Richard Alexander Williams had no criminal record. A college graduate from Chiefland, Florida, with a degree in criminology, he was the kind of candidate HR departments say they dream about: educated, clean-cut, and motivated. But two background checks changed the course of his life, both triggered by someone else’s crimes.
The first time it happened, Richard had just landed a conditional job offer from Rent-A-Center. He had passed the drug test, aced the interview, and cleared every hoop except the background check. That’s where things went wrong. His background check flagged a felony cocaine sale. Not his, but someone named Ricky Williams, with the same last name and same date of birth, but a different person. Still, the employer rescinded the offer. By the time Richard corrected the error, the job was gone.
Months later, another job, another Ricky Williams. This time, it was for burglary and aggravated battery against a pregnant woman. The accusations were horrifying and, again, untrue. However, they cost Richard the job. He was left with headaches, sleepless nights, and the growing realization that a piece of software was determining his future and getting it wrong.
What is Section 613?
Section 613 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) provides background screening companies with two options when reporting potentially damaging public records:
- Either verify the accuracy of the information before reporting it. Or
- Notify the applicant immediately if potentially damaging information is sent to an employer.
The law was created in 1970, a time when verifying the accuracy of criminal records was much harder and slower, often involving calling courthouses, sifting through microfiche, or physically visiting a clerk’s office.
That option to notify the applicant before verifying the information was created as a safety net in case speed was absolutely necessary. However, over time, many vendors made it their default. This places the burden on the job applicant to understand the notice, correct any errors, and do it fast enough to keep their job opportunity alive.
The Human Cost: Time, Dignity, and Lost Jobs
The applicants who receive these notices often overlook the legal nuances. They are left confused and humiliated. Many are unaware of how to dispute a record. Others are too discouraged to try. Some spend weeks fixing errors that were never theirs to begin with. A few never recover the job opportunity at all.
And this is not rare. The National Consumer Law Center’s 2022 report, “Broken Records Redux,” found that background check reports routinely contain “stale, incorrect, or misleading” criminal record data, often pulled from bulk databases with minimal oversight. For individuals with common names or shared birth dates, mistaken identity is a recurring issue.
The Institutional Cost: Legal Risk and Missed Talent
For some employers, choosing to notify the applicant without verifying the information may seem like a formality. But it can carry real legal exposure. If a candidate sues, arguing they were denied a job based on unverified or incorrect information, the company can be pulled into expensive litigation.
But legal risk is just the beginning.
Many employers unknowingly harm their own operations by creating a hiring process that appears efficient but is fundamentally flawed. Qualified candidates, often diverse, experienced, and highly motivated, are quietly filtered out by bad data. The best candidates are sometimes the most proactive, and when they sense unfairness or disorganization, they walk away. That quiet attrition costs companies in ways that never appear on paper, resulting in weaker teams, slower onboarding, and missed innovation opportunities.
The reputational cost is harder to quantify but no less damaging. A company that becomes known for botched or unfair hiring loses trust not only with candidates but with recruiters, partners, and existing employees. Word spreads. And once a company earns a reputation for mishandling background checks, it’s hard to recover.
There’s also a cultural impact. When hiring decisions rely on flawed data, teams begin to lose confidence in leadership and processes. Bias and frustration creep in. Good hiring managers begin to question the system. Bad ones use it as a cover for snap judgments. Over time, the cost compounds.
A Better Path: Verification Before Notification
Verifying the information before reporting it offers more protection to everyone involved. It reduces the number of wrongful rejections, increases trust in the hiring process, lowers legal risk, saves time later in disputes, re-screening, or worse, defending against a lawsuit. Most importantly, it ensures that good candidates aren't punished for someone else's past.
Government agencies, too, have noted the broader harm of inaccuracy. The FTC’s Fifth Interim Report on the FACT Act emphasized the importance of robust data accuracy protocols in consumer reporting, warning that bulk record-scraping and minimal quality control could have serious consequences for consumers and the institutions relying on those records.
What HR Leaders Must Ask Themselves
- Are we receiving unverified data about candidates?
- Are our background checks based on “close enough” matching?
- Do we know when a 613 notice is sent, or do we find out when the candidate calls us in a panic?
- Have we ever lost a great hire because of a mistake that wasn’t theirs or ours?
Protecting Fairness Means Doing the Work
True fairness means taking the time to verify, to confirm, and to care. The cost of not doing so isn’t just legal. It’s human.
At KRESS Employment Screening, we verify records before reporting them. With the highest accuracy rate in the industry, we believe background checks have the power to change lives for better or worse, and that’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly.
KRESS was founded not just to do business, but to do right by people.