Technology has greatly changed Irvine-based Accurate Background, which is slated to become one of the largest U.S. employment screening companies with its planned purchase of a CareerBuilder unit.
The expanded company will grow to 1,700 workers in OC, suburban Chicago and Virginia when it closes on CareerBuilder Employment Screening.
Accurate Background agreed to buy the division earlier this month on undisclosed terms.
The CareerBuilder Employment Screening (CBES) acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and should close by March, adding 600 workers to Accurate Background. CBES offers background screening services very similar to Accurate’s, as well as drug-testing services and technology to employers in the U.S. and abroad. The deal will also bring Accurate Background more geographic reach and new clients.
Founder and Chief Executive Dave Dickerson said tech advances have sped up work in the business, which he’s been in for a quarter century. That includes criminal background checks, which in the past often included sending a person to local courts to get information or using a fax machine.
“Now we’re able to integrate with the court or even go through their website using robotics,” and data-grabbing software, he told the Business Journal.
“We’re removing the human touch … making it more efficient,” he said. “As the courts become more automated, we’re leveraging that.”
Tech Check
In the old days before such tools, it could take more than a week to get information. Now, checking a criminal history, driving record and Social Security verification can take “less than a day,” he said, and “automated processing is much faster.”
This includes required double-checking of data that’s collected, also a “very manual process” in the past.
“Tech [is] faster, more reliable,” according to the CEO, who said his company has a 99.9% accuracy rate.
Courts not yet automated still require a personal touch: someone has to show up and check records the old-fashioned way.
These days, the applicants are part of the solution as well: most candidates access information through a mobile phone and send it to the company, further slashing the time needed to complete work.
Even relatively old-school tools like email speed things up.
Post-Employment
Accurate Background also does “post-employment screening,” or watching out for issues after a person gets a job.
“You’re really seeing this more in the gig space, where there’s contractors,” Dickerson said, such as in hiring and tracking drivers for ride-sharing or food delivery.
“Let’s say a person got arrested on Friday for a DUI and that person’s driving for you. You want to know before that person gets back in one of your vehicles and they’re driving around some of your customers.”
Tech is again an upgrade here; companies have been able to check such events but more commonly through annual or quarterly reviews, such as in commercial trucking.
Now, “it’s an ongoing monitoring.”
No Predictions
One area of candidate screening where technology is excluded—even forbidden—is whether a firm can jump into artificial intelligence applications to predict a prospective employee’s job performance or even misbehavior.
Is the “punishment pre-crime” sci-fi of, say, “Minority Report” on Dickerson’s to-do list?
No way, he said.
Emphatically.
“We cannot do that,” Dickerson said of a ban on making such predictions. “That’s not the business we’re in. Federal law prevents us from doing that.”
The background check industry is “highly regulated” under, for instance, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Many prospective employers also check an applicant’s credit report.
Private Equity
The Apax Digital Fund, which invests in and buys companies in high-growth enterprise software, consumer internet, and technology-enabled services areas, is a minority owner of Accurate. Dickerson is majority owner.
Both buyer and target in the latest deal are “growing north of 30%,” Dickerson said. “We’re the two fastest-growing companies and we’re combining them.”
Accurate Background last year was OC’s No. 17 fastest-growing large private company with about $122 million in annual revenue and two-year growth of 19%.
Company headquarters will stay in Irvine.
