Sterling, A First Advantage CompanyReviews of sterlingcheck.com

I did a background check through care.com. When it came to the Motor Vehicle one, it came back "unperformable". The wrong last name was used after I was asked to send a copy of my DL. I had to get my own Motor Vehicle abstract. Bad experience. Update, they made things right for me. I now have the correct background check and I am back on care.com.

I'm not sure where Sterling's workers are based but they had trouble understanding some of my employment history. I worked in Northern Ireland for a branch of an Irish company, but they flagged as a mismatch that it was a UK address and P60 tax summary provided. Northern Ireland is part of the UK so there is no issue with this documentation, and the employer was structured on an all-island basis so was an Ireland registered employer. This wouldn't be confusing to someone with local knowledge but is tedious to have to respond to as a candidate (and the way their email was worded would have been seen insensitive by some).

Hopeless. They contacted me about a former employee by phone. So far so good - I provided them with my e-mail adress and double checked they had written it down correctly. Next thing they e-mail the company's generic e-mail account (rather than me). I respond - it bounces back. I try responding from a different account - it bounces back again. I call them and they give me a different e-mail address to use. Then I get another e-mail to the company's generic e-mail account. I am not going to reply again.

There are clearly easy ways to check employment history and asking what name l used at one of 4 companies seems absurd. When clearly I’ve stated I’ve never changed my name in the initial submission. The request for documents that are unlikely to be kept long after leaving also seems unreasonable. Add to this a history of working in regulated industries where these checks have clearly been carried out multiple times before and you’d think this outfit would be better equipped to find the story themselves instead of coming back with questions that show a lack of initiative or good process.

Not sure how they win contracts from large multinationals. 1. Their IT application, systems and procedure do not use correct terminology for their respective country. eg: Police clearance certificate is required in one country, different term is used else where, staff may or may not know this!! 2. Staff are very poorly trained , they ask for mark list of passed certificate for PhD ( doctorate) and put process on hold! And many other and difficult to list

Phone message was almost inaudible both in terms of the volume being too low and speaking too fast. When I called back the same issue existed, the person was almost whispering and I could barely hear them. Accent was very heavy and hard to understand. Absolute terrible experience

Was asked to provide a reference. All 20 questions were mandatory including the text fields. The form submission failed and since support is not available on the weekend the entire form had to be redone. Support failed to acknowledge the submission failure or empathize with the extra effort required.

Pros: UI is modern. I had to complete a nuanced background check for my employer and everything was emailed to me very efficiently. Cons: The company search feature for employment verifications is trash. I had zero positive matches. I worked for Sterling for a decent amount of time and they could not even verify my employment from when I worked for them. For a company that prides itself in verification accuracy and ease of use, that is a pretty significant swing and a miss.