Background Investigations

Over and over again, we confirm what our experience – and, before that, our training in law enforcement and national security-related disciplines – have taught us: that the greatest threat to an organization is actually the insider. Among the organizations we have helped, the key was often ensuring that background investigations were adequately thorough and comprehensive given a number of important factors, such as the seniority and sensitivity of the position, the access to key systems and information required to carry out the position’s responsibilities, the scope of decision-making associated with the position, the strength of the company’s oversight and internal control environment, and an assessment of the risks to the company’s people, performance, processes and reputation if this particular individual either intentionally or accidentally undertook a harmful act.

Hillard Heintze addresses these challenges at two levels:

• Operational background investigations
  For many companies, the principal need is to establish, update or assess a regular, day-to-day process of conducting background investigations for new job applicants or existing employees whose imminent change in position and responsibility within the company has triggered the need for a standard background investigation. Our clients need regular access to a set of background investigative services that are comprehensive in scope, cost efficient and highly effective at uncovering critical background-related information that can lower risks to the company and its operations. The problem, however, is chronic shortcomings in the employment screening industry that the largest companies in the market have allowed to linger unaddressed for years – shortcomings such as long turnaround times, poor customer service and incomplete reports that are often hard to read. We place our highest confidence in a company we have chosen to support as an alliance partner, S2Verify.

  S2Verify is a leading process innovator in the application of employment screening technologies to the needs of business and individuals for employee and tenant information that is comprehensive in scope, delivered quickly to key managers, and easy to read, understand and use by authorized personnel. Founded in 2009, with headquarters in Chicago and operations in the Atlanta area, the privately-held company specializes in providing a customizable yet fully integrated, best-in-class set of background screening services that address business and consumer needs either poorly met or not met at all by leading, nationally-branded providers of mass-market background screening solutions.

• Strategic background and due diligence investigations
  Sometimes, however, the level of due diligence and investigation for a particular position of individual is significantly higher. When strategic circumstances exist – with respect, for example, to a senior executive or mid-level manager under consideration for an acutely mission-critical role in the company’s operations – Hillard Heintze supports our clients’ objectives with the full strength of the firm’s investigative expertise, experience and insight. Normally this involves a systematic approach that relies not just on analysis of data culled from across the nation and world’s key databases and intelligence emerging from our homeland security and law enforcement network, but also interviews with key individuals in a position to shed light on the investigation.