[andymal]

Googling someone is not even close to as effective as paying for real background check services, which can be very costly and take days or weeks. For example, how can you be sure that your new employee didn't change their name after committing a crime? How do you know if the John Smith applying to your open position is the same one as the murderer in some article? Google searching isn't good enough for these cases or any company that takes pre-employment screening seriously. Source: Me. I work at an employment screening company.

[droidist2]

Do professional background checkers use the same public sources more exhaustively or do they have special access to private databases and other sources?