Trigger and retrieve results for an Xref reference-check via API
domain: recruiting · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Contact Xref integrations support to register your platform and receive Sandbox API credentials; all development happens in the sandbox environment first, with a separate production environment after go-live
Choose an auth model: for a single-account integration, authenticate with an API key against the auth endpoint using an 'Authorization: Token' header; for a multi-tenant platform, implement the account-level OAuth2 flow — send end users to the Xref login/oauth authorize URL for your client_id, then exchange the returned authorization code for an access_token via the token endpoint
Retrieve the list of active questionnaires available to the account so you can select the correct questionnaire ID for the reference check you want to run
Trigger the reference check by calling the check-creation endpoint with candidate/referee details and the chosen questionnaire ID
Register a webhook_url at platform-registration time so Xref can push notifications as referee responses come in or the check completes, rather than relying only on polling
Poll the check-details endpoint (requested time, requester, candidate info, referee responses) using the same token/API key to pull final results once the check is complete
Known gotchas
Xref's OAuth model is account-level, not user-level: once any single end user completes the OAuth flow, the resulting access_token authorizes API access for every user under that Xref account — a different mental model than typical per-user OAuth
Onboarding is not self-serve — you must contact Xref's integrations team to get sandbox credentials, and you must supply redirect_url and webhook_url upfront when registering your platform
Alternative vendor Checkster (now operated under Harver) does not have comparable public API documentation — its integration details are shared privately via its support team, which is why Xref was chosen here as the more current/independently-verifiable API
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