SafeHire Inc.

SafeHire Inc. was the digital background screening arm of The CIP Group, and safehireinc.com was the product: a Laravel web application I designed, built and ran on my own for five years, taking an employment background check from a link in an applicant's inbox to a signed PDF report and a paid Stripe invoice, with no paper and no manual billing anywhere in between.

Key Takeaways

  • Delivered a complete product as one engineer: applicant intake, e-signature capture, investigator workflow, PDF report generation, secure document storage, customer accounts, card-on-file payments and automated invoicing.
  • Modeled thirteen screening services, each with its own report section, conditional rendering and per-unit pricing, so every report and invoice reflects exactly what was purchased.
  • Supported both digital and paper intake, because real offices still use paper, with the workflow adapting cleanly to either path.
  • Treated the data with the seriousness it demands: sensitive documents stored off the web server entirely, served only through ownership checks and short-lived signed URLs.
  • Ran the application in production for five years, through framework upgrade cycles and vendor API migrations, with support built into the product itself.
  • Closed the engagement as deliberately as it started, with a complete decommissioning plan when the client exited the screening business.

Organization

SafeHire, co-branded with The CIP Group, sold full-service digitally managed background checks to small and mid-size regional employers, trades contractors, service businesses and property managers, organizations that need a defensible background check but have no HR department to run one.

Challenge

Background screening ran on printed forms, email attachments and a spreadsheet: applicants printed, signed, scanned and emailed intake packets, or didn't, and sensitive documents lived in an inbox. The product had to digitize the whole lifecycle while handling social security numbers, signatures and criminal record findings to an appropriate standard.

Solution

  • A Laravel application with a status lifecycle for every check, a structured intake flow with drawn signature capture, and state-aware validation on identity documents.
  • Conditional report architecture across thirteen services, from criminal and civil searches to license and employment verification, with declined consents surfaced explicitly rather than omitted.
  • Templated investigator tooling so recurring report language is inserted, not retyped.
  • S3 document storage behind authorization gates and 15-minute signed URLs, with nothing sensitive ever served from the web server.
  • Stripe card-on-file billing that invoices the moment a report completes.
  • Production operations throughout: server hardening, mail authentication ahead of vendor deadlines, and admin support tooling.

Results

  • Background check turnaround down roughly 70%.
  • 100% collection rate on completed reports.
  • Roughly 10 administrative hours a month removed.
  • Zero sensitive documents ever served directly.
  • Five years in production, ending in a clean, complete decommission.