Outside of the Federal security clearance world (where they can apparently deny you a clearance if your little sister lives in Iran), what are some ways that you can fail an employment background check other than due to lying on the job application or on your resume, because of a criminal record, or because of a bad credit rating?
I’m not talking about people who don’t have the qualifications required (educational or experience), and were honest about it, or who were honest and listed their actual work history, but a supervisor gives them a justifiable bad reference, but people who fail the HR background check for something else and are deemed unsuitable regardless of the hiring manager’s desire to hire.
I’ve filled out a background check authorization that permitted them to inquire into my “mode of living”, but I’ve never heard of anyone failing a background check because the employer disapproved of a candidate’s roommate or because the candidate throws wild parties at home.
E.g.
“Did you get the job?”
“No. The hiring manager liked me, but they told me that HR flunked me on the background check because I had a child out of wedlock.”
It’s been mentioned here in the past that if you want a security-relevant or money-relevant job, they don’t want anything in your private life that could be used as lever. So a cashier who regularly gambles in Las Vegas could be pressured with debts, even if at the moment the person is totally debt-free.
A person with access to sensitive data and a child out of wedlock could be pressured to steal the data or have his secret told to his wife*/ the press (I don’t know how relevant that is in the US today).
It’s very rare today that they will tell you the reason they flunked you: they have nothing to gain by giving you feedback, and everything to loose if you bring a lawsuit of discrimination against them.
In the fictional novel “The Firm”, where Tom Cruise works for a mafia attorney’s office, one of the perks is a weekend on a tropical island, where he is seduced by an attractive woman … pictures taken of their sex scene on the beach are later used to threaten him “Don’t want your wife to find this in the mail, do you?”
The answer is anything at all so long as they are not overtly stepping on ADA or stuff overtly forbidden by law (ie race, creed, sex etc).
This issue is related to a larger problem in hiring spies where people who would often make the very best and most convincing spies (ie foreign nationals, counter culture types, gays, flaming liberals and similar) are rejected as being kinda, sorta sketchy and untrustworthy. This results in the US spy services having a significant population of Mormons (often due to language facility acquired via missions).
I leave it to the reader to decide how effective an embedded spy a demographically typical Mormon would make, and then understand why our human spycraft is considered a joke compared to other countries with much smaller budgets, but a more realistic approach like Israel.
All it takes is being transsexual. By requiring you to give all previous names, they force you to out yourself. Recruiters can be fawning over you, slavering with desire to snag you, then as soon as the background check form is submitted, suddenly they’re strangers.