Sterling, A First Advantage CompanyReviews of sterlingcheck.com

Very professional and efficient! The one time I called the rep was very nice and called me right back when I accidentally hung up!

I've had my background check done by Sterling twice (in the UK) and each time the experience has been negative. In both instances, Sterling were the main/sole reason of delays and issues with the recruitment process. It was a real shame as the recruitment teams did a great job, and only the outsourced part of the process went badly. In 2019, when starting a graduate job, the process took most of the summer and was not fully completed at my start date, so I had to sign a disclaimer. In 2021, my start date got pushed back. This was mainly because Sterling paused the process due to a "discrepancy". They have not told me what it was. However, when my prospective's employer's HR team received the supports (and they had to chase for them), it was apparently something they resolved so easily that they just sent it straight back to Sterling. I have, over my two background checks, had a lot of communication with Sterling, and these are the main issues I have identified: > They keep the candidate in the dark. Throughout the background check, they will not share with the candidate any details of the process or any issues they are coming across. A lot of these are things that could be easily resolved if giving the candidate space to explain, but they will not do that. They will simply say "we are still processing". In 2021, I kept trying to get progress updates with them multiple times, only to get these generic responses. Imagine the surprise when less than a week before my start date they shared six unresolved points with my prospective employer. I was then able to clarify these very quickly, but this should not have been left for the last minute. I do appreciate that there are limits to what can be shared with the candidate. However, this should not be used as an excuse to completely ignore them. > Rigid process / lack of critical thought. They have a process that I assume works OK if the candidate had a couple full time jobs in the past 5 years. However, say you are a fresh graduate with a varied history of volunteering, part-time jobs, gap year... you will be in trouble. If you are a foreigner or have worked outside of the UK, that seems to be almost a guaranteed delay to your start date. Sterling seems to be unable to adjust their procedure to anything out of the ordinary. I have had the pleasure of seeing the following: being asked for documents that didn't exist, being asked for evidence of pay for a voluntary position, Sterling delaying my background check due to being "unable to contact" a business that ceased trading three years ago... > The candidate does a lot of the work for them. They need to fill in a massive form with all contact details and provide a huge amount of documents. It is hard to see what Sterling actually do - other than send generic emails to the email addresses provided by the candidate, and request some standard criminal records etc. Once there is something unusual (business has re-branded, ceased trading, volunteering position...) they don't seem to know what to do as an alternative and will just stall the process. > Staff will not take ownership. When you try and get something resolved, nobody will actually try to help you. I think this might be a problem of the admin staff being underpaid, untrained, unclear guidelines...? This links back to the inability of Sterling to deal with anything even slightly out of the ordinary. However, this was best demonstrated when I was, for two weeks, trying to speak to someone about my concerns. When Sterling did eventually email me, they accidentally left in the conversation trail, where I could see numerous employees just throwing my case in each other's directions, nobody seemed to know who was responsible - or want to take responsibility. What is more, their resolution was: "please speak to your employer about your concerns". > They are very slow. I think this is a result of what I identified above. This was best demonstrated when I was going through the process in 2021. There I found that a month after me submitting my information, they had not yet been in touch with my latest employer. This was 4 days before my original start date (which was, of course, postponed)! Overall, they don't seem to be in any rush to complete the background checks efficiently, or on time. In both my background check I had to have the employer step in to speed the process up by taking some of Sterling's tasks due to Sterling being slow. I see my experience is largely in line with what other negative reviews show. Conversely, it is interesting to compare those to the non-descript one-sentence positive reviews from accounts with only one review posted.

Contact with Sterling was great, the customer service I received was awesome. The representative I spoke to was friendly and helpful in answering all my questions. My only issue was the first email I received multiple times and one of the links did not work on my computer and only worked through my phone.

They should me all the things I had to do as for the drug test and background and kept me posted on all things . That was very good and good work on doing

Fast processing and quite response to queries.

Great job friendly too

Hello I am very pleased with the communication in addressing my questions great customer service rep also helpful I would highly recommend Sterling

I marked this as average only because of the rocky start we have with the background check authorization. I am still a bit confused on this issue as to why we need a signed authorization every time we run, say, a MVR report. Once we have authorization on file that should be good enough. My company also requires an new employee to sign a Fair Credit Act waiver so that should be enough. I would like to see the regulation that states you need a "fresh" authorization every time you have to run a MVR. Just does not make sense.