Can Background Checks Be Done on the Weekend

Let’s say your business is scrambling to fill a job quickly. You’ve gone through the process of interviewing candidates and have selected a finalist. You’ve even extended a conditional offer of employment. Now, the only thing left is to vet your new hire by conducting a background check. There’s only one problem: it’s a Friday evening or Saturday morning. Can your business run a weekend background check, or will you have to wait until Monday to move forward?

Weekend background checks are not unheard of or impossible. Many background checks are database searches, which means you can search them from your computer and get instant results. Several of our products at backgroundchecks.com fall into this category, including our US OneSEARCH database check.

Other background checks will require live record searches or a mix between database checks and live record checks. For instance, if you include a county criminal history search in your background check process, someone from your background check company may need to go to the courthouse to perform a live records search.

Not only will this type of search have a turnaround of several days, but it also can’t be a weekend background check: courts are not open on Saturdays, Sundays, or on government holidays. Even if you initiate a county criminal history search on a Saturday, your background check company likely won’t be able to do anything until the court opens again on Monday morning.

County criminal history searches aren’t the only background checks that typically can’t happen over weekends. Expect a similar scenario for state or federal criminal searches, for civil court background checks, for national wants and warrants searches, and for bankruptcy record searches. Driving history searches can be weekend background checks in some states when access to these records can be granted in instant database form.

Expect standard business hours to apply when you need to run any background check involving public record information. Most government offices are not open on the weekends, which means your background checks will need to happen during the week.

The same restrictions typically apply for resume verification checks. If you are trying to do an employment history verification, you are at the mercy of a company’s business hours. Since many businesses are closed on the weekend, don’t expect to verify employment history details with a weekend background check. Colleges, universities, and higher education institutions are also closed on Saturday and Sunday, so education verification checks must often wait until Monday.

At backgroundchecks.com, we include timeline estimates for each background check we offer. If you are trying to conduct weekend background checks, the services marked as “Instant” are your best bet. You may see a time estimate for other checks, such as 1-3 days or 2-5 days. If you are ordering a background check on a Friday or Saturday, expect your check to skew toward the longer side of the time estimate.