Most Walmart background checks clear in 2 to 5 business days. The check starts only after you have a conditional offer in hand, which means a slow report is delaying your start date, not deciding whether you get one. That distinction matters, because almost every panicked question applicants post about this stage comes from reading “pending” as “failing.”
Pending is not a verdict. It usually means a county courthouse hasn’t answered a records request yet. The check itself is narrower than most people fear, and federal law puts hard limits on what can appear in it at all.
Here’s what the screen covers, what genuinely disqualifies a candidate, and what to do when yours stalls or comes back wrong.
When the Check Happens, and Who Performs It
Walmart orders the background check after the interview and the conditional job offer, as its own application process page lays out. You’ll sign consent and disclosure forms first; a screen without written consent would violate federal law. The result has to come back clear before the store schedules your orientation.
Walmart doesn’t perform the check itself. Applicants and consumer-law firms consistently report that First Advantage handles most Walmart screens, with Sterling named as a second vendor for some roles and regions. The email or text inviting you to submit your information will name the company, and that name is the one you’ll deal with for status calls and disputes later.
Everyone gets screened. Cashiers, overnight stockers, seasonal holiday hires, and corporate applicants all go through the same stage, though the depth differs by role.
How Long Does the Walmart Background Check Take?
A Walmart background check typically takes 2 to 5 business days from the day you submit your consent forms, based on consistent applicant reports. Some clear within 24 hours. Vendor-side sources and consumer-law writeups put the normal outside edge at about a week.
The wait is driven by geography more than by your history. First Advantage pulls records county by county, and a county that still processes requests through a clerk’s office can take days to answer what a digitized county returns in minutes. Applicants in the same hiring wave routinely report wildly different waits: one Indeed commenter in the Dallas area got results in 3 days, while a Reddit applicant reported “2weeks 3 days” between check completion and the orientation call.
A report that sits at “pending” past a week usually means one of three things. A court is slow to respond. Your file tripped a manual review, often because a name or birthdate partially matched someone else’s record. Or the check is actually done and the store simply hasn’t acted on it yet, which is more common than applicants assume.
You can check status directly with the screening company instead of guessing. First Advantage operates an applicant portal and phone line for exactly this, and the store’s people lead can see on their end whether your file has cleared.
What the Screen Actually Covers
The core of the report is a criminal history search: county, state, and federal records, plus the sex offender registry. What else gets pulled depends on the job.
| Component | Store associate roles | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal history | Yes, every role | County, state, and federal courts; sex offender registry |
| Identity / SSN check | Yes, every role | Confirms your SSN matches your identity |
| Employment verification | Reportedly light | Applicant reports suggest hourly-role history is rarely deep-checked |
| Driving record | Driver roles only | Delivery and truck driving positions |
| Credit history | Reportedly not pulled | Described as reserved for finance-adjacent and some management roles |
| Drug test | Separate step | Role-specific, not part of the background report |
Federal law fences the criminal search in. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. §1681c, a screening company may not report arrests that never led to conviction once they’re more than seven years old. Convictions are exempt from that federal seven-year bar, so a felony conviction can legally surface no matter how old it is. Several states close that gap with their own laws capping conviction reporting at seven years, which is why two applicants with identical records can see different reports in different states.
Sealed and expunged records shouldn’t appear at all. When they do, that’s a reporting error, not a Walmart decision, and it’s disputable.
One boundary worth naming: this screen is a records pull, not an investigation. Nobody calls your high school, reads your social media by default, or interviews your neighbors for an hourly store job.
What Disqualifies You, and What Doesn’t
The convictions that weigh heaviest are recent ones involving theft, fraud, violence, or sexual offenses, because they map directly onto the risks of a retail floor full of cash registers, customers, and coworkers. A shoplifting conviction from last year is a serious problem for a cashier application. The same offense from twelve years ago, with a clean record since, is a much weaker signal, and in many states it can’t legally be reported at all.
A record is not an automatic no. The EEOC’s enforcement guidance directs employers to weigh three things before rejecting someone over criminal history: the nature and gravity of the offense, how much time has passed, and whether it relates to the specific job. Blanket no-felons policies invite discrimination liability, and Walmart’s practice, confirmed repeatedly by hired applicants, is case-by-case evaluation. Our guide to jobs that hire felons covers Walmart’s fair-chance posture in detail, including how to present a record honestly when the question comes up.
Things that generally do not sink an application: dismissed charges, old non-conviction arrests (barred from the report after seven years), traffic infractions for non-driving roles, bad credit for store positions, and employment gaps. Lying is the exception that turns a survivable record into a rejection. The screen verifies identity, and a fabricated work history or a denied conviction that then surfaces reads as dishonesty, which is the one thing no individualized assessment forgives.
If the Check Stalls or Comes Back Wrong
Give it five business days before acting. After that, call the screening company’s applicant line for status, and if the file shows complete, contact the store directly. Applicants who got hired keep giving the same advice:
“My best advice is to call. If you pass the background check the job is yours. My store will hire anyone with a pulse who can pass a check. Be bold, they are likely hoping you’ll accept the job more that you’re hoping they’ll offer it.”
– r/WalmartEmployees, November 2025 (6 upvotes)
Walking into the store and asking for the people lead works even better than calling, since store phone lines often go unanswered.
A wrong report is a different problem with a real legal remedy. Screening databases mismatch people with similar names and birthdates, resurrect expunged cases, and list dismissed charges as pending. If your report costs you the offer, Walmart must send you an adverse-action notice with a copy of the report before the decision becomes final, and you get a window to respond. Dispute the error in writing with the screening company, not with Walmart; under 15 U.S.C. §1681i the company must reinvestigate, generally within 30 days, and delete anything it can’t verify. Send court documents with the dispute, keep copies, and if the company rubber-stamps the same error, an FCRA attorney takes these cases on contingency because the statute awards damages and fees.
Where the Check Sits in Walmart’s Hiring Timeline
By the time the background check begins, the evaluated parts of hiring are behind you. The assessment test screened your application, the interview got you the offer, and the check is the final verification pass on the person the store has decided to hire.
It travels alongside one other screen: the drug test. The two get conflated constantly, and the difference is simple. The background check applies to every hire; Walmart’s drug testing is role-specific, tied mostly to safety-sensitive positions like pharmacy and equipment operation. You might skip the drug test entirely. You will not skip the background check.
Once the report clears, the store schedules orientation, and that handoff is the second place applicants lose days. The check completing and the store calling are separate events, sometimes a week or more apart, because orientation sessions get batched: Day one is paid at your normal starting rate, and the discount card follows at 90 days.
“Gotta wait for the orientation email once your background passes”
– r/walmart, 2026 (3 upvotes)
So if two quiet weeks have passed and the screening company confirms your file is complete, the holdup is scheduling, not screening. That’s a store problem, and it’s solved in person at the customer service desk, not by refreshing a status page.
Walmart Background Check FAQ
How long does the Walmart background check take?
Most Walmart background checks finish in 2 to 5 business days, with about a week as the normal outer edge. Slow county courthouses cause most delays. Applicants have reported everything from same-day results to more than two weeks before hearing back about orientation.
What does Walmart look for in a background check?
The report covers criminal history from county, state, and federal courts, the sex offender registry, and identity verification. Driving records get pulled for driver roles, and credit history is reportedly limited to finance-adjacent positions, so store associates shouldn’t expect a credit pull.
Does Walmart hire felons?
Yes, Walmart hires people with felony records on a case-by-case basis, weighing the offense, the time since, and the role, in line with EEOC guidance. Recent theft, fraud, violence, or sexual offenses are the hardest to overcome; older unrelated convictions frequently pass.
What does it mean if my Walmart background check is pending?
Pending means the screening company is still waiting on at least one records source, usually a county court, or a possible record match needs manual review. It is not a rejection signal. If pending stretches past a week, call the screening company’s applicant line for a status update.