Many Fortune 500 companies ran their new hires past HireRight before the first day of work. Employers ordered criminal, education, employment and drug screens through its website. HireRight then gathered the results from courts and records across the country and abroad. Most of its clients were large companies that hired in volume. When it filed in 2007, background screening had become standard practice in American hiring.

Plugged Into the Hiring System

HireRight was founded in 1995. Its bet was that the slow, paper-based business of employment screening could move onto the internet. It built software that plugged into employers' hiring systems. A check could start with a click, and the results could flow straight back. That integration won it large corporate accounts. International checks became a strength as global companies screened candidates in many countries.

A Year on the Nasdaq

HireRight priced its IPO at $15 a share in August 2007 on the Nasdaq. Its time as a public company was short. In 2008 US Investigations Services, a large provider of government background checks, bought HireRight for $19.75 a share in cash. The HireRight name lived on. It later returned to the public market as a separate company, then was taken private again.

Cover: Ornament with Owl Mocked by Day Birds, Martin Schongauer. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an owl (watchful scrutiny).