Do you know where your background information comes from?

Research, Research, Research. When using an information provider, it's crucial to your business that you ask as many questions as possible. There are many things you have to look at when you're looking for an information provider. I have recently been seeing companies that claim to search over 1 billion records, that sounds great, and if you're a property manager or HR director that needs a source, this would sound appealing. Let me break down how these companies claim to search billions of records:

Let's say a person is pulled over for speeding,
flees the scene,
endangers the public,
wrecks the car (wreckless driving),
flees again on foot, officer catches up,
he assaults the police officer,
he's finally arrested; now they search the car,
the car has drugs in every compartment possible,
they find stolen weapons,
this is now simultaneous possession of drugs and weapons ,
they run the plate and the car is stolen,
they run the name and the person has outstanding warrants.
WOW! can you imagine someone racking up 11 charges on one arrest record! I assure you it happens every day in some form or another.

OK, so here's the 411 - now that I have your attention I can explain what this is all about - that was all under one arrest record. So, when these companies claim to be searching over 1 billion records, they are counting each of those charges as individual records. If convicted that scenario above would be under one arrest record.

So if you come across a company that claims to search over 1 billion records, it would be smart to ask how many actual arrest records they search. We've seen companies that search 200 million actual arrest records, but that still leaves you with millions of liabilities because there are companies now that can search up to 400 million actual arrest records which if marketed individually would be deep in the billions.

I hope this is an eye opener, don't leave millions of risk and liabilities hanging over your company, when you see something that sounds too good to be true, check into it. If a company is claiming to search over 1 billion records, they might only be searching 100 million actual arrest records or less, who really knows if they don't tell you!

So do your research, with the right information your company can be covered. Just a little advice to finish it out, if you get a hit on a national criminal search such as these, it can always be verified by doing a county criminal search. County searches will be more accurate, this pertains more to employment than rental screening but it's a good practice if you want to be sure you have the right person.