Non-Compliant Background Checks Can be Difficult to Spot, This One Difference Can Save You from a Compliance Nightmare
When looking for a background check company online it can be difficult to sort through all the ads, and great sounding deals. Recent lawsuits show it’s important to know the difference and one way to tell the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) compliant companies from the rest is finding out if they use record confirmation.
Recently several companies have come under fire for using inaccurate background checks to vet employees. The Indy Star reports that a potential hire for the IDE Management company in Indianapolis filed a class action lawsuit against the company after she was told she had a record that excluded her from the position and didn’t receive a copy of her background report. The problem was, those records didn’t belong to her!
In the lawsuit, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will determine whether IDE violated the FCRA guidelines. In this casethe company may face steep fines should they be found liable but they could have avoided all of that.
Whenever a credit reporting agency like HireSafe performs a background screening, FCRA guidelines require them to confirm the reported information using personal identifiers. To correctly and accurately match a report to an applicant a first name and last name is simply not enough. To remain compliant HireSafe uses multiple identifiers like date of birth to confirm that the name accurately matches the record. On top of these steps credit reporting agencies must verify criminal records by contacting the county courts where the records are stored.
These simple steps confirm that any records found belong to the potential hire and are one big difference between compliant background screening companies and non-compliant ones. If the company you are looking at only matches records by name, you could be next for a class action lawsuit.
Luckily HireSafe makes compliance easy, our QuickApp system allows you to complete the entire process online with no paper forms to keep track of. Simply enter your applicant’s information and they will receive a secure email to begin the process. If we find any records pre-adverse action steps are available online, and applicants can easily retrieve a copy of their report from HireSafe. These steps allow the applicant time to dispute the findings in the report by contacting HireSafe.
Without these steps the background screening process would not be FCRA compliant so if you want to be sure you’re 100% compliant, trust HireSafe for all your employment background check needs. View our most popular background check packages here.