ABOUT

THE COMPANY

OUR STORY

In business since 1999, First Check Applicant Screening is a licensed private investigations company that specializes in applicant screening.

THE FIRST CHECK DIFFERENCE

Our clients understand that they can be legally liable for the actions of their employees, volunteers, and tenants. Courts have ruled that you can mitigate that liability by making a “good faith effort to obtain information that was reasonably available about your applicant”. That’s where we come in.


As a licensed private investigations company, we provide you with many solutions to properly screen your applicant.


County criminal searches are a core element of a background investigation. We use our nationwide network of 2500 court researchers to actually check the court records at the county level.

Many companies simply rely on a cheap background check that’s purchased from one of many database companies on the Internet offering instant background checks. Many of these databases are dangerously incomplete. What the database companies are really selling are limited records purchased from a patchwork of jurisdictions over time. Often, the database company does not update the records after they purchase them. For example, your database report may show that an applicant had an offense that resulted in deferred adjudication. However, that applicant may have recently done something to violate that agreement which resulted in an arrest or a conviction and the outdated database may not show you the new information. This database can be used as a “pointer” devices to see if they uncover any other issues, but we don’t recommend they ever be your sole source of information.


Companies who rely on cheap background checks believe in the myth that a piece of paper in the file will demonstrate due diligence if they are ever sued.

In business since 1999, First Check Applicant Screening is a licensed private investigations company that specializes in applicant screening.

Our extensive court researcher network enables us to provide accurate background investigations in all parts of the country. We provide customized background screening solutions based on the needs of your organization. We offer instant database background checks for our clients who insist on it.



We also provide other direct verifications of employment, education, professional license, credit, and references often essential to the screening process.

It is our belief that direct criminal county-level verifications are the most effective at discovering criminal records. However, multi-jurisdictional searches, federal, statewide, and local warrants searches are good supplemental searches that when combined are a thorough search of an applicant’s criminal history.


We are members of our profession’s industry trade group, PBSA. The Professional Background Screening Association exists to promote ethical business practices, promote compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and foster awareness of issues related to consumer protection and privacy rights within the background screening industry.



We are also members of an organization called Concerned CRA’s. Concerned CRA’s is a group of like-minded CRA’s (Consumer Reporting Agencies) who are concerned about the future of the employment background screening industry. We believe that certain data practices employed by some CRA’s place our profession at risk.

Some employment background screening firms send sensitive personal information (i.e. social security numbers and financial account information) off-shore to be processed. We believe that sending such information off-shore places both applicants and employers at risk and should be avoided whenever possible. Alternatively, when personal information is sent to other countries, applicants and employers should be made aware of this practice.

In addition, some screening firms sell “national criminal records databases” without appropriate safeguards to ensure that the information they are delivering is accurate and up to date. We believe that criminal records databases are valuable sources of information if they are used in a responsible manner.


We fully comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and have an excellent dispute resolution/consumer relations department to assist applicants who have disputes with the information reported on their screening report.

First Check is a Consumer Reporting Agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act; however, we do not maintain a database on consumers. The applicant has authorized all the screening reports that we generate.

At First Check, we take seriously your obligation to also comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act regarding ordering consumer reports. We strongly emphasize the requirement placed on you regarding making a clear and conspicuous disclosure in writing to your application before ordering a screening report. We also emphasize the role you must play regarding pre and post adverse action if you rely on one of our reports to make an adverse decision on your applicant.



We are integrated with many Applicant Tracking Systems which can make ordering and reviewing your background checks easier. We can also assist with customer integrations using our API technology.