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As you may have noticed there are some background checks that are almost instantaneous while others seem to take days, or even up to a week or more to finish. But why is there this difference in time frame?
The first thing that you should appreciate is that the term ‘background check’ is really used very loosely to describe any and all sorts of searches that look into a person’s background. In reality, there are many different aspects of a person’s background that can be looked into – and that is the big difference between most of these checks.
Different Scopes and Extensiveness
Let’s just say that one sort of check just requires a simply search through an online database while another requires someone to manually call up references to check their authenticity. Both of these checks deal with the background of a person – but they are extremely different indeed.
As you would expect, a search of an online database would take seconds, or minutes at very most. On the other hand manually dialing people to check references could take hours, days, or even weeks depending on their availability.
That is why some background checks end up being lengthier – because they have a different sort of scope. Another similar reason would have to be just how extensive the search actually is.
For example, if a background check involves just searching one online database it might take 5 seconds, but if it involved searching 100 online databases it might take 500 seconds, or about 8 minutes. If it involved searching 100,000 would take about 8,000 minutes, or over 18 hours.
See how the size of the search can affect the time it takes to complete?
Make no mistake, determining how ‘good’ a background check is based on the length of time that it takes to complete isn’t exactly ideal. Truth be told, because both extensiveness and scope have a role to play, the real way forward is to determine exactly what sort of scope you require, and also how extensive you need the search to be – i.e. what sort of sources you need to look at to get the information you need.
As you start to carry out more and more checks you’ll slowly develop a rough idea of how long certain checks are meant to take, which is when things may start to make a lot more sense.
Until then, just concentrate on what matters: The information. At the end of the day you undoubtedly know what you’re trying to find out by getting a background check – so focus on getting what you want or need instead of anything else such as the length of time it will take.