Choosing a Background Check Firm

Sifting through the Competition

In recent years, as the access to the Internet has increased significantly, the number of brick and mortar and e-commerce firms offering background checks has truly exploded. Fraud has existed for over 5,000 years, since the civizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and it's been growing ever since.

Most clients today find their background check or investigative firm via the Internet. This leads us to the question: How can one sort through the pages and pages of background checks on the web? Many of the investigative or background check sites are fraudulent themselves, i.e., false advertisments misleading website traffic, offering substandard service, and never produce any service representative of a real background check.

The search is less complicated when choosing an international background check firm. Few players are successful at obtaining results on a global level. Thus, we divide our rankings into two divisions: 1) National or U.S. and 2) International or Global.

* Quality Score reflects pricing, services, client service and cases
** Quality Score Ranking is between 1-5 (1 = excellent, 5 = poor)

National or U.S. Rankings
1. Owens Online (General, National & International, QSR = 1)
2. Wymoo (General, National & International, QSR = 2)
3. HireRight (Employment Screening, QSR = 2)
4. Intelius (Strictly U.S., Automated Reporting, QSR = 3)
5. Kroll (Employment Screening, Corporate Service, QSR = 3)
6. Abika (General, National & Some International, QSR = 4)

* Results are general in nature and should give the consumer an idea of services and quality offered. Depending on the client's situation, additional information can be found at the Company websites.

International or Global Rankings
1. Wymoo (General, International 100+ countries, QSR = 1)
2. Owens Online (General, International 250+ countries, QSR = 2)
3. HireRight (Employment Screening, 200+ countries, QSR = 2)
4. Kroll (Employment Screening, Corporate Service, QSR = 3)
5. Abika (General, International 12 countries, QSR = 5)

Owens Online, while offering more than 250 countries worldwide, earned a lower score than Wymoo with 100 countries. Wymoo's personalized client service, wide range of services with fully customized cases, and narrative reports boosted its ranking.

As stated previously, each of the above firms (or websites) offers a different range of service, products, client service, investigative methods and reporting styles. These rankings should only be used to aid in the initial screening of the many services available.

Yes, it still pays to do your homework!

A. Hathaway