Learn with Better Hiring Institute how to make hiring verifiable, end to end
The Better Hiring Institute (BHI) are working with government and industry to fundamentally overhaul the way hiring is done in the UK.
Follow a single job application from search to offer: a candidate, an employer, a job board and a screening provider. See what breaks today, what changes when every party can be verified, and how to run every step yourself with a real wallet.
Better Hiring Institute
Faster, fairer, safer hiring across the UK
BHI convenes both sides of the hiring market: the employers who buy hiring technology and, through ARTP, the 50+ providers who build it. That is the position from which a sector-wide trust network can credibly be governed: by the body that already sets the standard, rather than by any one vendor within it.
The BHI's sister company, JobsAware, works with work seekers and workers, meaning the voices of employers, providers, government, workers, and work seekers come together in one place.
ARTP workstreams: Standards · Right to Work · Criminal Background Checks · Digital Identity · Digital Wallets and Credentials.
The hiring journey today
A candidate applies for a job. Between “I’d like to apply” and “you start on Monday” sit four to eight weeks of a single repeated task: proving things.
The cast
Meridian Technologies (demo)
Employer, hiring a Senior Software Engineer, London, £70-85k
JobSearch (demo)
Job board, jobsearch.example.co.uk
Alex Chen (demo)
Candidate: 5 years' experience, BSc Computer Science
Halcyon Talent (demo)
Agency running fake job ads to harvest identity documents
Northgate Screening (demo)
Screening provider, not certified
Orchestrating Identity
Certified Orchestration Service Provider; onboards organisations onto the network
Trustworthy Verification Services (demo)
A second certified DVS provider, acting as an alternative grantor
Caledonian University (demo)
Awarding body: issues the degree, a Qualification credential
Northbank Identity (demo)
Certified DVS provider: issues the right-to-work and employment credentials
Cirrus Certification (demo)
Cloud certification body: issues the professional certification, a Qualification credential
HMRC
Data source for employment history, accessed under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 information gateway. Not an issuer.
What the candidate carries
Alex has four things worth proving, and no way to prove any of them without sending copies of documents to strangers:
BSc Computer Science, First Class Honours, 2017
Employment history: 5 years, 3 employers
Right to Work (UK): British citizen
Professional cloud certification, 2024
Today each exists as a PDF, a scan, or a database record behind someone else's login. Alex emails the same four artefacts to every employer, and every employer verifies them from scratch.
The problems, and what they cost
For the candidate
The same paperwork, every time
Every application asks for the same certificates, the same payslips, the same passport scan. Nothing carries over.
Data everywhere
A passport scan sits in the inbox of every employer, agency and screening provider the candidate has ever spoken to. The candidate has no idea who still holds it.
Weeks of dead time
Offers are made conditional, then stall while references and checks grind through email.
For the employer
CV fraud
Qualifications and employment dates are asserted, not proven. Detection happens late, or never.
Verification cost
Every hire funds a fresh round of reference chasing and certificate checking: the same facts, verified again.
Time to hire
Background checks are slow, delaying when people can start work. They carry significant risk when they go wrong.
For the market
Fake job ads and fake recruiters
A recruitment scam and a real application look identical: both are a form on a website asking for your passport.
Productivity
In the age of mass job applications, current processes are time consuming, inefficient and high risk.
Uncertified providers
The DVS register exists, but it is a web page a human checks at procurement time, not something a system checks at transaction time. An employer has no machine-checkable way to confirm a provider is certified for what it claims.
A real job ad and a scam job ad look exactly the same. A real degree and a claimed degree look exactly the same. On both sides of the hire, nothing can be proven.
The word of the Institute
“The Better Hiring Institute aims to bring together providers of hiring technology to champion faster, fairer and safer hiring in the UK through its Association of RecTech Providers.”