How Long Does a DoorDash Background Check Take

After its founding in 2013, DoorDash has grown to be one of the most common and highly rated food delivery services in the United States and Canada.

DoorDash had always been growing steadily. But in 2020, the company’s individual market share grew by a staggering 12.5%, which in turn pushed its annual revenue from around $850 million to over $2.88 billion.

And its growth is understandable since they focus on providing both convenient services to its customers and running an efficient system for its employees. Or, as they call them, Dashers.

Naturally, with the growth of the company came many job applications. And to make recruitment easier for their hiring team, DoorDash started doing background checks on all their applicants.

So if you’re considering applying to join DoorDash, and don’t know what to expect from the background check, keep reading as we discuss everything about it.

Doordash Background Check

DoorDash’s background check scans your criminal record for any violent crimes, theft, use of recreational drugs, or felonies.

They also search your motor vehicle record for anything ranging from driving under the influence, license suspensions, or hit and runs. However, they can only look seven years back into your records.

Why DoorDash Does Background Checks on Their Applicants

While some people might find it extreme for a food delivery service to do background checks on their applicants, in the eyes of DoorDash, it’s completely reasonable.

Look at it from their perspective, their customers choose to use their services every day, and the last thing they’d want is someone with a past of theft or violence to threaten their loyal customers in any way.

Therefore, DoorDash conducts background checks to ensure that the people they hire are calm and collected and will get the job done with as little hassle as possible.

What Are the Limitations of a DoorDash Background Check?

It might be that someone has made mistakes in the past but has reformed and is a better person now. In that case, does the DoorDash background check scan your entire past and disqualify your application if they find the smallest mistake?

Not exactly. And that’s due to a law that protects an individual’s privacy during a background check.

The FCRA

The FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) is a law that promotes accuracy and fairness in background checks. It also works towards protecting a person’s privacy as much as possible when a company conducts a background check.

For instance, according to the FCRA, a company can’t look back more than seven years into your records to ensure reformed individuals have a chance at getting jobs. They also can’t look at any expunged convictions you might have.

What Information Do I Need to Provide DoorDash to Conduct My Background Check?

DoorDash can’t conduct a background check on you without your consent. However, before they can start their background check, you need to provide some information to complete the application process.

• Your date of birth, address, and full legal name.
• Information from your driver’s license.
• Social security number.
• Your vehicle’s insurance details.
• The color, make, and model of your vehicle.
• Your bank details to receive payment.

Since you’re not applying for a position as an employee but an independent contractor, DoorDash won’t ask you for a CV and has no interest in your education.

Who Conducts DoorDash’s Background Checks?

Wouldn’t it be impressive for DoorDash to not only dominate the food delivery industry but also conduct background checks? But, unfortunately, that’s not the case.

DoorDash uses the services of Checkr, Inc., a company that specializes in conducting background checks. Checkr also provides its services to other large companies like Uber and Lyft.

What DoorDash Looks at During a Background Check

Unlike other companies who take their background check to the next level by looking at things like your credit score and financial information, a full reference check, and identity confirmation, DoorDash keeps things to a necessary minimum.

During the DoorDash background check, they only examine an applicant’s criminal and motor vehicle records.

Red Flags on a Criminal Record

Criminal records are the backbone of any background check. Most companies look at their applicant’s criminal records to ensure the safety of their employees. However, since food delivery drivers work solo, DoorDash looks at criminal records to ensure the safety of their loyal customers.

So if you’re wondering what could get you disqualified on your criminal report, you’re in the right place.

A History of Sexual Offenses

Whether it was a minor misdemeanor sexual offense or a major felony sexual assault, it wouldn’t matter. If DoorDash finds a sexual offense on a person’s criminal record is an instant disqualification.

Theft

Since people working for DoorDash will constantly be going up to people’s front doors, the company needs to ensure that the people they hire are honest and trustworthy to ensure the safety of their customers’ property.

Property Damage

Again, since DoorDash employees heavily interact with the property of DoorDash’s customers, it’s safe to say that any history of property damage will get you disqualified.

Violent Crimes

Much like all companies, safety is always the number one concern. And the last thing DoorDash wants is one of their customers getting hurt.

A Felony

Since most felonies are violent crimes, DoorDash and many other companies like Lyft and Uber prefer not to hire ex-felons. Although, some companies like Amazon are known to occasionally hire non-violent felons like people who committed tax fraud.

However, DoorDash isn’t tolerant of any felonies on a background check.

Use of Recreational Drugs

Since DoorDash is looking to employ people whose main jobs are driving, they want their delivery drivers to be completely sober at all times. Therefore, anyone found with any drug-related incident on their record will be instantly disqualified.

A drug-related incident can be anything from a small possession charge to failing a random roadside drug test that one time.

Red Flags on a Motor Vehicle Record

Since working for DoorDash requires you to be driving most of the time, you can understand that they try to look for the least problematic drivers when recruiting. However, there are two types of driving violations when it comes to approving or disqualifying an application.

The first kind is minor driving violations. Applicants will be fine if they’re found with one or two of these on their motor vehicle record. But as they say, the third time’s the charm. DoorDash has a three-incident rule. This means that if they found three minor moving violations on your record, you’d be disqualified.

• Moving violations like running a red light, speeding, failing to indicate, following too closely, and driving on the wrong side of the road.
• Failing to stop and report an incident.
• Citations.

The second kind is major driving violations. You don’t need to commit them three times for your application to be disqualified. One of these and you won’t be offered a job.

• The obvious one, driving under the influence.
• Hit and run.
• Driving with an expired license.
• License suspensions.

What Is the Status of My DoorDash Background Check?

After you’ve applied for a job at DoorDash and gone through the recruitment process and the background check, you might be wondering what’s next.

Before Checkr, Inc. sends the background check results to DoorDash, you might want to check the current status of your background check. You can do so by going to the Checkr website. There, your background check status will have one of the following statuses.

Complete

The complete status doesn’t mean that Checkr is done with your background check. It only means that the request Checkr sent a request to collect the names of the counties that contain any records with your name on them.

Pending

If your background check status is pending, that means that your background check is almost done. At this point, the reporting is in progress, and Checkr will be waiting for your county criminal records.

This process takes the longest time, around two or three days to finalize. If it takes longer than usual, it might be that Checkr doesn’t have enough information on you to search for your records efficiently. In this case, they will reach out to you asking for extra information.

Clear

Your background check status being clear is a great sign. That means that Checkr received your motor vehicle record and criminal record, went through them and found nothing that goes against any rule DoorDash has.

At this point, your DoorDash account should be activated soon, and you can start your job as a DoorDash delivery driver.

Consider

It isn’t a great sign if your background check status is set as consider. This means that Checkr found something questionable in your records, and they’re not sure if it’s bad enough to disqualify you or is acceptable according to DoorDash’s rules.

In this case, Checkr will forward the background check results to the hiring team at DoorDash for them to review. And according to the information on your background check, DoorDash can decide to either hire you or disqualify you.

The questionable information could be a non-violent misdemeanor, a small number of moving violations, or an old license suspension.

Dispute

Unfortunately, if you find your background check status as dispute, that means that the people at Checkr have found something that directly breaks one of DoorDash’s recruitment rules. Therefore, your application has been rejected.

After you’ve been disqualified, you can request a copy of your background check. And if you find inaccurate information that led to your disqualification, DoorDash gives you the right to dispute the result of the background check within 30 days of its completion.

Does DoorDash Background Check Include a Drug Test?

Unlike the background tests conducted by other companies, DoorDash doesn’t include a drug test in its recruitment process. This is due DoorDash’s background checks being fairly simple and only looking at your criminal and motor vehicle records.

However, incidents involving drugs on those records won’t be tolerated. Meaning that if you are currently clean but have been involved with any drug-related incident in the past seven years, DoorDash won’t hire you.

Does DoorDash Disqualify Applicants With Misdemeanors?

DoorDash’s policy on hiring people with criminal records clearly speaks against felonies. However, what about misdemeanors?

Misdemeanors can be victimless criminal offenses like vandalism, trespassing, shoplifting, and drunk driving. However, some more serious misdemeanors include minor assault, battery, and minor sex crimes such as indecent exposure.

It’s a guarantee that even as a misdemeanor, DoorDash won’t hire a person with a violent past. So that rules out assault, battery, and sex offences.

On the other hand, people with non-violent crimes like vandalism and trespassing can be considered for a temporary job position at DoorDash.

How Long a DoorDash Background Check Takes

According to DoorDash, a background check can take five to seven days. However, some DoorDash drivers say it can take closer to ten days to complete.

Why Is My Background Check Taking So Long to Complete?

There are factors that determine how quickly a background check takes to complete. For instance, if you’re someone who moved around a lot and worked in many different states, it could take Checkr a longer time to gather all the information about you out there.

If you’ve applied at a time when DoorDash is receiving a high volume of applications, it can take longer to finish your background check since you could be in a long queue of applications.

Also, suppose you’ve done many questionable things in the past and your criminal or motor vehicle records are larger than average, it’ll take them longer to check since the US doesn’t have a centralized database of criminal records.

And given the large number of counties in the United States, each with its own criminal records, Checkr could take significantly longer to collect your records from multiple counties.