She tried to end a patient at the nursing home and was also busted for raiding the medicine cabinet. Obviously no check.
My son applied for a job at a small construction firm and they did call his references.
At some other places (notably banks) did full background check, calling all my previous employers from the past 10 years, and asking for criminal records from all countries where I spent more than 3 months in the past 5 years. They also wanted all kind of documentation where they found some discrepancy between my CV and their findings...
(Funnily they never asked for the records from my original country. For all they care, I might be a fugitive murderer there, as long as I have paid my parking tickets in the other countries...)
Calling all of your previous employers will get them your dates of employment and nothing else. Less than that if you worked for a startup that went out of business.
Since the business's domain and phone number no longer worked I had to get a letter of reference on """corporate letterhead""". He had never made any such thing so he printed it on the back of a receipt. Bigcorp HR hated this and said they were moving in a different direction.
It was really annoying at the time because I was fresh out of college and did not have any other jobs to list as experience.
HR people say that they do that to avoid liability, but… typically they aren’t covered by NDA, and there’s only slander/defamation if you find out about it, it’s negative, and it’s not true.
I used to do my own reference checks and got lots of info, often without asking. Well placed silence will often lead people to jabber. More often than not they would say lovely things. They they’d say lovely things than silence on a difficult topic.
Eh, HR at previous employers might share whether you were a problem employee. And any references you provide from previous employers had better speak glowingly about you -- if they wouldn't, don't provide them.
I don't know if any of the references I've ever given were called, but since none of the references I've given ever told me about getting called about me I assume none were called. To be fair I've had a) few jobs, b) enough credentials in terms of portfolio of public works (in standards setting organizations, in open source, etc.) that there is little need to check those references. If you interview me and you can get me to talk in detail about said public work and also you can check how I think and would solve problems, then between that and a background check that's almost certainly enough.
This is why I tell people to make sure to have a portfolio of public work. In practice it is difficult to make a large portfolio of public work -- at some point that has to include participation in the upstreams of external open source, in mailing lists, in fora, etc., and that all takes time and not being shy. Most job applicants are not going to have much of a portfolio.
> Eh, HR at previous employers might share whether you were a problem employee.
HR departments are trained to say exactly two things: whether or not the person worked there and the person's dates of employment. Anything else can result in a lawsuit.
It ended up working out because I had previously worked at Google and my former skip-level, who knew me personally, was now the SVP signing my offer letter. But if the hiring process is this incompetent, it makes me wonder how many other people have real career consequences because background check services are lazy and incompetent.
What you call lazy and incompetent is probably a system working as intended where the collateral damage is accepted approvingly.
At one point for Verizon I had to prove I did 1099 work for a company and had to show bank deposits from the LLC! (With amounts redacted).
In the place I work for, when engineers are going to conduct technical interviews, the only preparation material they are given is the candidate's resume. So we try to ask questions based on their experience in the places they claimed to have worked for. It's not super hard to realize the job description in the resume is embellished once you start asking questions, but yes this is not fool-proof. Still, the best candidates will often have very interesting discussions about challenges they had in their previous jobs and be able to properly articulate what they did and why and how. If you're gonna lie, you better back it up very well.
If somebody claims to have worked at Amazon as a product manager for 2 years, and rehearses a story they wrote with ChatGPT (who maybe has data from blogs of related product managers)... Then I'd probably get fooled, if the candidate was reasonably well-spoken and confident. Similarly, I don't have the time or patience to contact a university to try and get real verification for a transcript. Just being honest...
I was told they weren't going to look at it, because I "probably faked it."
It was at that point, that I realized that no one wanted me, and I gave up looking. I guess that I could have said that if I had been able to fake that stuff, they should hire me right away, because I'm a leet wizard, but I'm sure they said that, to evoke exactly the reaction they got, and I was better off, not working there.
I won't go, where I'm not wanted.
Stupid example: the person claims they know CSS, and you bring up the subject of aligning a div for the first time.
As a consequence I hold my breath about job background checks to this day. Realize that background checks aren't done until they've offered you the job. In Seattle Tech, and thus covered under WA State laws, I've always had criminal record, job history, sometimes credit, but very rarely education. Never had a drug test.
Expect Federal background checks, and then they check in the cities, county level, and state based on the prior addresses you supplied.
Most job history in the US is tracked through Lexis Nexis or Equifax (owner of The Work Number). Education history through the Education Student Clearinghouse.
The whole process is automated. It's software, looking for records that contain the word "felony", deciding your future. Anybody working there is making very little money and they have no power nor oversight.
When I was looking for work (about seven years ago), One company asked for my HN handle, and another company wanted my Facebook login (and password).
I don't think so. Homey don't play dat game.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the folks, here, work for those background check companies, and could probably provide more complete information.
"I don't have Facebook" or "sorry, no, that's private", whichever one is accurate. If that doesn't do it it's not a place worth working at.
I believe that there has since been a court case, that ruled that kind of thing illegal.
Of course, with the current political environment, I suspect we may see things like requirements for proving marriage (to a man), if you are a woman with children (like it used to be in Days of Yore), etc.
This is completely unnecessary hyperbole and injection of politics into a topic where it does not belong.
Of course, if you hadn't replied, I could have simply asked @dang to remove it (I have done that, in the past).
I will ask them to remove my post, but you have preserved it anyway.
Some companies definitely check references. I've had multiple companies contact me as a reference for an applicant and ask for a brief phone call or to write a quick blurb on some website form. Just make sure you ask before listing someone as a reference.
Source: I've worked at a couple unicorns, 2 FAANGS, current Meta eng, all did full 10-year lookback background checks
Job 1 was hard to verify because my company used a PEO (https://www.adp.com/resources/articles-and-insights/articles...). It’s basically Corporation as a Service. Where you are “co-employed” by the PEO for purposes of health insurance, payroll management, taxes, etc. Bit for everything else the company is your employer.
That means IRS statements and your W2 show you working for companies like Insperity or Rippling (a YC company) even though that’s not the company you worked for.
The company I did work for had been acquired. Luckily, I’m still friends with the CTO of the startup even though he had moved on. I sent the background check company his LinkedIn profile and phone number.
The next company was Amazon and they use TheWorkNumber.
The next company I could verify by doing some type of OAUTH between the background checking company and my company’s payroll provider.
Previously, I’ve been able to log into the IRS website and get old W2 information to verify employment.
At my current gig (SWE at a big corporate place) they outsourced all verification to another company who verified my employment and college enrollment was when I said it was.
I think it's because they don't actually read your resume, and it's just about SEO optimization.
At my workplace, we do employment and education verification. We don’t do criminal background checks because it isn’t strictly necessary in our space.
The last time I had a background check, despite providing the name, address, and phone numbers of past employers to the background check firm, the resulting report indicated in several cases they had instead called unrelated companies in unrelated industries in states I had never lived or worked in. There were no repercussions when those companies (understandably) had never heard for me. Presumably, HR had checked the box that the check was performed, but they didn't actually care about the result.
One of the cases they flagged as "unable to verify employment" was a stint at a company I had founded, where I'm still listed as the LLC manager on my state's business registration website, i.e. a simple Google search for company + my name would have sufficed. (The name of the construction firm in a neighboring state that they repeatedly called instead wasn't even similar.)
So at least one company does check.
[1] I do have a completed bachelors now...honest!
It depends where you are applying. FinTech and related fields will most certainly review background checks including contacting your college and verifying your high school diploma, criminal history and much more. This is not just best practice, these companies have a requirement to perform these steps and in some cases have B2B contracts and SOC1/2 requirements stating that background checks are performed on all full time employees and any contractor that has access to customer data.
It becomes more hit-and-miss in the other tech companies you mentioned as all the companies you mentioned have third party relationships with FinTech. Some departments will do all the same background checks and will otherwise do basic background checks that may catch lies on your college or high school statements and employment history.
TL;DR Just stick with the facts on your CV and do not volunteer too much information that may lead to more digging in the same spirit of everything dyingkneepad said.
I applied to an insurance data entry job to fill the gap. It was Q4 2019 and I'd been in the workforce since 2008. Lots of tech support including big-boy serious-business firewall stuff. I think the application asked if I had a high school diploma, but I figured it was just a cursory formality. Naturally, the background check company pops up, wanting to "verify" my high school diploma. It was a home school diploma, in Texas, where home schooling is completely unregulated except for a one-liner statute declaring home school diplomas equivalent to normal high school diplomas. There's nothing to verify.
In the end, I had to get my mother on the line with these people so she could . . . tell them she really did home school me. And they were like, "cool thanks" and pushed through my background check. I mean, she could have been anybody! It's not like they validated anything. If they were checking something that was actually a big deal, that could have been mildly scandalous or something.
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*but, well,
I asked him in the interview if he thought anyone reads all of his lengthy resume, and if he thinks a typing contest from nearly 15 years prior is an important detail for potential employers to know about him. He said he likes to be thorough.
I did not recommend hiring him.
The interview reflected the resume in many ways. He had experience that aligned to the role. Most questions received extremely long answers that didn't necessarily give me more information than a much shorter one would have...and I say this as someone who prefers to ask open-ended questions that get the candidate talking. It was just endless fluff and exposition that didn't really go anywhere or add anything.
He was nominally qualified, but I could not imagine working with him given how he communicated in his resume and interview. I also didn't want to inflict his communication style on clients, as he would have had to interact with clients directly in the role.
He had helpfully removed details under his old jobs. His resume reflected his communication style. I recommended hiring him.
[Edit] I should add that I have had candidates that I really wanted to hire but were later rejected for having misinformation on their application form or in their CV. This was in FinTech.
Resume fraud is prosecutable in plenty of jurisdictions as well (Australia and the UK at the very least).
I did a startup. the year before we were incorporated I was doing prototypes and fund raising. We called the company and you're weren't employed until 20xx, but you listed 20xx-1 as the start date! now you're in trouble.
I mean it's not like we're studying the resume and looking for inconstancies. Generally I just picked one specific line, one specific claim, and drilled into it. I generally want to give you a chance to do the whole "STAR" thing, but about some specific technical you claim to be one of your biggest wins.
I never have (or have done to me) called any of the references. That feels like a step too invasive for a generic senior engineer gig. Maybe for management I would care more, but I don't interview for or apply to those.
Re: 'resume prank', I generally consider a fancy college to be a detractor. It mostly shows your parents drilled you in highschool, and not much else. It's basically a moot point.
Some of these systems are relatively automated but almost every company uses a third party. Very few employers will do the phone calls themselves. If you worked at small startups, they will often call the CEO's personal phone number. So, you'll need to tell them to pick up the phone. They will verify things like title and dates you were employed.
I've had five different employer in the valley. Personal references never got called - which I always found funny. Some places wanted references before they even gave you an offer! Those guys are a waste of time, btw. They always sent insane low ball offers. Like if you said your minimum was $200k/yr salary in the first interview, they'd send you an offer for $150k/yr. I was floored at such idiotic behavior. You went from having little chance because I was using you for practice anyway to literally zero.
Meta has very few openings and does a lot more interviews than necessary to fill seats.
There aren’t even that many spots open in the Bay Area either. I had been open to the Bay Area for a few months and never got a single call there either.
I never got a match from Meta. I expect this is more common but it’s just not spoken about.
However, lying to people is generally a bad idea, as it can get you in a lot of trouble later in some places. Verification is often still done via employment records, school credit/diploma stamped copies, contract investigators, and psychological profiling.
Some jobs have very invasive screening processes, and will dig into your personal life beyond what most feel is justified. Some places do credit checks, court record searches, family interviews, mental health history checks, and drug tests.
Some people do glean resumes off social media to spoof credentials, but are often ejected from the building in less than a day. On rare occasion, the truly incompetent ended up in court for contract breach.
Crazy people try unethical things all the time... and statistically one will meet a few eventually. Generally, people that shoulder a lot of responsibility do not like getting conned, and get very good at spotting sociopaths. =3
We get around that by asking: "Would you hire this person again?" and we get a 80% answer rate. Tells us everything we need to know.
lol =3
It also depends on the country, what you can ask and get varies wildly depending on the place.
I always found refernces to be ridiculous. I never ptovide any and one company that asked got on touch with my good friends (ex-coworkers or not) whi explained that I was the nest Jesus, with an incredible background in technology and management skills that would make Trump pale in comparison.
They wanted to talk with my prevous boss but, what a shame, it is illegal here. They would have had good feedback as well, though not new religion grade as the ones they got (and they told me that they were great).
I did less great on IQ tests where I ranked between a chair and a fly but apparently this did not matter after all.