How it works
Anchor once. Check often. Close the loop on day one.
Identity is established a single time, against a government-anchored record. Everything after that is a free comparison against what was already proven.
The four checkpoints
Who are you?
The candidate completes a government-anchored identity check on their phone, together with a liveness check that uses randomized challenges. From this, VAHI derives a biometric template and binds it to that device.
This is the only time a government identity check happens. It takes roughly a minute and a half, and the candidate keeps the result — it is reusable across employers, and it is free to them.
Is it still you?
Every interview round runs a check against the enrolled template — technical screens, panel rounds, the HR conversation. No round is exempt, because the common pattern is a stand-in for the technical rounds and the real candidate for the rest.
These checks are one-to-one comparisons that run on the candidate's own device, so they cost nothing to repeat. There is no second identity check against the government record, ever.
Is anyone helping?
For roles where the stakes justify it, VAHI adds signals about the candidate's surroundings — a second camera angle from the phone, audio cues suggesting another person, and network signals such as an unexpected location or connection type.
These are patterns over a session, not single moments. A candidate glancing away is not a finding.
Did you show up?
Before systems access is granted, the person joining runs one more check — about a minute — against the record of who actually sat the interviews.
This is the step most verification stops short of, and it is the one that removes the payoff. An impersonation that survives every interview round still has to survive the first morning.
Two devices
The laptop does the work. The phone carries the trust.
Live coding and whiteboard rounds need a real machine, so the laptop stays the workspace. But a laptop browser cannot prove much about its own camera feed. A phone can prove considerably more, and it is already the device the candidate has in hand.
So the two are paired with a QR scan — the same pattern as logging into a web messenger or approving a bank transaction. The phone's verified identity is bound to the laptop's session for the duration of the round.
Two modes
Friction is a cost. We spend it where the risk is.
A link before the round
The default, and the path most candidates take.
- A link and a short check before each round
- Nothing to install
- Nothing running during the call itself
- Result reaches the employer as a pass or a flag
Dual-device, continuous
Used selectively — senior roles, regulated sectors, or a session already flagged.
- Phone paired as a trust anchor
- Checks continue through the session
- Environment and second-camera signals
- Priced above Standard
The employer sets the policy. A risk assessment can raise a session's mode, never lower it.
Three states
A session is one of three things. Never a verdict.
Two points, no link. Either verification has not run, or it could not complete. It is an absence of evidence, not evidence of anything.
Something was flagged and a named person is looking at it, with the evidence attached. The interview is not paused and the candidate is not rejected.
The link holds. This session is tied to the enrolled identity, and that binding is recorded as signed evidence.
The link is the verification. That is why the unverified state is drawn as two points with nothing between them.
The output
A signed record, not a score in a dashboard.
When the chain completes, VAHI issues a Verified Hire Certificate: a cryptographically signed record linking the enrollment, each interview round, and the day-one check into one tamper-evident artifact.
Each entry is hash-chained to the one before it, so a record cannot be quietly altered after the fact — including by us. The certificate can be verified independently, offline, using a published key. If a hiring decision is ever questioned, the evidence stands on its own.
When things break
The interview never waits on us.
The rule underneath all of these: fail open for the interview, fail closed for the certificate. A candidate's job should never depend on our uptime — but a signed certificate should never be issued on faith.
Limits
What this does not do.
VAHI establishes that the enrolled person is present at their device, round after round, through to day one. That is a narrower claim than "this interview was honest," and we would rather state the boundary than blur it.
This is why our contract language is fraud-resistant, with auditable evidence — and why you will not find the word fraud-proof anywhere we are accountable for it.