Choose the right package
The first decision is what to order. Most clients settle on two or three standard packages and only deviate for senior or safety-sensitive roles. Here's how to think about it:
Basic
SSN trace, address history, national criminal database, and national sex offender registry. Fast and cheap. Appropriate for roles with low fiduciary or safety exposure - seasonal, internship, or entry-level non-driving roles. Not appropriate as a sole check for most full-time hires, because the national criminal database is an aggregated index, not a true primary-source search.
Plus
Everything in Basic, plus a 7-year county criminal search at every county where the applicant has lived or worked. This is the workhorse package for most full-time employment screening. The county search is what turns a background check from a cheap data lookup into an actual records-based check.
Premium
Plus, extended with federal criminal search, motor vehicle record, and either employment verification, education verification, or both. This is the default for management, fiduciary, driving, and professional roles.
Custom
Build a package from any combination of our products. Common custom combinations include: finance roles (Premium + credit report), healthcare (Premium + OIG/SAM + professional license verification), and government contractors (Premium + federal criminal + federal civil + international if foreign residence).
Enter applicant details
Enter the applicant's legal name and email, then use your signed release form or approved fulfillment workflow for sensitive identifiers. Do not enter SSNs, dates of birth, or other sensitive details into a free-text field unless the system specifically requests them for that purpose.
A few fields that trip up new users:
- Legal name. Not preferred name, not hyphenated-short-form. Run the check against the name on the applicant's government ID. If the applicant has used an alias or a maiden name, add it as a known alias - we'll search those too.
- Date of birth. Required for almost every court. Without it, the courthouse can't distinguish between people with the same name. This is the single biggest cause of false-positive results across the industry.
- Address history. You can let the SSN trace populate address history (default) or ask the applicant to enter it during the disclosure step. Applicant-entered addresses are usually more complete for recent moves; trace-discovered addresses catch older ones.
Confirm release-form status
Before fulfillment begins, confirm that the candidate has received the required disclosure and signed the required authorization. Current dashboard requests can include a release-form upload or a release-form confirmation for operations review. If your account later uses an automated invitation workflow, operations will confirm that setup during onboarding.
If a candidate has not completed a required form, do not proceed with the check. Contact the candidate, correct the email or paperwork issue, and wait until authorization is complete.
Track progress
Depending on account setup, component status appears in the dashboard or is sent by operations. Common status language includes:
- Pending - component hasn't started (typically because it's waiting on an upstream result, e.g., county search waiting on address history).
- In progress - component is actively running. Shows who's running it and when it was last touched.
- Needs attention - component has hit a snag and needs manual review. Operations or the dashboard shows the reason.
- Complete - component is done. The result is visible in the partial report.
Many county-criminal employment packages complete in 1 to 3 business days. Packages with verifications, international work, court delays, or employer/school outreach can take longer because they depend on third-party responsiveness and jurisdiction access.
Handle common delays
A handful of situations routinely slow a check down. Here's what they look like and what to do.
Courthouse closed or paper-only
A nontrivial number of U.S. county courts are paper-only or have limited research windows. When we encounter one, we dispatch a paralegal on the next business day the court is open. Expect 3 to 5 business days for paper-only counties - less common now than five years ago, but still a real thing in rural jurisdictions. No action required on your end; we'll tell you upfront if the order hits one.
Common name, DOB mismatch
If the court returns a record for someone with the same name but a different DOB, we don't report it. If the DOB matches but the address or SSN doesn't, we flag it for manual review and pull additional identifiers (middle name, court-record identifiers) to confirm or exclude. You'll see a "needs attention" status if a record requires this kind of disambiguation.
Former employer unresponsive
Employment verifications rely on either The Work Number, direct HR contact, or in rare cases the applicant providing a W-2. If a former employer won't respond after three contact attempts (typical turnaround: 48 hours between attempts), we'll escalate and ask you whether to mark it "unable to verify" or request the applicant supply a W-2 or paystub. Most of our clients accept "unable to verify" on non-recent employment and only escalate to the applicant for the most recent 1 to 2 employers.
International candidate
If the applicant lived outside the U.S. in the last 7 years, the check may require in-country research. We scope this at intake and tell you the realistic turnaround for each country. Most Western European and Canadian checks complete in 5 to 10 business days. Some countries (Germany, Brazil, India) require specific applicant-signed consent forms beyond the U.S. standard. We'll let you know upfront if any additional steps are required.
Cancel or modify an in-progress order
To cancel or modify an in-progress request, contact operations from the dashboard or by email as soon as possible. Billing depends on which components have already been started or completed, pass-through access fees, and your service agreement.
Next up
See Reading reports for how to interpret findings once the check is complete, and Adverse action if the report contains potentially disqualifying information.