Background checks, whether for employee screening, litigation, investigation or security objectives are often misconstrued to be local to one specific jurisdiction. The scenario often goes something like this: a background check needs to be conducted and the subject currently resides in New York City, so the background is done in New York. This may seem logical, but is likely far too limited.
The truth is, people move around more than at any other time in history, meaning, records pertaining to the average person likely exist beyond where they currently live.
Jurisdiction is everything in background checks
Even when one has not officially registered his/her address somewhere else, many, particularly younger people, “stay” places, some times for many months or even years. These folks have a formal, recognized address, likely at a relatives house, but they don’t live there. In reality, they have created records or their activities where they are staying, but only an a
astute, trained investigator will find those unofficial locations and search there. Those records can reside at the Federal, state, county and local levels. Also consider that many of us travel from county to county daily. In some cities like Memphis, Kansas City, Washington DC or Philadelphia, it is reasonable for a person to cross state lines multiple times each day. This means records can be in many separate locations and would be missed if the search is confined to one local or another. Instant, web based search robots (who make up the majority of this industry) will fail to find these every time.
In the case of employee screening, one can usually only look back 7 years. But for some people, they have lived in multiple states and multiple cities within those states during the course of those 7 years.
Learn more about our background check services. If you are interested in having the most complete, accurate background checks available today, we encourage you to contact our team. We will always take the time to answer your questions and explain specifically where we search and why.
