How Synthesia, trusted by 90% of the Fortune 100, piloted the biggest names in pre-employment checks and switched to HirePass
One live pilot on real hires: two challengers, the incumbent as the benchmark
customers • SynthesiaZero delayed starts
Not one start date held up by a check
100% of checks resolved
Including a backlog the previous provider had left incomplete
Forms done in 8 minutes
From first field to submit, on any device
Hiring in 25+ countries
One platform, one process
35+ daily users
People in PeopleOps, Talent and HR, one shared view
6 weeks to switch
Three to decide, three to migrate
The industry had an answer,
Synthesia was looking for a better one
Synthesia makes the AI video platform used by 90% of the Fortune 100. Fresh from a $200 million funding round, the company was opening offices in Austin and Berlin, expanding in Paris and Zurich and planning to grow headcount by more than 70% in a year. For PeopleOps and Talent, that meant more candidates, more countries and more moving parts to manage.
Pre-employment checks sat right in the middle of that growth.
Synthesia had a well-established vendor in place, with a long track record in the industry. But as the company scaled, its requirements began to move beyond what the standard pre-employment checks model had been designed to handle. Checks needed to be completed before start dates in every country and where right to work verification is required from day one, nearly complete is not complete. Workflows needed to adapt as hiring plans changed, while candidates and the PeopleOps and Talent teams needed a clear view of where each process stood.
Every time those challenges came up, the friction was explained as a fact of international hiring. Each market had its own rules and its own way of working through them, and the delays, paperwork and manual chasing that came with them were treated as unavoidable. Over time, it had been accepted as simply how checks work.
For a company building AI products, that answer raised a bigger question:
If AI is changing how companies work, why shouldn't it change pre-employment checks as well? HirePass took a process that used to eat up our team's time and simply handled it. We brought them the problems; they brought back the solutions."
Pitch decks vs. live pilots
Synthesia set out to test the market, not just hear from it. The established names had the credentials, the client lists and the years in the market, and the question was whether that experience would hold up against a newer generation of platforms. There was one way to find out: see how each performed in the real world, with real candidates, real countries and real deadlines.
The team reviewed the top global providers, running scoping calls to see how each would approach Synthesia's problems. HirePass came back with a specific answer to each one and a clear position: every problem on the list could be solved.
That was a promise worth testing, so the field was narrowed to two challengers and both went into a live pilot, with the incumbent running alongside as the benchmark.
The test criteria came straight from the day to day of hiring at Synthesia:
For candidates:
One unified flow: could candidates complete everything in a single onboarding journey, with identity checks and country-specific requirements built in?
Speed and accuracy: was information pre-filled and validated live, so errors were caught in the moment?
A measurable experience: was candidate feedback captured along the way, so satisfaction could be tracked and the flow kept improving?
For the team:
The internal platform: could automation take the routine work, so attention narrowed to the candidates that needed a closer look?
Fit with the tech stack: would it connect natively where it mattered, with an API for everything else?
Behind the platform:
Global coverage: does the provider run its own infrastructure, or source from third-party resellers? Which data sources underpin each?
Security: could it meet the bar of ISO 27001 certification, compliance and clear safeguards for how candidate data is handled?
Within days, the differences were clear. Every provider had promised automation and a modern experience. The pilot showed the distance between what the sales teams promised and what the platforms delivered.
The two challengers had taken different paths.
One brought a network of third-party partners under one roof, a new interface over the same old handoffs and delays. HirePass had built its own infrastructure, connecting directly to official data sources with no intermediaries.
Three results stood out.
Synthesia's candidates completed their onboarding forms in 8 minutes, start to finish. Dynamic forms adapt to each candidate, their check package and their country, asking only for what's needed and pre-filling what's already known.
HirePass validated candidate data live, as people typed, catching errors on the spot instead of days later. No other platform in the pilot could do that. And every check, in every country, ran through one platform and one process. Fully digital, with no paper forms anywhere.
Their team feels like part of ours, reliable coworkers rather than an external partner. HirePass has really exceeded our expectations, both in collaboration and on the technical side of things!"
A candidate experience worth talking about
For a candidate, the check sits between the offer and day one, when excitement about joining is at its highest. Synthesia treats it as part of the welcome.
That stays true as hiring grows. Whether it's a senior hire, a relocation or a multi-country package, the flow adapts to each candidate and asks only for what their situation requires. Most finish their forms in around eight minutes, and some go out of their way to say so.
A candidate we just hired told us how impressed they were with the checks experience. Nobody compliments pre-employment checks, especially highly-discerning technical candidates. When someone does, you know the solution is working well."
AI surfaces the signal,
then people bring the context
Automation now handles the repetitive work, from processing documents and running verifications to keeping candidates in the loop. People make the judgement calls.
“Consider” is the review step for checks that need a human. Anything within Synthesia's own policies clears automatically. Anything that might fall outside them is flagged at the start of the journey and sent to a person, with the reason it was raised disclosed up front so the review begins with context rather than a search for it. From there, PeopleOps and Talent handle it the same way every time. They review the result, add the context, speak with the candidate and record the outcome.
A potential red flag is only part of the picture. We know the candidate, the role, the circumstances. HirePass gives us a clear way to factor that in and record why decisions are made. That's how every decision stays consistent and fair."
The standard never changes,
only the country does
For Synthesia's Engineering and Security teams, the pilot was a test of fit. Checks had to meet the same security bar as everything else in the stack, and sit inside the existing architecture without becoming another system to maintain.
The same rigour applies to every hire, wherever they are. Nobody gets access to Synthesia's systems until they've been fully vetted, and as hiring scales globally, each new region brings its own rules, documents and ways of issuing them. HirePass maps those requirements country by country and runs every check through the same process, so teams work the same way in London as they do in New York. The standard never changes, only the country does.
The review started with ISO 27001 certification and moved on to data handling documentation, audit information and penetration test reports, all available through the HirePass Trust Center. It's a live view of the security programme rather than a snapshot from the last audit, so the team could check what they needed, when they needed it.
PeopleOps had a dedicated account manager and a step-by-step migration guide. Native connections to Ashby, HiBob, Vanta and Enterprise SSO were completed as part of the core setup, and where Synthesia needed something more specific, the HirePass GraphQL API gave its engineers room to build alongside the HirePass team.
Synthesia kept its existing provider in place throughout, so service never paused. The pilot took three weeks, the migration another three. The last step was the backlog: a batch of checks the previous provider had left incomplete. Synthesia put them through HirePass and every one was resolved, most of the individual checks completing within minutes.
Six months in
HirePass runs Synthesia's pre-employment checks across more than 25 countries. Over 35 people in PeopleOps, Talent and HR work in HirePass daily, with one shared view of candidates, checks and anything that needs attention.
Wider rollout began with a cross-team enablement session covering policies, outcomes to date, the KPIs going forward and an open Q&A, all recorded and shared so anyone joining later starts from the same place. Support runs through a dedicated account team, available to anyone at Synthesia, with most queries answered within minutes.
Not one start date has been delayed by a check, and candidate feedback is now consistently positive. That matters because the check is the handover between candidate and employee, and it should feel as considered as everything that came before. Potential compliance issues surface early, with room to review them before they become a problem. Decisions are consistent and recorded, and the team's attention goes where it's needed.
The setup isn't finished, because Synthesia isn't. New countries, new integrations and new requirements will keep arriving as the company grows, and the platform and partner were chosen to grow with it.
That was the point of the pilot: Synthesia didn't settle for the way pre-employment checks were done. It tested every claim against the day to day work of its own team, and set a new standard for how a vendor should be chosen.
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A live pilot with your candidates, in your countries, while your current provider stays in place. Nothing to switch off, nothing to migrate.
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