Our Story
In 1999, Jason Morris founded EmployeeScreenIQ and planned to revolutionize the employment screening industry. How? By providing employers with a premium solution rooted in a more comprehensive, reliable and legally compliant background check. Sound familiar?
Nick Fishman teamed up with Morris shortly thereafter and soon realized we had a lot of company. And while many marketed themselves on those very same ideals, the pudding lacked the proof. We realized that we needed to find a way to differentiate from the competition.
Kevin Bachman joined us in 2002 and it was clear he had larger plans. He convinced us that we could still win on these ideals, but that true differentiation, and bigger profits, comes from a relentless focus on operational efficiency and white-glove client service.
He saw an opportunity to walk into large, enterprise clients with million-dollar screening budgets and convince them their organizations were in better hands if they just started choosing the best partner. One who combines top tier performance, accuracy, technology and support. Not the company who invested everything into being the fastest, or those who cut every corner just to be the cheapest. But the best combination of what a company really needs once they begin working together.
Around that same time, Jason Morris saw an opportunity to organize our profession and create standards by developing an association that would advocate on behalf of the industry—Voila! That effort turned into the Professional Background Screeners Association, where he has served as Chairman of the Board. Additionally, Morris served as Chairman of the Background Screening Credentialing Council (BSCC) for 2 terms and served on that board for several years, including the launching of the industry's first Accreditation program. Bachman oversaw EmployeeScreenIQ’s inclusion in the 2010 Inaugural Class and is the current BSCC Chair.
Concurrently, Nick Fishman was determined to build a recognized, differentiated brand that both stood out from the competition and could generate sales without having to pick up the phone. He positioned EmployeeScreenIQ as the experts in the field; the industry thought leaders who were on top of the emerging trends, the litigation risks, and the opportunities to serve better faster by utilizing technology and automation. Fishman pioneered EmployeeScreen University which served as the industry’s first on-demand knowledge base, featuring a mix of multi-media learning tools such on best practices, compliance updates, the latest industry trends, industry research, etc. This effort gained the company notoriety as the “voice of the industry” and resulted in him becoming a public speaker at national and regional HR events, a primary media contact for national publications, an industry advocate lobbying on behalf of our association to federal legislators and government regulators including the FTC, EEOC and CFPB. He was selected to testify as an expert at a 2012 US Civil Rights Commission hearing on employers use of background checks.
Together, the team grew the business into a nationally recognized Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA). This growth didn’t go unnoticed. The team was routinely recognized by other leaders in the HR space, most notably Workforce Magazine’s Hot List of Top Background Screening Firms, HRO Today’s Baker’s Dozen List, and the Weatherhead 100 list, which annually honors the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio.
In 2015, we were acquired by Sterling, where Morris, Fishman and Bachman successfully transitioned their customer base to the Sterling platform and served in various executive capacities over a several-year period.
Today, we remain highly involved in the background screening industry as business consultants, M&A advisors and executive recruiters. We formed IQubed to collectively help background screening companies, software platforms, data providers and investors navigate the space with the knowledge we’ve accrued over their combined 60+ years in the industry.