If you want to hire a new employee for your business, you will know that it can be a risky process that will require a lot of resources. In addition to paying your employee and covering the cost of training, it’s also important to find a reliable background check company to ensure that you are making a good investment in this employee. Using one of the best background checking websites available to search for available records is key to ensuring that this process runs smoothly.
However, finding the right pre-employment screening service is not always easy since there is a scam site out there for every reputable, accurate and dependable site. Since the last thing that you want is to waste precious business resources only to find out you’ve used a scam site, we’ve put together a list of the best background check sites that are available. When you use one of these services, you will be guaranteed the most reputable, accurate information before you make a hiring decision
What is a Background Check?
A background check is a process that is used to verify a person’s identity and find out more information about them. This is done using records of the person’s employment, criminal, financial and educational history, along with further documentation if needed. An employment background check will typically take place after somebody applies for a position or if the employer is planning to offer somebody a job. An employer will need the consent of the individual to run a background check on them along with information such as their date of birth, current address and social security number. With an employment background check, you can check a wide range of different criteria including driving records, drug screenings, and social media activity. Bear in mind that different states have different laws surrounding background checks.
The 15 Best Employee Background Check Services:
These are the best background check companies that we have found to use when hiring new employees. Using any of these options, you will be able to perform a thorough and reliable search of any new staff before making any hiring decisions.
Background Report:
Pros
Cons
Background report is an easy, DIY background checking option for people who want to conduct the entire background check process online. They offer background reports that are easy to read and understand, and you have access to highly-trained US-based support staff at all times. This background checking service allows you to access multiple databases instantly, offering the most accurate and comprehensive results.
Background Report is known for being one of the best background checking companies in the US, and it offers numerous types of background checks for employers including standard, basic, and premium packages. The background reports are compiled from various sources that have been assembled over years. Background reports include a range of checks including criminal history, financial history, contact details, employment history, civil court records, tax liens and more. They claim to have offered the best, most thorough and highest-quality background reports to employers for over eleven years, allowing you to know the reality before you take anybody new on board to your business.
Background Report gives you the most accurate information as quickly and efficiently as possible. It allows you to obtain a background report on anybody, but bear in mind that you will need the individual’s consent to obtain a background report for employment purposes. Along with a comprehensive background check, the report also includes identity verification to help you ensure that your potential new employee is who they say they are.
Background Report offers two packages for getting background checks. The Basic package costs $21.95 per month and includes social security number validation, instant criminal conviction checks, sex offender records and more. The Premium package starts from $31.95 per month and includes everything included in the basic check plus address history, alias names, phone number history, bankruptcy records, eviction records, judgement records and lien records.
Accurate Now
Pros
Cons
Accurate Now offers automated background checks that are tailored for small and medium business. They claim to offer powerful screening services used by enterprises at reasonable prices and on an easy-to-use, manageable platform. You can choose from a range of screenings to find the one that fits your workflow. All core services are FCRA-compliant, so you can be sure that you are in line with legal requirements for performing a background check on employees as long as you have gotten the individual’s consent beforehand.
Accurate Now uses a database that has been compiled using thousands of sources to provide summaries of contact details, name and name variations, and current and previous address history. You can also use this service to get the criminal history for an individual over seven years, searching records in county courts based on SSN Trace records. Criminal history results include both misdemeanor and felony charges, offenses, file numbers, dates, disposition and sentencing information. Searches can be conducted for any US county. In addition, you can access National Criminal Search, a proprietary database complied from US court records, and check if the individual appears on the National Sex Offender Registry.
In addition to criminal records, you can also find out more important information on your potential new hire including education verification, to ensure that they actually have the credentials listed on their resume. You can also perform an employment verification check which involves contacting past or current employers to verify any employment information that has been provided on a job application, and verify professional licenses with the license issuing authority. If you are hiring an employee who will be required to drive, you can also get a three-to-five-year driving history for the individual including DMV records and any out-of-state driving-related charges.
GoodHire:
Pros
Cons
GoodHire is a popular provider of employee background checks, covering all the standard areas that you would expect from this service. Their background checks offer verification of identity, criminal history, credit checks, and drug testing history where applicable. It covers a range of different industries including construction, education, hospitality, retail and more to ensure that all background checks are fully compliant with each industry’s specific regulations.
One of the main ways that GoodHire differs from other employee background check providers is that it offers access to a large amount of data for popular searches, allowing you to get some results instantly. In addition, the platform is also mobile-friendly, making it easy for busy business owners and managers to perform background checks on new hires on the go. Bear in mind that some more in-depth background checks may still take a few days to complete.
This California-based company offers small business owners and HR managers a fast, legally compliant, tech-forward and comprehensive background checking service for both prospective and current employees. The whole process is designed to be as easy as possible for employers to navigate; all you need to do is order the most suitable service package for you and enter the name and email for the employee that you would like to check. Both you and the employee will receive a comprehensive and transparent background check process that is FCRA compliant.
GoodHire will share the result of your employees’ background checks on a user-friendly interface that will clearly break down all the relevant information that you need. It offers a range of unique tools that are designed to keep the process as automated and streamlined as possible. For example, employees can comment on background check results to provide context easily wherever needed.
Employment Screening Resources:
Pros
Cons
Employment Screening Resources is a company with plenty of experience behind them, having been founded all the way back in 1997 by Lester Rosen, a hiring attorney. ESR is based in San Francisco and is staffed by employees who are experts in nationwide labor and hiring laws. They offer a range of tools to make the background checking process easier for employers including integration with the most popular HR, HRIS and ATS technologies.
ESR offers a suite of pre-employment background checking services. Their comprehensive solutions are designed to empower employers to make more informed, compliant hiring decisions. Background reports include everything that you would expect and more including identity verification, credit reports, social security number tracing, Form I-9 and E-verify services, criminal history searches, sex offender registry searches, civil records, driving records, substance abuse test results and multi-jurisdiction criminal insight searching. In addition, employers can also use ESR’s service to perform social media screening on potential employees and check the legitimacy of verifications, licenses, references and qualifications. You can also access occupational health screenings, global sanctions and watch lists, and international background screening for potential employees who have lived abroad in the past.
In addition to pre-employment checks, ESR also offers post-hire screening services to ensure that your knowledge of your current employees stays up to date. You can access ongoing monitoring solutions including monthly monitoring and annual checks, keep on top of annual driving records, criminal records, and watch list data to help you ensure that you are doing due diligence on your current employees. They offer expert advice to help you find the right searches, frequency, and compliance practices for your post-hire screening and monitoring program.
HireRight:
Pros
Cons
HireRight is another top background checking website that offers pre-employment screening for over 240 countries and territories around the world. It can handle applicants in twenty different languages, making it a top choice for international employers who often work with applicants from overseas.
HireRight is committed to ensuring that their customers feel comfortable and have peace of mind knowing that they are working with thorough and verified results. They are dedicated to strict adherence to industry standards and offer fast turn-around times, delivering quality-checked, real-time results as soon as they are available. Their products and services are constantly updated to ensure that current and future screening compliance needs are always met, including providing outreach and tools to ensure that their customers can easily stay up to date with changing regulations.
HireRight offer the largest number of ATS integrations in the industry, as they believe that it is crucial for employers to have an e-recruiting solution that provides complete visibility throughout the process. Their signature platforms are designed to seamlessly integrate with all leading applicant tracking system technology allowing employers to hire easier, better, and faster.
The background screening process involves everything that you would expect including identification verification, criminal history check, drug testing history, driving history, and more. HireRight are also proud to offer one of the highest verification rates for education and employment history in the country. As an international background checking service, they can also easily offer background checks on potential employees who may have lived outside of the country or are applying from overseas, including eligibility to work checks, international criminal records and more. Their reach is extremely wide including screening in over two hundred countries, allowing enterprise-wide customers to take advantage of a unified program across a global organization.
Intellicorp:
Pros
Cons
Intellicorp is an employee screening company that offers a full range of background check services. They will work together with employers to ensure that all customers have access to a screening program that best meets the needs of the organization. They offer a range of employment screening packages with something to suit every employer. The standard package offers all the basics that you would expect from this service including social security and identity verification, address history, government sanctions search, criminal history and sex offenders register list search. The enhanced program offers additional checks on employment history and federal criminal records, while the premium package is the best option for a thorough and comprehensive background check, including education and professional reference verification, arrest records, and more.
Intellicorp is dedicated to working with employers to find the best solutions for them. They offer package customization options to meet your unique business needs, whether you need to meet specific legal requirements, industry regulations, or simply want to hold your candidates to a higher standard. Some of the most popular add-ons that you can access include drug screening, traffic reports, adverse action letters, former name searches and more. They also offer credit report and international history searching.
In addition to the services that they offer, Intellicorp is committed to helping their customers stay compliant and get the best from their employment screening efforts. Due to this, they offer access to a comprehensive online learning center where you can find a wide range of materials designed to help you learn more about the process and improve your compliance. Their team offers a combination of expertise, knowledge, and superior customer service to help facilitate effective and fast decision making for you and your team.
InfoMart:
Pros
Cons
InfoMart is a background screening company based in Georgia. They offer industry-specific pre-employment screening services for clients, including background checks for suppliers and interns. Before choosing InfoMart for your employment screening needs, you can contact the team to request a demo of how their modernized, simplified background checks and identity screening works.
With a background check on a potential employee from InfoMart, you will receive all the expected information including identity verification and social security number tracing, criminal history checks, driving records, sanctions searches, sex offender register and watch list searches and more. You can also use InfoMart’s service to conduct a social media audit for your potential employee and look into their occupational health history.
InfoMart is committed to helping employers ensure that they remain compliant when screening potential employees for their specific industry. They cover a wide range of industries and offer specific background checking services for education, food service, automotive, finance, retail, transportation, sports and entertainment, manufacturing, staffing, healthcare, hospitality, and sharing economy. They offer global services to make checking international employees easier, and along with screening services for potential employees, they offer student and internet screening, vendor background screening and volunteer screening.
In addition to pre-employment checks, InfoMart also offers a continuous criminal history monitoring service for your current employees. With this feature, you will get access to real-time background checks and employee arrest data to ensure that you always have the latest information on the people who work for you. You can choose from three different monitoring tiers to ensure that continuous criminal history monitoring is something that can be easily fit into the preferred procedures for your company. Employee data is matched 24/7 against nationwide arrest data, providing you with instant alerts if a member of your team is arrested for any reason.
Checkr:
Pros
Cons
Checkr is a start-up that is relatively new to the industry, but has quickly become the go-to choice for many technology companies of all sizes. The company offers some unique features compared to other employment screening services including an automated, mobile-friendly platform that is set up to check both full-time staff and gig workers, making it ideal for today’s gig economy. It is becoming more and more popular due to its ease of use and quick integration process. It is suitable for all businesses from start-ups to enterprises and offers access to a wide range of risk management, analysis, and other hiring tools.
With Checkr, employers are able to select from a list of industry-specific background checks to ensure industry compliance, or create a customized background search that is unique to their needs. Role-specific solutions for the areas of talent acquisition, operations, compliance and HR leadership are also available.
Checkr believes that all candidates should have a fair chance to work, and enable this by connecting companies to more diverse pools of qualified talent while putting strategies in place to help employers reduce bias throughout the hiring process. There are many options available to narrow this field based on your specific organizational needs.
Their background checks offer a range of information and employers can choose from single searches or combined searches including criminal background checks, driver records, drug and health screenings, civil searches and employment and education verification. They offer an intuitive, easy to learn system with personalized support whenever you need it. They send reminders to applicants when their input is required, and generate documents that are fully compliant with both federal and local regulations.
Verified Credentials:
Pros
Cons
Onfido is an ideal employee screening service to use if your business is entering a big growth phase and you plan to hire a large number of employees. This background check startup offers background checks for companies in both the US and UK, along with on-boarding services that are included with their automation platform. They offer an easy to integrate SDK, with just an ID and facial verification needed to get started on any device. Identity checking services are easier than ever with document verification that scans the user’s ID to detect whether or not it is genuine, covering over 2500 document types from almost 200 countries.
Onfido covers all industries along with offering industry-compliant background checks for a range of specific industries where certain checks are required. This includes transport, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, marketplaces and communities, and retail and eCommerce. They pride themselves on offering a service that is designed for speed and ease, and their mission is to create opportunities for people.
Along with background checks, Onfido also offers ‘Know Your Customer’ services, enabling you to meet all regulatory obligations and keep your customer satisfied. Offering user-centric design, they add additional smoothness to any areas where you will need to ask your customer for more data to verify their identity in order to meet KYC identity verification requirements. For example, one feature that they offer is real-time feedback to help users submit high-quality documents for verification, making it easier whether you are asking an employee or a customer to upload a photo of their ID for verification purposes.
Trusted Employees:
Pros
Cons
Trusted Employees is a Minnesota-based, FCRA-compliant service that has been in the background checking industry for two decades. They have a team of experts who work together with small business owners to provide customized background checks based on business type, industry, and the position that they are hiring for. Whether you’re a small business owner hiring your first employee or a manager at a large company that hires new employees all the time, their main aim is to ensure that it is easy, safe and smart.
Trusted Employees offer a range of different check types to ensure that you are fully aware of who you are hiring before beginning to on-boarding process. They provide a criminal records history by checking multiple criminal databases in accordance with FCRA guidelines. Where required, they can also provide a credit background check on potential employees from simple credit reports to detailed credit histories. You can also use the services provided by Trusted Employees to ensure that your potential new employee has an honest resume, with employment verification checks to ensure that their employment history is valid, along with reference verification services that are designed to help you ask the right questions and avoid any compliance issues when talking to references. You can also make sure that the person you are hiring has provided complete education history with education verification checks.
Trusted Employees offer background checks that are as unique as your business, customizing the service to meet your specific needs. They offer streamlined analytics and reporting to ensure that the process is hassle-free, along with easy ATS integrations and built-in FCRA compliance. Enhanced risk assessment services ensure that you have all the latest advice and information on the best steps to take throughout the hiring process if a red flag shows up on a background report.
Asurint:
Pros
Cons
Asurint is a background checking company that provides both general and industry-specific employee background checks for both SMEs and companies at the enterprise level. Their client service team and industry experts are US-based with a significant amount of knowledge and experience in background checking for various industries including transport, non-profit, healthcare and retail. In addition to pre-employment checks, they also offer rescreening and ongoing criminal history checking. They understand that businesses have various needs, offering a range of solutions and products that are designed to work for unique customers in any combination needed to make the correct hiring decision. They take the time to get to know your business to help you find the right solutions for you.
Customized solutions are available for employee criminal history checking, allowing employers to either set a custom timeframe for their criminal history searches, or leave it open-ended. Bear in mind that certain jurisdictions will set a limit of seven years when reporting an individual’s criminal convictions, while others allow for unlimited crime reporting regardless of the amount of time that has passed. Along with criminal background checks, employers can also use the services offered by Asurint to perform civil background checks, drug testing and medical services, credit checks and financial background checks, identity verification and social security number searches, driving and motor vehicle records and more.
Each step of the background checking process from Asurint is fully FCRA-compliant and ready to be legally used throughout the hiring process, including both federal and state-specific regulations. They are fully accredited by the PBSA for employment screening in the US, and offer integration with over thirty different applicant tracking systems. Along with this, they are committed to high consumer privacy. They offer fast turnaround times with typical background checks completed within days, offering high accuracy levels.
AGoodEmployee.com
Pros
Cons
AGoodEmployee.com offers a range of background checking services that come with personalized support. They aim to provide employers with answers to all questions that they have regarding data, compliance, and next steps. They offer four different background checking packages to choose from starting from $29.95.
The main aim of this company is to provide employers with peace of mind when making hiring decisions. They offer screening solutions that are designed to be easy to read and understand, and use a comprehensive network database to put together accurate, transparent reports. You can choose from the packaged bundles that are available or get in touch with them directly to create a custom solution that is designed to perfectly fit the needs of your company. You can trust all reports to be FCRA compliant to help you make the smartest hiring decisions.
Pre-employment screenings include everything that you would expect from this service including identity verification checks for social security number fraud, and verifying address history to ensure that you know exactly who you are hiring. You can perform a county, statewide, or national criminal history search to ensure that you have a thorough understanding of your potential employee’s criminal background to ensure a safe workplace. This can also include a search of the nationwide sex offender database, which is designed to capture more information compared to a county search.
Along with identity and criminal background checking, you can also use AGoodEmployee.com to make sure that you have all the necessary information when it comes to your new hire’s credentials. You can run employment verification checks to ensure that their previous employers match the details given and education verification to make sure that your potential new employee has the qualifications and credentials that they say they have. Finally, you can check the drug screening history or perform custom drug screening tests before and after hiring.
SterlingOne:
Pros
Cons
SterlingOne is one of the oldest background checking companies in the US that’s still very competitive in this industry. With offices across five different states including Washington and New York, you can be sure that this company will provide you with in-depth, accurate and compliant background reports on your potential employees. They provide a range of local, federal and global checks to ensure that you have as much information as possible on the people that you are hiring and offer a software platform that can be easily integrated with several different ATS providers along with custom-built systems.
Sterling provides compliant background checks for a range of specific industries including education, financial and business services, franchises, gig economy, construction, government, hospitality, manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences, utilities and energy, non-profit, retail, staffing, media and entertainment, technology, and transportation. In addition, SterlingNOW is designed specifically with small businesses in mind, with no set-up fee and a range of self-service features that are designed to keep costs as low as possible while still allowing small businesses and start-ups to access the most comprehensive background checking services for their employees. Self-service clients can also use CourtDirect, the court runner technology from Sterling that offers criminal searches completed in sixty minutes on average, with almost all completed within no more than twenty-four hours.
Sterling is well-known and highly-rated for offering some of the fastest background checking services in the industry, including clear reporting and a very user-friendly dashboard. Along with criminal history checks, employment and education verification and more, you can also access extensive drug and medical screening for employees when needed.
0 comments