Guides on choosing, evaluating, and working with background screening providers, from the All Screeners team.
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The checks that make sense for an office hire aren't the checks that make sense for a driver, a nurse, or someone who'll have access to your company bank account. Here's how to match the screening to the actual risk of the job instead of running the same expensive package on everyone.
ComplianceIn a growing number of states, ordering an employment credit check for a role that doesn't qualify for an exception is the violation by itself, before the employer ever looks at the result.
Report TypesMaintenance staff and leasing agents get keys to people's homes. That's a different risk than a typical office hire, and it changes what you should actually be checking for.
ComplianceRoughly a dozen states restrict how employers can use credit history in hiring, and New York just extended its rule statewide. Here's which states get cited most often, what the restrictions usually cover, and why you shouldn't treat any list, including this one, as final.
ComplianceNo, federal law generally bars this, and the rule isn't the FCRA. It's 11 U.S.C. Section 525, a Bankruptcy Code provision most employers have never heard of, and it covers private employers too.
ComplianceA credit check needs more than the FCRA disclosure you already send for every other background check. What permissible purpose actually means for a credit pull, and why the paperwork carries a layer standard checks don't.
ComplianceFederal law caps most background check history at seven years, but that cap disappears for jobs paying $75,000 or more, and criminal convictions were never covered by it at all. Here is the exact federal rule, with the parts most sites get wrong.
ComplianceAn employment credit check isn't a credit score, and it isn't legal everywhere anymore. What the report actually contains, why more states are restricting it, and why you need to verify your own state's current rule before you run one.
Report TypesMost companies only need three or four check types, not the whole menu. A fast reference for matching checks to the actual role.