Employment Screening Services by Industry

The check each industry owes

Every row below is a search or step a federal rule names for that sector, with the deadline it sets. State law adds more on top, especially for schools and care workers.

Healthcare: the exclusion lists

If your organization bills Medicare, Medicaid or another federal health program, the search that sets healthcare apart is the exclusion list. HHS-OIG keeps the List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE). No federal health program pays for items or services an excluded person furnishes, orders or prescribes, and OIG's FAQ says that payment ban applies to “anyone who employs or contracts with the excluded person.”

The LEIE holds only OIG's own actions, so a search of it alone misses the federal SAM list and each state's Medicaid exclusions. That gap is why screening firms sell a bundled “sanctions” or “exclusion” search; ask which lists it covers and how often it re-runs on your current staff.

Nursing homes carry one more rule. A facility may not employ anyone found guilty of abuse, neglect, exploitation, mistreatment or misappropriation of residents' property by a court, anyone with such a finding in the state nurse aide registry, or anyone whose license is under discipline for it (42 CFR 483.12(a)(3)). That makes the registry and the license board two searches the file has to show.

Transportation: the DOT driver file

For a commercial driver in safety-sensitive work, the FMCSA rules build the file for you, item by item. Motor carriers pull a commercial driver's three-year record from every state that licensed them, within 30 days of hire, and pull and review each driver's record at least once every 12 months. In the same 30 days the carrier investigates the driver's safety performance history with DOT-regulated employers over the preceding three years, and keeps a written record of each employer contacted. Our guide to MVR checks covers the driving record side.

Two checks come before the first safety-sensitive shift. A commercial driver cannot start safety-sensitive work until the employer has a verified negative pre-employment drug test (narrow exceptions apply), and the employer must run a full query of the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, which needs the driver's specific consent. After that, the Clearinghouse is queried at least once a year; a limited query is enough unless it shows a record, and then the full query must follow within 24 hours. Test types and the DOT panel are in drug testing for employers.

The driving record you pull through a screening firm is still a consumer report, so the FCRA steps apply. There is a narrow exception for remote applicants to DOT-regulated driving jobs; everyone else gets the standard steps.

Child care, Head Start and schools

Child care providers covered by the federal child care block grant do not order their core check from a screening firm at all. The provider sends the request to its state agency, which has up to 45 days to return it. The check covers an FBI fingerprint search, the National Crime Information Center's sex offender registry, and the state criminal, sex offender and child abuse registries in every state the person lived in during the preceding five years.

Head Start runs on its own rule: before hire, an interview, reference checks, a sex offender registry check and either a state or an FBI fingerprint check; within 90 days, the other fingerprint check and the state child abuse and neglect registry, where one exists. No unsupervised access to children until all of it is done, and the full set again at least once every five years (45 CFR 1302.90(b)). Schools follow their state's statute, so read your own education code before you buy a package.

Where a screening firm earns its place here is everything the state check leaves out: employment and reference verification, a driving record for anyone who drives children, and volunteers the rule does not reach. The volunteer screening scope planner sets a search scope per role, and churches comparing volunteer firms can start at background check companies for churches.

Banks and broker-dealers

A bank with FDIC deposit insurance may not let a person convicted of a crime of dishonesty, breach of trust or money laundering (or who entered a pretrial diversion program for one) work in its affairs without the FDIC's written consent. The FDIC turns that into a hiring step.

Broker-dealers, exchange members, transfer agents and clearing agencies have a fingerprint rule instead: each must fingerprint its partners, directors, officers and employees and submit the prints to the Attorney General, subject to the exemptions in 17 CFR 240.17f-2(a). Credit reports are the other finance-specific search, and several states and cities limit them; see credit checks for employment.

Staffing firms

A staffing firm is usually the one ordering the report, so the FCRA duties are its own, not its client's: give the background check disclosure on its own page, with nothing else on it but the disclosure, and send the report and the Summary of Rights before deciding against anyone because of it. A client's screening standard is a contract term layered on top; it never replaces those steps. The disclosure form builder drafts the page.

The EEOC's 2012 guidance on arrest and conviction records applies to every entity Title VII covers, employment agencies included. That brings in its individualized assessment: tell the person they may be excluded because of past criminal conduct, give them a chance to show why the exclusion should not apply, and weigh what they say. Our individualized assessment guide walks through one.

Firms by industry

Which industries each firm names on its own site, and the sector search it publishes for each. “Not published” means the firm does not name that industry; it may still take the work, so ask.

The FCRA steps, firm by firm

The same 6 firms against the steps every employer's file needs. Foley's pages describe the DOT file in depth and the FCRA notices not at all, which is why its notice, assessment, disclosure and dispute cells read “Check with the vendor”. None of them publishes its data retention controls. The full sequence is in the FCRA rules for employers.

The firms, one by one

How we compared

Questions employers ask