HireRight  Reviews 706

The Absolute Worst Company – Stay Away from HireRight

If I could give ZERO stars, I would. HireRight is hands down the most incompetent, unprofessional, and frustrating company I have ever had to deal with. They do not hire people who actually speak English well enough to understand basic questions. Every call feels like I’m speaking to someone reading off a script with zero understanding of the U.S. system, tax forms, or even common sense.

They rejected official IRS documents – yes, you read that right. LEGAL IRS forms weren’t “good enough” for them. They don’t understand the tax year, they asked me for a W2 for 2025 when we are literally still in 2025. How absurd is that?

It feels like they intentionally make the process harder so you give up. Honestly, it seems like their entire business model is to frustrate you into quitting while they collect and sell your personal information to find the next victim. They don’t care about accuracy, fairness, or even following U.S. laws – they just drag you through hoops until you break.

This is not just bad service; it’s predatory, shady, and harmful. No serious employer should be trusting these people with sensitive background checks. If your future job depends on them, prepare for endless stress, delays, and nonsense excuses.

HireRight should be investigated and shut down

I give 1 start because I cannot give 0. The worst company I have ever worked with, and I have worked with really bad companies. They offer backgrouding check for other countries, however they have no idea how things work on other countries.
1 - They where supposed to check my title certificate, however for a really specific reason, they could not do that through the Spanish official database. I have explained them exactly the reason and I put them in contact with the university and I gave an official authorization to the university to provide them my title. In the email, the university (they were on CC) said explicitally that they would wait for the company to contact them. And they did not, I suppose they do not Spanish and neither know how to use any of the thousands tools available to translate that we have nowadays.
2 - They were supposed to contact my previous company and ask personal information about me, then, my previous company gave partial information, what is normal, taking into account the data privacy policies in Europe. However, instead contact me and ask for help or some authorization to allow my previous company to provide the information, they just added to their report that there is discrepancy.

Besides that, they take up to 2 days to answer you.

Now it is clear for me why their review is 1.1, and to be honest, it is that because the minimum you can give to them is 1 star.

If I could give 0 star, I would give it to them. My SSN verification takes so long to be verified. They were so slow. Therefore, I missed one opportunity.

I needed to change the drug collection site. There is a button to do so on the website. However, the mobile website sucks and the button just gives you a blank screen.

So I opened their live chat line. The people were great. However the UI is a bit weird and it is quite easy to accidentally refresh the page because of the way gestures work on browser apps. If you refresh or get disconnected you have to start all over again due to some glitch or over-site. There's no link to easily reconnect with the agent. I also had to go through two agents each time. However, the agents would have to look through for the data for each clients "in network" drug screening sites. How is that not easily accessible a few clicks away. Also the agent did not have access to status of open or closed, appointment required, etc. for the drug screening sites. That's annoying. So while waiting I got disconnected.

And get this. After I got tried to get through for the last time. I was put in queue for the drug screening team despite the fact that they had already all clocked out. Why didn't the agent know that?

All of this could have been avoided if their website worked properly and had a functional live chat with a reconnect feature. Except it didn't. They cheap out on it while collecting millions from clients.

They were told not to contact me yet they did anyway demanding info I don't know and telling me I had to make some appointment in 3 days. If they specialize in background checks why am I doing all the work and feeling threatened because they are lording a job over your head. This is Blackmail!

This company is ridiculous! My background check information was submitted on 7/2/25. It is now 8/28/25 and the check is still only 91% complete. HireRight claims that the state police are the problem and not releasing information. This is odd as I had a background check completed in May with a temp agency that came back clean within days. It has two months of no salary or insurance, and my savings are running low to pay bills. I have had several background checks, and they have NEVER taken more than a few days. In the future should I get a job offer, I will ask that employer who does their backgrounds checks. If they say HireRight, I know to apply for work elsewhere.

I don’t understand how companies continue to use HireRight. My experience has been frustrating and long-winded, instead of conducting their own research, they repeatedly came to me with questions such as the names of HR contacts. Surely, with platforms like LinkedIn and other resources, they should be able to source this information themselves.

It creates unnecessary work for the candidate and feels like a very poor user experience. I expected a more professional and streamlined process from a verification company.

Update (30/8/2025):
Rating upgraded from 1 star to 3 stars.

So after my initial concern, HireRight did look into my background check and whilst things did not necessarily speed up, I felt the additional communication was helpful (hence for additional 2 stars).

Here is what HireRight need to do to earn 5 stars:
- Re-train your online chat/email/telephone customer services representatives to be much more empathetic with people having background checks. Avoid using vague and abstract sentences in your scripts such as "We don't need anything from you at this time" or "Contact your employer to find out more". This is frustrating and given that you are processing my data, providing clear and specific progress updates is OK and is not a violation of GDPR if the update belongs to the individual you are speaking to.
- Consider providing a percentage on the background check portal so that candidates can see the progress being made. This may save people from calling in.
- Have your customer service staff "own the issue". If someone calls in with an issue, tell that staff member that they own the issue and should act/think like an owner and see it to completion and contact the customer with an update.
- Assign a single 'case researcher' to each background check. It feels like different researchers were carrying out background checks on different parts of my profile. I'm not sure how efficient this is and doesn't necessarily provide a holistic view and any individual compiling a report especially where there may be issues in obtaining references from past employers that are no longer in business.
- Final thoughts: Communication and speed/efficiency are key. HireRight kept saying to me that background checks take 10-15 working days. That's fine but on their portal it had a much lower estimate. Update that estimate and just say "Checks can take up to 15 working days in most cases, and we expect to be completed by {calculate working 15 days from date of information submission}.". This sets a far better expectation vs giving a low ETA and then not meeting that.

Initial review:
I'm disappointed with HireRight. I've given them all the information they needed, spoken to their agents on a daily basis on chat - and they are having issues getting input from one of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Surely you have got connections to this huge company?

Nonetheless, I have updated my profile, called them and also now sent them a phone number they can call at this company and verify my employment there - which was for almost 15 years!

I asked their customer service agent to write the number down and forward it to their internal researchers but he seemed to lazy to do that - after pushing him, he eventually did but did not sound too happy. Seriously?

The verification is not rocket science and HireRight is not helping the process of me making a positive and strong impression with my prospective employer.

Please fix this and complete my background check. I will be glad to change my review if things get completed by EOD today.

My Applicant ID:
GA-081425-9V4D7

The most disgusting company I have ever worked with; Still a mystery to me how they can meet the GDPR law by going to sneakily check on me, asking me personal information of so many employees, details. and on top of all, why the hell its me doing the work for your when it should have been the other way around? I deeply hope you guys will go bankrupt. Most disappointing service I have ever had to deal with.

They do not understand what materials they are given. I have provided them with start letters and / or contracts for my past three roles (including documents with the word 'contract' in the heading, and yet they claim I am not providing the right materials and reporting back to the recruiters HR. I have also been asked to provide copies of degree certificates that were provided 10 to 14 days ago, and they have claimed to have received dates from Universities I studied at some 30 years ago, which are months wrong - as in no UK Uni has those start months.

They come over as ignorant and unable to read.

***Edit: Given the reply I received, the situation gets worse! I have described some of the issues, you can check this against my name and uploads, so why ask? You can SEE that I have already provided contracts and certificates.

A background check company that makes you do all the leg work. Poor English speaking representatives work there. I have never had so much trouble. Terrible company

PATHETIC SERVICE RUN BY OBVIOUS IDIOTS,THEY ASK FOR PAST EMPLOYMENT HISTORY THAT NOBODY HAS,I DOUBT THEY KNOW OR EVEN CARE WHAT DAY IT IS EITHER,IF YOU SEE THE WORDS HIRERIGHT RUN,RUN AS FAR AS YOU CAN FROM THESE INCAPABLE MORONS

feels like AI - they just don't care about circumstanses

As many have stated, if we could give this company negative stars we would. They have had my husbands information since 7/1 for his background check. The county has a new computer system and they are blaming it on the county. We talked to the clerk herself and she gave the needed information within 5 minutes. HireRight will not pick up the phone and call or email the clerk. We have a copy of the completely clean background check and they will not take it. We are going on 2 weeks of no pay or insurance at this point. There is total lack of common sense with this company. If something isn't working, you don't wait WEEKS and keep delaying. You pick up the PHONE. What we got in 5 minutes from calling, they have been waiting 5 weeks for and won't get. They won't listen that the system doesn't work the same way since updating and keep trying to use it. Its getting very grim around here. Hoping this review helps someone along the way and that we all didn't suffer for nothing. No company should use HireRight. Extremely disheartened.

HireRight is conducting my background check for my job. They said it would take them 2 days to obtain my criminal background check, but it's been 8 days and counting. No real response on their end as to why it's taking so long, just a vague "wait a couple more days." I'm worried about missing my start date. I passed up other jobs for this one. It shouldn't take this long to just look me up on the clerk of courts website.

I don't know why companies hire this service? This makes the candidate experience with the employer from best to worst, exactly at the last mile.
1. pathetic portal and process: No way to edit/comment give context to the details/documents, once submitted.
2. on insights/updates about the progress or what so ever.
3. Manual verification process with zero logic: e.g. manually calling the phone line to the college to verify a student/degree completed 20+ years ago !? seriously? (after submitting all the degree certificates, transcripts, marksheets, etc.,)

This is an absolute rubbish service. A complete exercise in box-ticking with zero understanding of context or what documents are actually required. Why companies still use HireRight is baffling — maybe it’s an insurance thing where they just need to say they’ve done a background check.

It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them that certain documents aren’t available or don’t exist — they’ll ignore everything you’ve already submitted, keep spamming you with the same requests, and harass you with calls and emails until they get what they think they need, even if it’s completely irrelevant.

No respect, no common sense, no regard for your time. Just relentless automated nonsense. A truly broken process from start to finish. Absolute rubbish.

lets start with the save function not working while filling out paperwork, and no ability to update or make changes after submitting. So the user experience is pretty bad. Now the service they provide the company I worked for was bought out by another company. this has thoroughly confused them and i am unable to reach a human to try to help, they want tax forms from half a decade ago that i just don't have. I am confident that with the documentation provided that they don't actually do any verification that takes more than 3 seconds.

Very unprofessional agent. He called me to request some documents and one I couldn’t provide. Made a small mistake because their system isn’t the best.
He said to me “ it’s not serious” while I already explained the situation. Very unprofessional , he should just stick to do his job and keep comments to himself.

I recently accepted a position and was required to complete a background and drug test. No big deal this isn’t my first rodeo I’m 58 years old, educated and a veteran. Wow was I wrong! I worked for a company twice but somehow they flagged it as incorrect dates. It wasn’t incorrect, it was a mistake on their part. Provided all w2 forms and still flagged yellow. I also provided them with my education transcripts and all the information they could ever possibly need and they also flagged as unverifiable! I didn’t have a problem getting the information though. They flagged me on dates because I worked full time at one job and part time at another in the same time frame. They basically ask you to do their job. I must say this is the most ridiculous background check I’ve ever had, the Army didn’t put me through this much nonsense on my background check. If I could give them a zero I would.