Hiring Someone New? Here's Why ID Checks Shouldn't Be a Manual Headache
Checking a new hire's ID usually means a separate KYC tool, a per-check invoice, and a PDF nobody files. Here's how Flitz builds identity verification straight into hiring.
You've found the right candidate. The interviews went well, references checked out, the offer is signed. Now comes the part nobody enjoys: confirming that the person who showed up to the interview is actually who their CV and passport say they are. For most Swiss SMEs, that means either skipping the check entirely and hoping for the best, or opening an account with a separate KYC vendor, paying a per-check fee, and ending up with a PDF report that gets emailed around once and then forgotten in a shared drive.
Neither option is great. Skipping identity verification leaves you exposed — to forged documents, mismatched names, work permits that quietly expired, or simply a hire who isn't who they claimed to be. But bolting on a dedicated KYC tool for a handful of hires a year rarely makes sense either: it's another login, another contract, another cost line, and the result lives nowhere near your actual HR records.
A problem that's bigger than it looks
Identity checks sit in an awkward spot. They're not frequent enough to justify specialist software for most small businesses, but they're important enough that getting them wrong — hiring someone on a permit that's about to lapse, or missing a name discrepancy between an application and a passport — can create real compliance and liability problems later. Office managers end up doing this by eye: looking at a photocopy of a passport, maybe comparing it to a LinkedIn photo, and hoping that's enough due diligence.
Verification built into the hiring flow, not bolted on
Flitz takes a different approach: identity verification is part of the hiring and onboarding process itself, not a separate errand. From a Recruitment application or directly from an HR Management staff file, you send one link. The candidate opens it on their phone — no app to install — photographs their passport, ID card, or residence permit, takes a selfie, and answers a short questionnaire. The whole thing takes about five minutes.
Behind that simple flow, several checks run automatically:
- Document reading and validation. The document is read and its MRZ check digits are validated deterministically against the ICAO standard, alongside expiry and tamper checks — not just an AI guess, but a verifiable cryptographic check.
- Face comparison. The selfie is compared against the document portrait, with a liveness sanity check so a photo of a photo doesn't slip through.
- An AI-led interview. On top of your own base questions, the system asks document-specific follow-ups — about an expiring permit, or a name that differs from the application — and judges every answer for consistency.
A human still decides, always
This is not a system designed to quietly wave things through. Auto-verification only happens when every single gate passes cleanly. Hard failures are rejected outright. Everything in between — anything inconclusive — is queued for a human reviewer, who sees every signal side by side: the document, the selfie, the interview answers, the flags raised. Nothing passes silently just because an algorithm was "mostly confident." That matters for a Swiss SME owner who can't afford to outsource judgment calls on something as sensitive as a new employee's identity. The tool surfaces the evidence; you make the decision.
From verification to staff file, automatically
The part that actually saves time is what happens after the check. Once the candidate is hired, the verified passport data and the document image don't stay trapped in a separate KYC report — they become the person's HR Management staff file directly. No re-typing a name, date of birth, or nationality. No hunting for the original ID scan months later when a fiduciary or auditor asks for it.
Handled responsibly, not just efficiently
Identity documents are sensitive, and Flitz treats them accordingly. The identity images are kept on private storage with a retention purge, while the extracted fields remain as the permanent record of the check. If a data-subject access request comes in under GDPR, the information is there to find — not scattered across emails and shared folders.
Why this matters for a small HR team
If you're an office manager or a fiduciary handling HR for a handful of Swiss SMEs, you're rarely verifying hundreds of identities a month. You're verifying one, occasionally two, and you need it done properly without opening a new vendor relationship for it. Having identity verification live inside the same platform as recruitment and staff files means one less login, one less invoice to reconcile, and one less document to lose track of six months down the line.
Confirming someone is who they say they are shouldn't require a separate piece of software, a per-check fee, and a PDF that nobody files. It should just be part of hiring them.