Shelby County, Tennessee

Tennessee’s largest and most populous county, Shelby County contains approximately 930,000 people and borders Fayette and Tipton counties in Tennessee. Shelby County also borders Marshall and DeSoto counties in Mississippi and Crittenden County in Arkansas. Key regional employers include FedEx and AutoZone.

Home to Memphis, the nation’s largest logistics hub, Shelby County routinely puts up large numbers of new residents. After settling, these individuals filter into the regional job market, leaving area employers with high interest in their open positions.

Identifying the most talented and suitable individuals from a sea of applicants demands a measured process. The challenge no longer lies in attracting interest but instead determining who among the interested should pass to the next stage of the hiring process. 

What should separate the two groups? Qualifications are one factor, but an individual’s background is essential, too. Assessing someone’s character and credibility is a vital step for employers, and criminal background check tools contribute to developing a more thorough understanding. Your ability to make such an assessment requires a responsive vetting process that effortlessly scales up or down to meet your needs.

You won’t find the right information if you don’t know where to look first. Local resources should be at the top of your list–begin with records available in Shelby County. At this stage, detecting a severe criminal record or an offense related to the job may be enough for you to choose to examine the next candidate instead. Coming up empty-handed doesn’t mean the end of the road–your applicant might still have a record elsewhere, so expand your search to include adjacent counties. 

Always observe legal processes for using background checks to avoid exposure to accusations of discriminatory conduct. Though neither Shelby County nor the state of Tennessee imposes “ban the box” rules on employers, federal law still applies. The Civil Rights Act sets the standard for what constitutes employment discrimination, and the FCRA requires employers to obtain an applicant’s consent before a background search.

With clarity on the legal aspect of vetting, you can start processing background checks for applicants. Choose backgroundchecks.com for a diverse toolset purpose-built for employers of all kinds. Find critical local court records via a basic county-level background check, then include results from nearby counties, including those in Arkansas and Mississippi, with our US OneSEARCH.

These solutions depend upon databases maintained by state and local authorities that are unaffiliated with backgroundchecks.com. Data is subject to change. For critical or sensitive positions in which the most current information possible is essential, we can provide a direct record search of a county courthouse. Results are typically available in no more than three business days.

These reports source their data from the:

• Tennessee Admin Office of the Courts Supplemental Info – Felony and misdemeanor records from 1990-present, updated monthly
• Tennessee Department of Corrections – Felony and misdemeanor records, updated quarterly
• Tennessee Sex Offender Registry – 1997-present, updated bi-weekly
• Tennessee Drug Offender Registry – 2005-present, updated monthly
• Tennessee Animal Abuse Registry – 2016-present, updated monthly
• Shelby County Courts – Felony and misdemeanor records from 1999-present, updated monthly

These reports may include the subject’s:

• Name
• Offense
• Sentence

Maximize your opportunities for growth in Shelby County by using backgroundchecks.com to improve your workforce with confidence throughout the hiring process.

Learn more about our county background check options