CourtHouse Concepts Tracks Trouble, Tenure

Those who lie on their resumes need not apply.

Paul Hickman and Curtis Raymond, partners in the Fayetteville firm CourtHouse Concepts, are hot on the trail of anyone who falsifies information to get a job.

Basically, CourtHouse Concepts can be a human resource director’s best friend because it does county, state and federal criminal background checks, credit checks, motor vehicle histories, employment and education verification, credential verification, and even offers drug screening — on anyone, anywhere.

Hickman said the company has about 500 clients from Seattle to Miami to New York City and does between 500 and 1,000 background checks a day anywhere within the country’s 3,300 or so counties. Only 30 percent to 40 percent of the firm’s clients are in Arkansas, they said.

The duo said they are able to do all that with just three other employees.

Of course, the firm has a network of about 1,500 freelance field researchers who do much of the footwork before the information is compiled into a comprehensive report and sent back to their clients, Hickman said.

The pair opened the firm in Springdale in 1999 when they relocated parts of another firm from the Dallas area, and then relocated to downtown Fayetteville about four years ago, they said.

Hickman said CourtHouse Concepts has seen a sizable increase in its business recently. Last year, the firm’s revenue was up between 30 percent and 40 percent, and he expects to hit about $1.5 million in total revenue by the end of 2006.

CourtHouse Concepts charges per background check, but clients who do more volume get charged a little less, the pair said. The charges are based on statistically educated guesses about how many different searches the company will have to do to track all the data a client may want.

Some bank clients may want complete checks with credit histories, while others just want statewide criminal checks. If a comprehensive check is requested, CourtHouse Concepts will follow a person’s history wherever it leads, checking as many courthouses as necessary. Sometimes it’s just one, sometimes it’s several, but the client’s cost doesn’t increase.

The two men are so immersed in the data that Hickman said he knows on average a typical person will live in 3.2 different counties over the course of seven years.

Of the checks the firm does daily, only 2.5 percent to 5 percent have any prior record, or negative “ding,” to report. Of those, the firm does a spot check verification of about 25 percent by calling the local officials.

The company actually supplies its service to other larger background-checking corporations that resell their information, they said.