16 September 20257 min read
Pre-vetted is now the least informative word in the industry. It appears on the homepage of every provider, including the ones whose entire process is a recruiter reading a CV and forwarding it with a friendly note. The word survives because nobody ever asks what it contained.
It is worth asking, because the difference between the two is the difference between a shortlist and a mailing list, and you only find out which you were sent after you have spent three weeks interviewing.
What a real process contains
Vetting that means anything has four parts, and each one produces something a provider can show you.
- A screen against the actual requirement, not against a keyword list, which produces a written note on why this person was advanced
- A work sample or exercise the candidate completed, which produces an artefact somebody can still open
- A technical conversation with someone competent to judge the answers, which produces a reviewer's assessment naming strengths and gaps
- A communication assessment, spoken and written, run in the language the work will happen in
The test of whether these happened is simple: each one leaves a trace. Ask to see the trace. A provider who vets has a folder. A provider who forwards has adjectives.
What a CV forward looks like from the outside
It has recognisable symptoms. The candidate summary reads like the CV reworded. The provider cannot tell you anything the candidate did not tell them. Every profile you receive is described as excellent, senior and a great communicator, with no gaps mentioned anywhere, which is not how real people are.
The clearest symptom is speed of the wrong kind. Three profiles within an hour of a vague brief means nobody assessed anything against your requirement, because nobody had time to. Fast is not the problem; fast without a question about your stack, your review process or your working hours is.
The rejection rate question
Ask what proportion of applicants get through. You are not checking the number against a benchmark, because there is no honest benchmark and anyone quoting a precise one is quoting marketing. You are checking three things: that they know it, that it is not close to everyone, and that they can describe the last person they rejected and why.
A provider who has never counted has never treated vetting as a process with an outcome. That is the answer you are listening for, not the digits.
Vetting decays, and it decays against a requirement
Someone assessed eighteen months ago was assessed for a role that was not yours. A strong backend engineer vetted for a data-heavy platform is not automatically the right person for a customer-facing product with a design system and a demanding front end, and a genuinely good provider will say so rather than reshaping the summary to fit.
So ask two dates: when was this person assessed, and against what. If the answer is old and generic, expect to do more of the assessment yourself, and price the extra interview loops into your timeline.
Bench versus pipeline
There is a real difference between people a provider employs and people a provider knows. Both models work. They fail differently.
People on a bench have been worked with, so the provider's opinion is worth something, and continuity when someone leaves your project is a real commitment they can make. People in a pipeline are cheaper and broader, but the provider's knowledge of them is thinner and replacement means recruiting again. Neither is dishonest. Being told one and sold the other is.
What you should still do yourself
Even good pre-vetting is a filter, not a decision. It removes people who cannot do the work; it cannot tell you who fits your team, your codebase and your tolerance for ambiguity. Keep one technical conversation and one working session of your own, always, and treat the provider's assessment as evidence rather than a verdict.
The practical benefit of real pre-vetting is not that you skip interviewing. It is that the people you interview are worth the hour, which over a shortlist of five is most of a working week you get back.