (coverage up to 10 years, depending on bankruptcy type)
• Bad payment history – Provides a comprehensive consumer credit assessment, identifying adverse payment behaviour across banks, utilities, telecoms, landlords, collection agencies, retailers, and credit card providers, where legally permissible. Results include current financial status, payment defaults, credit accounts, loans and credit cards. (coverage up to 7 years)

The check leaves a soft footprint, meaning it does not affect the candidate’s credit score or creditworthiness.

We’ve made it easier for candidates to enter their country of employment and citizenship details. Clearer guidance reduces mistakes and helps prevent delays, keeping the journey quick and seamless.

What's new

• There’s now clearer guidance on what we mean by citizenship, so candidates can make the right selection.
• Candidates now see a short summary of their right to work details before they continue, so they can spot and fix errors early, without delaying the check

You can now set reference requirements by duration and quantity, not just one or the other. This gives you more control over what you need from candidates and cuts down on time spent going back and forth to collect your true requirements.

What’s new

Until now, reference checks supported either:

• A number of references (for example, three references), or
• A time period (for example, five years of references)

These options were mutually exclusive. You can now choose what works best for your hiring needs with combined AND logic. Even if one reference covers the full five years, candidates will still need to add another reference.

This flexibility is available across all reference types and is configured directly in the package builder.

How this impacts candidates

Candidates are guided clearly through what’s required:

• If the quantity isn’t met → they’ll be prompted to add character references (if enabled).
• If the duration isn’t met → they’ll be prompted to add gap verification.
• If neither is met → they’ll be prompted to add both until all requirements are fulfilled.

This helps candidates understand what’s missing, while reducing manual follow-ups from recruiters.

Wanting to set up a combined criteria? Find out more here

We’ve been listening, and January reflects that. Welcome to the January edition of our monthly product updates, a quick way to keep you in the loop on what we’ve been working on for the last month. Here’s what’s new:

Automated update service rechecks - Truly free

When you head to the Insights tab, you’ll land on Analytics, where you’ll see a snapshot of your key product performance metrics.

Overview

The Overview dashboard gives you a high-level view of activity across your account:

• Requests over time helps you spot hiring peaks and troughs, making it easier to plan capacity.

• Packages used shows how different packages are being used, so you can see which locations are hiring most, or which role types are driving demand.

Package performance

The Package Performance section helps you dig a little deeper:

• The map view shows where checks are being carried out, often reflecting where candidates have previously lived or worked.
• Completion rates highlight the percentage of requests that have been completed. If this looks lower than expected, it may be due to a recent surge in requests, or checks that weren’t cancelled for candidates who didn’t proceed.

Engagement

The Engagement dashboard focuses on the candidate journey:

• Time to start shows how quickly candidates begin their checks after receiving an invitation. If this is longer than expected, it can help to set clear expectations during the recruitment process — for example, asking candidates to start within two days.
• Candidate Experience Score reflects how candidates felt about completing their checks. If anything looks concerning, we’d always love to hear your candidates’ feedback so we can continue improving the experience.

There’s even more to explore across the Analytics dashboards, but these core metrics can already help you build scalable, global background checking processes — while delivering a great experience for your candidates. 🙌

As always, if you’d like help interpreting your data or digging deeper, your Zinc team is here to help.

Reference Smart Routing raises the bar for how employment references are completed, helping you and your candidates reach higher completion rates with fewer delays.

This release introduces a new approach to reference delivery. Instead of relying on a single contact and waiting to see if it responds, Smart Routing builds resilience into the process from the start. When we’re highly confident it will help, we automatically send reference requests to both the candidate’s chosen referee and a trusted departmental or general inbox at the same time - creating two strong paths to completion without adding any extra steps.

What you need to know

• Smart Routing is on by default for all supported Regulatory, HR and Professional reference types
• No setup or action is required from recruiters or candidates.
• We only ever contact appropriate generic or departmental inboxes (for example, admin@zincwork.com or HR@zincwork.com) - never individual email addresses. It operates fully within Zinc’s existing consent framework.

What’s new

• A smarter way to route references: When a candidate enters their referee, we check whether the employer also has a trusted departmental or general inbox within our smart routing database. If our data shows that inbox is likely to help, we send a request there at the same time as the candidate’s chosen contact.
• Trusted inboxes, chosen carefully: We don’t rely on static lists. Trusted inboxes are identified using historical reference data, including recency, frequency, completion rates, and information quality. Individual email addresses and location-specific inboxes are intentionally excluded.
• Parallel requests, faster outcomes: Both requests run in parallel. As soon as any referee completes the reference, the check is marked complete and any remaining requests quietly close in the background.
• No added candidate friction: Candidates follow the same familiar flow, we'll let them know when we are also contacting an additional reference on their behalf
• Clear visibility for recruiters: Recruiters can see both requests clearly labelled in their workflow, with completed references reflected in reports.

On the report, you may see items that we have not collected marked as 'No longer needed'. These are shown for transparency on our efforts and to ensure your records are complete. We will continue to automatically chase these items, however our Customer Success team won’t be able to manually chase them on request.

Curious how Smart Routing works in practice, the FAQs cover the details.

Rechecks are by far the biggest gap in background checking. Rechecks conducted every three years, leave a major safeguarding blind spot. In light of recent safeguarding issues, Zinc is on a mission to increase rechecks in order to reduce the risk of safeguarding issues. We're on a mission to raise the bar for the whole industry.

Our research has shown the DBS Update Service is the only practical route to more frequent rechecks: anything else creates too much admin, too much candidate friction, and too much cost.

Today, we’re removing those barriers by making Update Service rechecks genuinely free. The DBS has approved of us dropping the previous requirement to run ID and address checks alongside rechecks. Once a candidate is identified as being on the Update Service, Zinc will automatically schedule and run rechecks every three months. Zero actions are required from you or the candidate.

No clicks. No chasing. No fees. Zinc covers the cost and the operational work, you simply get quarterly rechecks, done automatically. Find out more here or reply to this email with any questions. This feature is set to go live on Wednesday 21st of January.

Whilst December is often associated with end of year parties and cozy evenings at home, the Zinc team were hard at work improving our product so that we can continue to deliver the easy, instant and delightful Zinc experience that you expect.

Here is a quick summary of the improvements we made to our product in December.

In-app and email feature communications

We’re now sharing all product updates in one place — through our new in-app What’s new section, changelog page and by email for any high-impact changes.

Whats new

• Only hear about what matters to you. We look at the checks you run and the integrations you use, so we don’t fill your inbox with updates that aren’t relevant.
• Fine-tune your preferences anytime. You can update what you’d like to hear about in your account settings.

Other improvements we made in December

• UK visa expiry dates are now listed on the Schedule page, so you can easily track upcoming expiries and rerun checks all in one place. Click here for more info.
• Australian criminal check submissions are now much simpler for candidates, thanks to our improved points calculation interface. 
• You can now view the email used to send checks to a candidate directly from their individual progress and report pages. This makes it easier to check they’ve received their checks or quickly find the email you need.
• Individual check turnaround times are now available in the Checks sub-tab of the Analytics section within Insights.
• Your All Checks report now includes the dates candidates start and complete their checks. You’ll find this in Insights → Reporting.
• If a referee’s email address bounces, Zinc will help keep things moving by suggesting an alternative email address from the same company, where available.
• We’ve updated our Greenhouse integration and Partner API to support Word (.doc/.docx) CVs for CV checks, bringing them in line with Workday. Recruiters can now submit Word files without background check requests failing, with the same smooth experience across all integrations.