Unlike reference or background checks, Layover is candidate-owned and portable: you write up what you actually did, a former manager (identity-verified) confirms it, and you get a credential you control and can share anywhere. Verified employment, real exit status, and manager-attested achievements in one link. A real, accountable person stands behind your work instead of another unverifiable bullet point. Free for founding users.
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Maker
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Hi Product Hunt. I'm Alex, founder of Layover.
Navigating a layoff used to mean walking your résumé in and having a human look you in the eye. Now it's a steel door marked "Careers," and behind the plexiglass sits Noreply, an old boiler with a screen for a face. You slide your folder in. A laser scans it. "Ah, this looks familiar." A hatch opens in its chest, crushes seven years of your work into a ball, and drops it in. "Thank you for applying. Have a wonderful afternoon."
Like hundreds of thousands of others, I got laid off this year. Three days' notice, family of four, not much runway. But I felt the layoff wasn't the real problem. I had the skills and experience. The problem was Noreply: a system where landing an interview feels like a lottery, and AI prints tickets by the thousand. When anyone can prompt a flawless résumé, "flawless" becomes the floor and the actual human disappears.
So while I sent applications into the void, I built the thing I wished I had. The idea: stop trying to write better résumés, and start proving the real work. With Layover, you write up what you actually did, a former manager (identity-verified) confirms it, and you get a credential you own and share. A real, accountable person stands behind your work instead of another unverifiable bullet point.
It started as a scoring system based on HR performance reviews and manager ratings, but I killed that early. A number a manager picks is just false precision, and an early user who happened to be a fraud analyst immediately picked up on that. What's left is the part that's actually un-fakeable: a real person, identity-verified, going on record about your actual work.
It's free for founding users while I build out the network. I'd genuinely love feedback, especially from anyone who hires, gets hired, or has met their own version of Noreply.
What would make a credential like this actually useful to you?
How do you handle situations where a manager refuses to verify, like can a candidate use an alternate verifier?
Report
Maker
@naimz Great question, and it's one of the most important design calls in the whole product. Short version: yes, but it's deliberately not "anyone."
The value of the credential is that a real, identity-verified person who was actually there went on record. So if a direct manager won't or can't, the candidate can use someone else who genuinely worked with them on that role: a skip-level, a close peer, a cross-functional lead, even a direct report for leadership work. What we won't do is allow a character reference or a friend who can't speak to the actual work, because that's the thing that makes most references worthless.
The credential also shows who verified it (former manager vs. peer vs. report), so it's transparent rather than flattening everyone into one "verified" badge.
Honestly, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to get right, so I'm curious: from where you sit, would a verified former peer or direct report carry real weight for you, or is it really only the manager's word that moves the needle?
Mailwarm
How do you handle situations where a manager refuses to verify, like can a candidate use an alternate verifier?
@naimz Great question, and it's one of the most important design calls in the whole product. Short version: yes, but it's deliberately not "anyone."
The value of the credential is that a real, identity-verified person who was actually there went on record. So if a direct manager won't or can't, the candidate can use someone else who genuinely worked with them on that role: a skip-level, a close peer, a cross-functional lead, even a direct report for leadership work. What we won't do is allow a character reference or a friend who can't speak to the actual work, because that's the thing that makes most references worthless.
The credential also shows who verified it (former manager vs. peer vs. report), so it's transparent rather than flattening everyone into one "verified" badge.
Honestly, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to get right, so I'm curious: from where you sit, would a verified former peer or direct report carry real weight for you, or is it really only the manager's word that moves the needle?