Ms. Cups is in the throughs of the job search and there may be light at the end of the tunnel, but a small problem came up.
The (non government if that helps) company she applied to got a third-party company to run a background check on her where she filled in her pertinent information, including previous jobs.
She was just called by the third-party company because a job she worked from 2008-12 says she only worked there from 2011-12. She worked all four years there, but the first 3 were as a student, and then she transferred from “student worker” to “official worker”, so when the HR lady looked up Ms. Cups’s stuff, they only had her as an “official worker” listed. Ms. Cups explained the situation and the HR company made a note of it.
Did her former employer just screw her out of a job? I know that background checks are pretty serious, and you shouldn’t lie on them, but she didn’t lie, her former employer didn’t have the right information for whatever reason.
How stringent are companies when it comes to background checks? Does it depend on the company? Since we know this is an issue should we do something about it? What should we do?
I’ve had background checks performed on me as part of the hiring process. There’s usually a follow-up interview or two where they ask you about any red flags. Is she going through a staffing agency? She could call her rep and explain the discrepancy. If possible, get some kind of document that shows her work status at that job so her rep can have a copy of it for CYA purposes.
There is an opportunity to upload documents to the third-party site, so she uploaded a list of references to people who can vouch that she worked those 3 other years
The purpose of bg checks is mainly to see if you’ve committed any crimes. I’ve got a common first name and last name, and one bg check done for me had my staffing agency believing I had committed a felony in Chapel Hill. That was another Knowed Out. I had to get a copy of my public record to prove I was the good Knowed Out. I keep copies of my vetted papers just in case I run into that situation again.
Over the last nine years I worked contract jobs and most of the agencies I went through have been swallowed up or merged into oblivion. For my last background check in October if they couldn’t reach an agency I uploaded W2s for the years worked and that was acceptable to the background check company.
After asking around, this was the most common answer we got. That the discrepancy probably won’t be that big of a deal, and it’s easily explained anyway.
Something like that happened to me once. I went to work for a Telco company in 2000, and they outsourced us to EDS in 2002. I stayed on with EDS until 2004, then changed jobs to another large IT Consulting company. EDS told me to list my employment dates with them as 2000-2004, which I did, but during the background check, EDS reported I only worked there from 2002-2004. I explained the situation to the new company, and got the job.
Inconsistencies are usually ok, as long as it’s legit and there’s no lies or hiding stuff going on.
The background check company won’t make any recommendations based on the discrepancy - they’ll just flag it and forward it to the hiring company, who, if they’re not a total idiot, will dismiss it as an easily explained misunderstanding.
I got a BA in 2001, and earned my MS from the same University in 2012. I therefore put my enrollment dates down as 1997-2001, and 2008-2012 (it took awhile to finish the Masters) in the initial form for the BG check for my current job.
When I saw my copy of the check report, they’d flagged a discrepancy under my education dates, as my alma mater reported my enrollment dates as 1997-2012.
I flipped out for a little while, but as it turned out, nobody cared.
I applied for a job where they REALLY needed me. The background check came back with two issues:
I had said I had worked at one employer for two years but* it was really only one (I* had also been there for over a year as a contractor and my resume clearly stated “Started as a Contractor through xxxx Company” and also that I had claimed I had a AA when I didnt (the question was "Degree or Degree program, so I answered correctly and I have a Masters anyway).
So, yeah, you can be screwed as this would be considered “lying” even tho it isn’t. HR is more in the business of not hiring that hiring. Fortunately, my was-going-to-be-manager *insisted *they contact me about these "discrepancies’, and I cleared them up, easily.
The company may not be a total idiot, but the person in HR that says “This means he’s a liar, so NO!” could well be. And, 9 times out of ten, you wont get a chance to explain it.
In my neck of the woods, when you do a placement as a student (we call them “student co-ops”) you need to distinguish this on your resume. It’s different from being a normal employee.
That’s great that she got hired on after her student placement, but portraying the entirety of her time at Former Employer Inc. as a fully hired employee was a mistake. If I were Ms. Cups I would change my resume, leaving one entry for Former Employer Inc., but having 2 titles with their corresponding dates. Something like: FORMER EMPLOYER INC. Student Placement - Woven Basketry Technician
2008-2011
Lead Basketry Technician
2011-2012
I don’t completely blame Potential Employer Inc. from going “enh, this is enough of a flag” and tossing her resume. Especially if she was already on the bubble. I’ve hired and fired in an office setting at it would be a red flag even after explanation.
Oh well, we’ll get it right for the next batch of printings!
She actually doesn’t even HAVE it on her resume, she’s had enough jobs (with better experience) in between for her to have only listed it because the dates just happened to fall into what the background check needed
That’s weird! How did the people running the background check know she had claimed employment from 2008 to 2012?
Maybe I’m not fully understanding the situation, it doesn’t sound as bad as I originally thought. White-fibbing by omitting your student status on a resume (which she didn’t do) is one thing, but this is something else.
The check wasn’t based on her resume, it was a separate document she had to fill out that just-so happened to ask for her last 4 or 5 or whatever positions, which this happened to be one of. She doesn’t reference it much because, again, she was a student, she did odd jobs at campus sporting events, nothing really “resume” worthy, but something she did nonetheless
Not only easily explained, but something positive: I started as a student intern, for 3 years; they liked my work so well that hey hired me as a full time employee.
Not unless the person in HR is a drone, they shouldn’t be.
My current employee does background checks. There’s been multiple issues, from cultural ones to one of my references having gone completely off the radar around Christmas (and I imagine it wasn’t due to winning the lottery, but it’s not like I can call his wife and ask); I informed the checking company back in January that Dave seemed to be unreachable and did they want me to provide a different contact? “No no, that’s ok”. Dave was both a business contact and a reference.
Two days ago I got an email from the HR person who managed my hiring process; the background check company had been able to contact everybody except Dave, listing him as a “failure” twice. Did I have a copy of the contract, payroll slip (once again, they weren’t my employers but my clients gaaaah why is that so difficult to understand?), anything? And anybody else who’d write me an “I know her and she didn’t kill anybody” note, doesn’t have to be a manager? A “payment for invoice” stub from my bank was accepted as proof that yep, these people used to pay me large sums of money and I used to invoice them; a letter from a different coworker-and-friend covered the missing personal reference. Total time, less than three hours. I’m now all background-checked, yay!
My coworker hired at the same time: his last employment was in Italy. The Italian company provided a letter in official letterhead in Italian, and a no-letterhead translation to English. The background people were saying “we cannot be sure this says what they say it says”. The HR lady wasn’t sure whether to be amused or stupefied and finally opted for amused.
That’s not really true. HR is generally in the job of filling positions, not finding reasons to fire or prevent you from getting hired.
I’ve had background checks where there were similar discrepancies. Contract vs full time, payroll handled by some 3rd party, company got acquired and went out of business or whatever. The background check company or HR just came back to me to ask me to provide additional information.
If a company has got to the point where they want to hire you AND are going through the actual process of a background check, chances are they’ve already invested a lot of time and energy into selecting you are aren’t looking to restart the hiring process because of a technicality.
Yes in my experience when we are hiring minor date variations we do not care about as everyone knows that the records or the memories can be off. Only claims of having worked in a company and never having been there (that is the actual fabrications, we do find that) concern greatly.
I was interviewing with a place for position that was a perfect fit. Over the course of 3 meetings, we covered pretty much everything about me, warts and all. Passed the drug test, then they ran a background check.
Never even got a call or email saying, “Fuck Off!”. They wouldn’t even return my calls.
To this day, I have no fucking idea what they came up with. I damn near disclosed every time I peed without putting the toilet seat back down! WTF?
You would think with all the time and expense they had invested at that point, they would at least answer the phone?
It was shortly after this event that I decided “retirement” was the way to go.
Once I was applying for a job. Did the interview, followed up with a phone call a couple of days later. They told me that the university I graduated from said they had no record of my graduation. I told the hiring manager “give me two hours”, called the university and asked to speak to a supervisor about it. I mentioned that this might lead to serious difficulties if I did not get a job offer because of their mistake. To their credit, they immediately called the hiring manager (I gave them permission to talk about my educational background, GPA, etc.) and told him they had made a mistake, and also followed up with a letter documenting that I had in fact graduated. I think in a way it was an advantage, since it kept my name in the forefront of the hiring manager’s mind. They made me an offer, although I wound up working somewhere else.
The other time was when being hired for my current job. I worked for a company that kept getting bought and sold, while consulting for another company. I mentioned this on my resume, but when the investigator checked my references, he only asked about my work history with the last company that acquired me/us. That company was neither IMO efficient nor known to go out of their way to assist either current or former employees, and did not mention my work history prior to my being acquired, even though they had those records. I wound up talking to the investigator and told him to contact the company, and ask specifically if they had records pertaining to my work history during the period in question. They did (they had said so during my interview when we got bought by said company), he called them, and they did their thing of “he worked from such-and-such a date thru such-and-such a date, and his job title was Senior Code Monkey”, and I wound up getting the job.
I don’t think I ever had an interaction with Corporate at the company who bought us that I didn’t come out of grinding my teeth. But don’t get me started.
