Qualification checks
Make sure your team has the right know-how to do the jobs you’re hiring for. Zinc helps you verify educational credentials, certifications, and professional memberships around the world so you can hire with confidence.
Confirm educational background and stay ahead of legal risks
Easy-to-use, mobile-first candidate experience
Verify automatically in minutes, or directly through institutions
What you need to know
Turnaround times
Available in
195 countries
Including
UK
USA
India
Germany
Australia
and more
Hire the most qualified people for the job, and avoid any legal, reputational, or team morale risks.
Remove blind spots
Education verification confirms that your candidate’s qualifications were genuinely awarded by accredited institutions. Along with CVs, interviews, and references, it gives you the full hiring picture and confidence you’re hiring the right person for the job.
Stay on the right side of regulation
In regulated or safety-critical environments, you need a team that knows what they’re doing. Not running education checks opens your business up to legal and regulatory risks, and can impact reputation, performance, and team morale.
Build workforce integrity
In a world of deepfakes and AI answers, you can’t always be confident that a skills test means that candidates have the qualifications to do the job well. Education checks reinforce a culture of honesty, maintaining integrity and trust across your workforce.
See it in action
Book a demo and choose a time to speak with one of our experts about a custom solution for your business.
1
day
Average turnaround time
1
minute
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) check average
2
routes
for verification
Fast, accurate education checks, packaged in a smooth candidate experience.
Thorough, reliable education checks
Fast, automated results
Global coverage
Smooth, hassle-free candidate experience
Intuitive by design.
“Since using Zinc we never get asked questions like, ‘How do I do this? How do I upload this document?’ The tech is clearly intuitive and works as it should. It provides a really strong user experience.”
Quickly verify credentials in one smooth workflow.
Step one
Once you send checks, candidates are guided through a step-by-step form to provide their qualification details and awarding institution. If a candidate has no qualification to declare, we process that free of charge and remove it from the final report. No extra friction for your team.
Step two
For direct Primary Source Verification, we contact the awarding institution via iCover to confirm the qualification is genuine. For uploaded certificate scans, we use instant OCR-based verification to avoid manual data entry. Both routes check the credential directly, rather than relying on what the candidate shares.
Step three
OCR based checks return in under a minute. Direct institution-verified checks typically take longer, around 9 to 22 days, since they’re dependent on the institution’s response time. Any discrepancy between what the candidate submitted and what the institution confirms is clearly flagged in your final report.
Integrations
Background checks, integrated
Zinc connects directly with your ATS or HRIS at no additional cost. Send checks, get results, and store reports without leaving your preferred platform.
Why businesses love using Zinc
%%An intuitive, easy platform%% with support that's far quicker than other providers. The answers are always reliable, especially when we're dealing with different countries.
%%The candidate experience is excellent.%% Integration was straightforward, the pricing is among the best on the market, and support is quick and consistently helpful.
%%It automates the screening of new employees%% and integrates well with our ATS and HRIS. The initial setup was super easy and we're really happy with the product.
Onboarding takes just a few minutes and %%running checks for international contractors is seamless%%. The pay-per-use model is a huge plus for a small company like ours.
%%It has made my role, and my colleagues' day to day, much easier and more efficient%%, while significantly improving the overall experience for our candidates.
Checks and paperwork sync automatically with our recruitment and HR systems, %%saving us so much time%% not having to check multiple systems. The support teams are always incredibly helpful.
For teams of every size
Flexible background checks
Whether you’re hiring a little or a lot.
Under 20 hires annually
Pay As You Grow
Get started in minutes. Our Pay As You Grow plan is built for lower hiring volumes — a flat rate per check, with no hidden costs or setup fees.
Start checking in minutes, no setup needed
Flat rate per check, no hidden fees
Pay only for what you use
20+ hires annually
Custom solutions
For larger volumes, our experts build a package around your needs. Flexible with your hiring and never expires, with integrations, setup, training, and support all included free.
A custom package built around your hiring
Credit pool that never expires or rolls over
Integrations, setup, and training included free
More from Zinc
Check out more resources, straight from our experts
Start screening in days, not weeks
Combine this check with right to work, references, criminal records and more, across 195 countries, in a single candidate journey.
What type of qualifications can Zinc verify for employers?
Zinc can verify:
- Undergraduate and postgraduate academic degrees
- Professional qualifications from a wide range of financial, legal, healthcare, and other professional bodies
- Technical and vocational certification
- Professional body memberships
Direct Primary Source Verification (PSV) goes through Zinc's partner iCover, which contacts the awarding institution directly. Optical Character Recognition-based certificate scanning uses Claude via AWS Bedrock for near-instant verification of uploaded certificate scans.
One important limitation: not all institutions are currently in Zinc's database. Candidates from smaller or less well-known international institutions may not be verifiable through the standard PSV route. If you need to verify a qualification from an institution that's not currently supported, Zinc's team can advise on the options. Zinc also cannot verify candidate GPAs.
How long does an education or qualification check take with Zinc?
It depends on the route. OCR-based certificate scanning comes back in under one minute. The candidate uploads a certificate scan, and Zinc's OCR technology extracts and verifies the credential data almost instantly.
Primary Source Verification (PSV), where Zinc contacts the awarding institution directly, typically takes nine to 22 days, since turnaround depends on how quickly the institution responds.
What’s the difference between OCR certificate scanning and Primary Source Verification?
OCR certificate scanning uses automated technology to extract data from a certificate image the candidate uploads: degree title, institution, date of award.
It's fast, under a minute, and works well for most standard qualifications where the certificate itself is credible evidence.
Primary Source Verification (PSV) removes that dependency entirely. Zinc contacts the awarding institution directly via iCover to confirm whether the qualification was genuinely awarded to the candidate.
PSV takes longer (nine to 22 days), but it's the stronger route for high-stakes or regulated roles where you need institutional confirmation, not just a credible-looking certificate. For healthcare, financial services, or education roles where credential fraud would create serious regulatory or safety risk, PSV is the right choice.
Can Zinc verify professional qualifications and memberships, not just academic degrees?
Yes. Zinc can verify professional qualifications and active memberships across a wide range of sectors, including financial services, legal, healthcare (checking current active status, not just initial award), and HR and management bodies.
Zinc verifies the status of the credential at the time of the check, not just whether it was ever awarded.
This matters most in regulated environments where a lapsed or suspended registration would affect whether someone can legally do the role. Zinc verifies directly with the issuing or registering body via PSV rather than relying on what the candidate presents. The check can't proceed until the candidate confirms their qualification details, so the process is candidate-initiated.
What happens if an institution is slow to respond to a qualification verification request?
Zinc chases institutions that haven't responded as part of its standard process, and you can monitor the status of all outstanding checks in real time from your dashboard.
If an institution is unresponsive beyond a reasonable window, Zinc flags the check as pending and lets your team know. Candidates aren't blocked from progressing through other checks in the same package in the meantime. If you need to make a hiring decision before a PSV result lands, Zinc's team can advise on how to document your decision-making appropriately.