From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:
Most people who know Buzzy Castonguay know he knows a lot about background checks.
Castonguay has worked in the industry since 2002 after a friend introduced him to the work.
'I was coming out of working in church ministry, when a friend asked me to come work with him doing background checks,” he said. 'I didn't plan on doing this very long, but it stuck.”
Having been as a Los Angeles County probation officer back in the 1990s, Castonguay worked with his friend for a while before starting his own background-check company when he moved to Iowa in the early 2000s.
After selling that first background check company, he got out of the business for a few years.
'But people always asked me about it, and when someone finally asked if I'd ever consider getting back in the business, I did,” he recalled.
In 2014, he opened C4 Operations.
'Our advantage is that we have access to a lot more information than the average consumer can access by simply visiting Iowa Courts online, for example,” Castonguay said, noting that they access national records.
C4 has a wide variety of pre-employment and tenant screenings - including sexual offender searches, identity verification, credit reports, county criminal searches, federal court searches, motor vehicle records and drug screenings - for companies and property owners.
'We are big on educating our customers on the information they do or do not need in a background check and help them understand what the reports we provide mean,” he said.
The C4 Operations staff - which includes about 10 employees - works with both large and small businesses across a wide range of industries, from janitorial and manufacturing to education and health care. Castonguay said they have some 3,200 customers nationwide.
'We are helping our customers make a good hire or find a good renter and perhaps avoid some problems down the road. We can help reduce the amounts of headaches in their life,” Castonguay said.
'We don't tell our clients who to hire. We just get the records and the information they need to make a good hiring decision.”