Three Rules HireSafe Follows to Keep Your Company Safe from Lawsuits

When shopping for the best employment background check company you may have seen numerous cheap “background check” offers across the web. These services generally just look up the name you provide and give you any records associated with that name. This rarely gives an accurate report and services like this are illegal for employment screening use.

The FCRA guidelines include many regulations that require background check companies and employers to confirm the information used to make hiring decisions. HireSafe uses many legally required and other procedures to protect you from costly lawsuits. Among these are a record confirmation rule, identity confirmation rule and 7-year rule.

1. Record Confirmation

We confirm any records returned in our cursory search at the county court level. This means that if we find anything to report on a candidate we will contact the county court that charged them and get records directly from the source. In addition to more broad searchers we use the provided applicants addresses to search county records. FCRA regulations require reports found at the local level are verified through identity confirmation.

2. Identity Confirmation

HireSafe ensures your candidate matches any records found. This means that when you receive a report from HireSafe we have confirmed that information matches your applicant. To confirm records, found correspond to your applicant we use their date of birth, first name and last name among other proprietary tools.

In fact, the FCRA requires any records used for hiring purposes are confirmed with at least the first name, last name, and date of birth. Many cheap background check services offer reports that are unverified. If you were to use one of these reports for the hiring process both the FCRA and the applicant could file suit and that can turn out very costly. Even verified information can be non-compliant, and that’s why we are always up to date on local and state ordinances like ban the box and the 7-year rule.

3. 7-Year Rule

Some states and counties have specific rules regarding the age of records found in background screening reports. Originally the FCRA limited records available to employment background screening to 7 years. While eventually that federal rule was lifted, 11 states and many counties, cities and jurisdictions kept the limit to 7 years.

The EEOC considers old reports to be older than 7 years and there are many individual state and regional laws governing the number of years available for background reports. To avoid lawsuits, it is far safer to limit information to those 7 years instead of on a region by region basis.

That’s why even though it is not federally required HireSafe’s policy is to report only the criminal convictions during the previous seven years. This date begins on the adjudication date or the date the county court considered the case. This extra rule is just one of the many ways HireSafe ensures your reports are compliant no matter what.

Read more about the ways HireSafe keeps you compliant on our FCRA compliance page, and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter.