HireRight Background Checks Review

HireRight provides one of the most extensive list of background screening services in the industry. The company offers over 150 data points on the people it investigates and has a truly global reach. It works for other large Fortune 100 corporations, large organizations, and governments, all of whom can pay for the most thorough vetting possible.

Although HireRight is a major player in the background check market, it and its parent company have been defendants in numerous individual and class action consumer lawsuits and in federal regulatory actions. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, the company was named in several lawsuits, which alleged that HireRight had violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by failing to delete records of expunged criminal convictions and failing to supply the subjects of background checks with copies of their reports, among other infractions. In 2015, its parent company, Altegrity, reached a $30 million settlement with the US Department of Justice for failing to conduct quality reviews of completed background checks. Subsequently, Altegrity declared bankruptcy and was merged into Kroll, Inc.

Perhaps to some extent this is a product of the company's enormous size, since larger companies have more customers and therefore are exposed to larger risks from errors. However, the portrait that emerges from these legal actions is of a company that has had substantial problems in ensuring the accuracy of its background reports and in complying with the consumer rights provisions of the FCRA.

More disturbingly, the company has defended itself in claims that it provided grossly inaccurate and defamatory information on people by arguing that it had no responsibility to pay damages when those people were fired from their positions on the basis of the inaccurate information. The company argued that it was just a harmless "middleman," since it did not fire those employees itself. This argument is, at its core, a claim that the company does not stand behind the accuracy of its background screenings.

Although the company has been reorganized somewhat since the 2015 bankruptcy of its parent company, Altegrity, its history of serious errors and violations of the FCRA is only a few years behind it. It's not clear whether HireRight has taken steps to improve its compliance with the FCRA and the accuracy of its reports. The company's reputation at this point is questionable at best.

Like many companies whose business is primarily with large corporations and organizations, HireRight does not publish a price list or other billing information.