Sterling, A First Advantage CompanyReviews of sterlingcheck.com

Can't believe I paid money for this service to do a background check. Firstly there was constant errors on the pages I needed to fill out, the most glaring issue was that it wouldn't recognize when I had filled out addresses past the 5 year mark so it would just keep prompting me for more addresses. Their solution was to mark me living at my first address since 2014 (not true), so that's suspect. Then I noticed my name on my profile is wrong too! Of course when I try to contact support about this I'm told they only handle US accounts. What a joke, this company is a racket, I'm already regretting giving them any of my information, who knows what's happening with it behind the scenes. Though considering the amount of incompetency shown so far, I doubt they'd even know how to do much with it.

I was recently offered a job with a company and I was really excited to join their team. I was advised that Sterling would be doing my reference and background check, so I filled out all the details on their online portal including all the photos they requested. It took a while, but I thought it was worth it. However, after some time they started emailing with confusing questions and requests for documents that I didn't have (and would later be told by professionals that didn't exist). I had my DBS certificate, financial and references back all fine, so I was unsure what they wanted. I called them to be receive more confusing and inaccurate information but was basically told to wait three more days for a specialist team. There days later I received a rather rude email advising me that needed to declare that I didn't have the documents they wanted. I called them to explain that I had other documents that I had been told would work. However again I was told that this would go to a specialist team. At this point Sterling strong armed into saying that I didn't have what they wanted by advising that this would affect my background check and potentially my job. So, I have now contacted their client. Just a side note that actually now considering another job offer, not with a client of Sterling. I won’t be dealing with Sterling again.

I have never had such a difficult time completing the onboarding process for a company before my recent encounter with Sterling Talent "Solutions." I began receiving notifications that I needed to complete a background check through their portal, but when I logged in, I encountered an old I9 that I submitted for another application 6 years ago. There were no instructions, no forms to fill out or places to upload any sort of documentation, and so I made my first call to Client Services. The representative was polite and contacted Tech Support for me, but they were unable to find a solution, and so I was told the issue would be escalated. Their version of escalation was to tell me to have my faculty recruiter submit a new ticket. This sounded more like passing the issue off than an actual escalation to work on a solution. I asked my recruiter to do this, but saw no change in the portal, so I tried calling Client Services again the next week. This time the representative transferred me over to someone in Tech Support, and I gave him a generic password so that he could log into my account. He also did not offer a solution, but put in a ticket, presumably to escalate. He told me it would be fixed by the next day, but it was not, so I reached out yet again. My faculty recruiter followed up with another call, then told me that I needed to call again, so I did. This time I insisted on speaking with a supervisor. I will give the supervisor props for trying to be helpful, but the problem was he didn't know how to fix it. 11 days in, I am still waiting for a solution, and I cannot start training for my job because of the Sterling nightmare.

Worked at least half a dozen jobs, this was the worst and most frustrating background check ever. My employment was never held hostage by me declaring my exact income before. Sterling is the first to ever do that. I wonder why. I have already worked with a team, left them, then was coming back less than a year later, background check first time took 2-3 days to clear, this time took about 2 weeks. Why? Because of my 8 or so positions, they sent emails requesting specific tax documents for some 6 positions. Why? Because they ring the phone 3 times on your employer, if they don't get a response, they send you a canned email demanding the tax documents as proof of your employment. If that is not the epitome of laziness, then it is the epitome of incompetence.

I am an VP of HR who has used Sterling Talent solutions in Canada on a number of occasions over the past few years. Over the last two years we have only used them three times with the same poor quality of service, lengthy turn around time and inability to deliver the full background check required. I have had to get the company employment verification myself as well as Quebec drivers abstract which they were unable to obtain themselves in a timely manner. Even with the documents provided it took them over a day to update the report and still didn't have it available as completed and wanted to verify the letters themselves. There policies, processes hinder employment timelines which are not in line with the hiring needs of the market today. We lost one candidate to another employer due to their slow process and inability to be responsive to what the market and the clients requires.

I am a Company Director asked to provide reference material for an Employee. This company is the worst I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. Their staff seem almost illiterate and some of the people I spoke with could hardly hold a conversation. On finally getting angry enough that the call handler put me through to a manager it became obvious that my time had been wasted. They do not treat anyone with respect. They waste the time of those providing references and then they hide their incompetence behind ´its our process’ statements. Get some competent staff, update your processes and stop wasting everyones time.

Pathetic service!!! They keep sending annoying emails to provide documents repeatedly. Save yourself the time and energy and hire another verification company for the background check.

This company has put my new job on hold for over two weeks due to their incompetence in being able to conduct an International background check. They ask for the same information you have already given them multiple times and ask for information that is irrelevant and unnecessary. They do not answer emails in a timely fashion and do not answer the phone or return phone calls.