New solution, available immediately, addresses two critical areas for fraud prevention – identity verification and performance validation – and does it at scale, top of funnel

RefAssured, a provider of automated reference checking solutions and post-hire performance insight for the staffing industry, today announced the release of a new advanced fraud prevention solution developed in partnership with ID.me. The solution allows staffing agencies to operationalize identity verification and authentication as part of a seamless, staffing-centric workflow.

Modern hiring has evolved into an AI-powered stalemate between candidates and recruiters. Candidates increasingly use generative AI to create and edit resumes, which can result in distortion, misrepresentation of experience, or reliance on genericized language, while recruiters combat the resulting overwhelming volume of applications by using AI-driven screening solutions to assess relevance on the basis of ambiguous qualifiers without the benefit of human intuition. The result is all noise and no signal, with the strongest candidates potentially ignored and irrelevant talent invited in.

Meanwhile, the rising use of deepfakes and other AI adjacencies have made it easier than ever for threat actors to penetrate corporations’ defense mechanisms. Existing methods for fraud detection and prevention have proven ill-equipped to meet this current moment, particularly with the rise in sophisticated and coordinated attacks from organized fraud rings operating globally. Status quo methods rely on antiquated checks that occur at the end of the placement lifecycle, which not only wastes time and increases costs, but also results in fraudulent candidates being submitted by staffing agencies to their clients, eroding trust.

RefAssured's integration with staffing workflows embeds fraud prevention when it matters most – before candidates enter client talent pools. Because RefAssured customers run reference checks as early as possible in the placement lifecycle, they can now ensure only legitimate candidates are submitted for consideration. They can then validate that these candidates can perform a job well, and assess to what degree, using authenticated reference intelligence. RefAssured’s integration with every major staffing ATS means ID verification happens within existing workflows, not as a separate step that slows placement velocity. This gives staffing firms the ability to quickly guarantee both verified identity and validated past performance before any candidate reaches a client, thereby protecting their reputation and reducing risk.

“Our clients trust us to do two main things – take on risk and provide the best possible talent,” said Kyle Allen, EVP at Vaco by Highspring and a longtime RefAssured customer. “And as staffing agencies, we owe it to our clients and ourselves to meet that standard. The launch of RefAssured and ID.me’s candidate fraud prevention solution is exciting news for the staffing industry. No one wants to deal with fake candidates and threat actors infiltrating their pipelines. No one wants to submit someone who can’t do the job or isn’t acting in good faith. This is what this industry has been calling for, and I can’t imagine a better company to deliver it than RefAssured.”

“Candidate fraud has reached epidemic levels,” said Brian Vesce, CEO of RefAssured, “especially in staffing, where placement volume and speed make the likelihood of navigating this issue all but guaranteed. Up until now, staffing agencies haven’t had a great solution to prevent fraud at the beginning stages of the placement lifecycle. Existing solutions are either point-in-time or occur as a last line of defense. By that time, even if you identify fraud before someone is placed on assignment, damage has been done. You’ve shown the client that the system is broken, you’ve lost their trust, and you’ve submitted candidates that misrepresented themselves and aren’t up for the task. By combining identity verification and performance validation, we’re ensuring the integrity of the hiring process and also making it operationally and logistically a lot simpler.”

“Staffing agencies face a unique challenge - stopping fraud without slowing down hiring,” said Taylor Liggett, Chief Growth Officer at ID.me. “ID.me’s digital identity wallet is already deployed at scale, enabling over 160 million existing users to authenticate within seconds. Together with RefAssured, we’re establishing a new standard for the staffing industry - one where identity is verified early, friction is minimized, and confidence is built into every placement.”

Since launching in 2023, RefAssured has amassed more than 1.5 million reference reports representing 30 million structured, immediately actionable, apples-to-apples data points. These include candidate soft skills, hard skills, behavioral attributes, and success factors, all of which can now be validated with outcomes facilitated by post-hire performance evaluations that connect the dots between expectation and reality.

The result is a repository of continually refreshed, perpetually relevant, third-party vetted, and authentically validated data that can underpin artificial intelligence solutions and predictive decision-making in hiring. Because RefAssured solutions are purpose-built for staffing agencies, they are designed from the ground up to be interoperable across every staffing-centric front office system and subsequently provide an intelligent data layer that plugs in seamlessly into the systems of record in which staffing agencies and candidates already live. As RefAssured usage proliferates, its applicability to inform the future of hiring agnostically across applicant tracking systems grows in concert. And with advanced identity verification powered by ID.me, RefAssured customers can trust that every candidate in their talent pipeline is indeed who they claim to be.

Enterprise staffing agencies including Vaco/HighSpring, Kelly Services, Ingenovis Health, LocumTenens.com, Soliant, Fusion Medical Staffing, Triage, and many more, trust RefAssured’s Joint Commission-accepted automated reference checking and performance evaluation technology, with a 100% customer satisfaction rate.

RefAssured’s fraud prevention solution, powered by ID.me, is available to staffing agencies immediately. Visit www.refassured.com/fraud-prevention for more information.

About RefAssured

RefAssured is a provider of automated reference checking solutions and candidate performance insight for the staffing industry. With an extensible platform designed to improve efficiency, speed placements, provide hire quality, prevent candidate fraud, and unlock revenue growth opportunities, RefAssured does more than just verify references – it validates decision-making. With a team comprised of successful serial entrepreneurs, staffing executives, and technology innovators, RefAssured is a platform for human potential. Visit https://www.refassured.com to get started.

About ID.me

ID.me is the next-generation digital identity wallet that simplifies how individuals securely prove their identity online. Consumers can verify their identity with ID.me once and seamlessly sign in across websites without having to create a new sign-in and verify their identity again. Over 160 million users experience streamlined sign-in and identity verification with ID.me at 22 federal agencies, 50 state government agencies, and more than 500 employers. Over 600 consumer brands use ID.me to verify communities and user segments to honor service and build authentic relationships. ID.me is committed to “No Identity Left Behind” to enable all people to have a secure digital identity.

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Together with RefAssured, we're establishing a new standard for the staffing industry - one where identity is verified early, friction is minimized, and confidence is built into every placement. - Taylor Liggett, CGO, ID.me