Best Practices – Kroll’s Five Point Search
Though the ideal background search for your employees depends on a number of factors – organizational type, industry, and the laws or regulations that may govern your process – Kroll nonetheless always recommends our “Five Points” check as the best basis for an effective background screen.
Kroll’s Five Points method offers an excellent overview of a candidate’s background, while avoiding many of the common pitfalls associated with the “bargain basement” background check that may be performed through a quick online search.
Point One: SSN Trace & Address Locator
This service acts as the foundation for our proven background screening methodology, since it not only reveals identifying information (such as name and name variations and date of birth), but also provides an accounting of resident history by uncovering current and former addresses associated with that Social Security number (SSN). Kroll then cross-references addresses uncovered by the service with addresses provided by the applicant and orders the appropriate criminal searches based on a minimum of the last seven years of address history.
This methodology restricts the candidate from omitting a place of residence where he or she may have a pending charge, arrest, or criminal record. By using this service to better define search parameters, Kroll has a better chance of discovering criminal histories that were missed under the traditional process and can become much less reliant on information candidates provide on applications.
Point Two: U.S. Criminal Records Indicator Search
Crimes are not isolated to where we live and work – individuals can commit offenses in jurisdictions in which they visit or travel. To provide another layer of security in the screening process, Kroll recommends performing a search of a proven multi-jurisdictional criminal database which may discover these hidden records. Our U.S. Criminal Records Indicator, which meets the most stringent of industry regulations, pools information from multiple trusted sources, including:
- State sex offender registries
- Statewide repositories of criminal information
- Multiple online county records
- Office of Foreign Assets and Control (OFAC)
- Interpol Most Wanted list
For those possible hits that are uncovered by our U.S. Crim, Kroll will automatically verify a record by ordering the necessary county and/or statewide criminal search.
Point Three: County (or Statewide) Criminal Record Searches
Kroll takes the address history provided by the SSN Trace and Address Locator – as well as any hit information uncovered by the U.S. Crim – and orders the appropriate county and/or statewide criminal record searches for a minimum seven-year period. Unlike our competitors who pull public records exclusively from online compilations – which may be weeks or months out of date – Kroll researchers go straight to the primary source, procuring records from county courthouses or combing the same resources that court clerks use.
Ordering a statewide search as opposed to the individual county is dependent upon whether the state(s) of residence offer record repositories that meet Kroll’s exacting standards for data accuracy. Currently, less than half of all U.S. states offer such repositories; therefore, in those states, Kroll will order the criminal searches in the counties of residence.
Point Four: Federal Criminal Record Searches
A number of heinous crimes you as an employer would want to know about may only be reported in federal district courts and may therefore not be found during standard county or statewide criminal record searches. These include such offenses as tax evasion, mail and wire fraud, drug trafficking, immigration law violations, bank robbery, and child pornography.
As with the preceding process, Kroll uses the address history uncovered by the SSN Trace and Address Locator to determine jurisdictions in which we will order federal criminal record searches.
Point Five: Driving Record Search
The final component of our Five Points methodology is to order the motor vehicle record (MVR) in the applicant's current state of residence. While some organizations think driving records should be pulled only if an applicant will operate a company vehicle, Kroll believes motor vehicle information exposes important character issues. By searching an applicant's MVR, we learn about suspended licenses, failures to appear in court, and arrest warrants. In addition, drug- and alcohol-related driving offenses, such as DUIs, may serve as a warning of potential substance abuse problems that can affect job performance. Moreover, in some states, these offenses are not always recorded with legal jurisdictions, but instead only appear on the MVR.
Pulling an MVR can also serve as another manner of confirming the candidate’s date of birth, allowing Kroll to prevent savvy criminals – who know that the primary identifier in court records is date of birth – from concealing their past by providing a false date.