In today’s information-at-your-fingertips age, you should anticipate getting a background check upon seeking employment. Most large corporations, such as Uber, Lyft, Target, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Amazon, will use a regulated background check.
A regulated background check is a background check that is compliant under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is a piece of Federal legislation that promotes accuracy, fairness, and privacy of consumer information. In being Fair Credit Reporting Act-compliant, a background check database is required to either pull a real-time request of court records or annually purchase information from court records.
One common example of the type of thing that the Fair Credit Reporting Act dictates is that a report can only go back seven years. This is why many people commonly believe that their record automatically disappears after seven years. While this is not true (your record is still there!) a Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant background check company will not report the record they find to your employer. This, however, only applies to certain types of jobs and is also why some employers will request a livescan or FBI background check – it is a workaround that allows them to see the unmediated criminal background report.
Most legitimate and mainstream companies, however, such as the ones initially mentioned above, will use a regulated background check because it is considered a reliable source compared to unregulated background checks, such as WhitePages, Intelius, BeenVerified, and InstantCheckmate.
In order to update or potentially remove information from a regulated background check website, proof of an expungement or record sealing is required. Regulated background check sites do not offer the option to opt out of their database like most unregulated sites do. Instead, you have to take the extra step to clear your criminal record.
If you have a criminal record and are thinking of applying for a job at a large corporation, you will want to first consider getting an expungement or record sealing. Lifeback Legal is a division of the Law Firm of Shea M. Randall, a trusted California Law Firm. We specialize in helping individuals get their life back with California criminal record expungements and federal licensing services.
To find out if your case qualifies, we encourage you to speak with our experts on the matter to check out what your next best steps are. You can reach our team by filing out the contact form below or by calling our office at (888) 751-5329.
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