The summer after high school, I applied at a milk bottling plant. I knew they wouldn’t hire me if I told them I would have to leave at the end of the summer, so when they asked, I told them I had an open schedule. After they checked my references, they sent me a letter saying that I could never work for them because I lied. Other than that dairy company, would anyone else really care about this?
FWIW, I was not fired. They decided not to hire me once they saw I would have to leave.
I think you are pretty safe - I bet they don’t even remember you now. It’s not as if you are going to give them as a reference is it?
It does show that the days when prospective employers did not do any checks are over. I suggest that you should also Google yourself as that’s what many of them do, as well as looking hard at your social media sites.
I just discovered this board today, and I can help with this question! I was a director of ops at one of the largest background check companies in the US. We conducted employment, criminal, and credit backgrounds. So I can help with any other related questions, if you or other posters have them.
The only way that a future employer would find out about this would be word-of-mouth, or their own research. Declined applications, for any reason, are not filed with any employment verification service. Good luck!
You did not work for them? Don’t know how that would ever show up anywhere.
I’ve been told by an amazing number of people that I am blacklisted, will never work in their town again, etc. It’s never, ever been a problem.
Prime example: the bitch who refused to pay me for 12 weeks and said if I took her to court I’d lose and never be hired by anyone ever again. Her payment plan from her to me of the award (back wages + damages) runs for another three years AND I have a permanent job at a much better employer.
The only time I could see it being a problem is if you worked for the Federal government and pissed them off - that just might complicate your life.
It depends upon the community.
One woman on another board worked for a jeweler and one issue of jewelers is employee theft. People work at a store for a while, find out the expensive items, and figure out a way to either steal it themselves or allow others to steal them. A $10,000 necklace stolen is no joke.
If that happens or is even suspected the person is fired and she said their is an informal network within the jewelry industry to blacklist that person so they never work in the industry again.
Agreed that if you never worked for them, what they have to say about you is meaningless.
There are some industries (the oil business for one) where if you get a bad rep, you can’t work for any of the majors. The little guys might hire you and their pay is good (sometimes better); but the major industry players won’t touch if the word gets out.
Another is gaming. If you quit under a cloud or a fired, you probably won’t work a decent job in casino again. 2nd shift porter cleaning the bathrooms, maybe. Operations manager or gaming director? No way.
OP, just don’t mention what happened to anyone and it will disappear like it never happened.
Welcome to the boards, WelkerOne.
This may be outside the scope of this thread, but would you mind elaborating? I’ve never heard of this kind of thing happening under any kind of normal circumstances, even if somebody has left a job on bad terms.
Welcome!
It would be really interesting if you started a “Ask the former background check guy” thread in MPSIMS. There’s a lot of confusion in the world as to what actually happens (and what typically doesn’t happen) during a background check and what is and is not usually covered. I think a lot of the “This will go on your permanent record!” threats that a lot of us got as children imparted a skewed understanding of background checks, leading e.g. to fears that the time when you knocked over that rack of dresses at Macy’s when you were 7 went down in some sort of file and hiring managers are getting a chuckle from your background check, or even rejecting you as a “person with a demonstrated history of disruptive behavior dating from childhood, very risky”. Also, I recall a question here on this board about whether background checks include an analysis of your casual friendships and contacts. ZOMG don’t hire this guy, he plays chess-by-email with Albanian sheep herders and is on the cake recipe of the week list from the Homemaking and Domestic Science Institute of Eastern Maine. Of course, they almost always do not.
Anyone in HR or management care to mention to what extent “blacklisting” actually happens (other than as a threat)? E.g. is there a big file on the MegaBigCo intranet saying “ZOMG don’t hire any of these wierdos…” and listing people? What are the criteria required to put someone on the list? Do you have to appear before the Blacklist Panel with a petition signed by at least five level 4 managers (or above) referencing a narrative showing good cause as to why the person should not be hired, and a majority vote of the Panel is required to add the name? Are people added to blacklists in a qualified sense, e.g. “Don’t hire this person for sales, IT, or for any position in Kentucky. Other positions OK”?
Is there a marketplace for blacklists? E.g. do companies really buy and sell blacklists from each other?
Not the same, but in the world of politics when people run for public office the press and ones enemies will go over their history with a fine toothed comb looking at anything and everything they ever did so if you were caught smoking pot as a teen, they will try and use it against you.
They said the day after Sarah Palin was nominated for the Republican VP slot over 150 reporters suddenly swarmed into the small town where she was from in Alaska looking for any and all dirt she or any of her family members had ever done in the past.
Are you sure this was the “lie” they blacklisted you for? How would checking your references give them the info that you only wanted a summer job? When someone calls us for a reference check, we are only allowed to give very limited information, and someone’s future plans are not included in that. Now if they had asked you point-blank in the interview whether you were leaving town to go to college and you said nope, staying put, and then they discovered otherwise, then I could see them saying “Don’t darken our door again”. But a reference check shouldn’t have yielded that information.
For what it’s worth, I rarely, if ever, check references at our large defense company when we hire someone because 1) extensive checking is already done for them to have a security clearance coming in the door and 2) anyone who lists references is inevitably going to list people who will give them positive reviews. You can ask for their direct supervisor to be a reference, but that information may not be useful because… 3) So many companies have a fear of lawsuits and specifically require employees to refer any employment inquires to HR who will only tell them “Employee X worked from date 1 through date 2 at our company”.
At best, if you’re lucky, some HR people will give you a hint as to the quality of their work if you ask “are they eligible for re-hire” and they say “no”.
As such, I highly doubt any company is keeping a legitimate “black list”. The simple existence of one is probably illegal in states like California as being discriminatory (and doubly so if the employee is actually black 
). Besides, such a list might contain generic names (i.e. Robert Smith), and you are very likely to run across several of those in your life in a large city. I’ve been in my current job for three years, and I have come across resumes for people who had the same first and last name, which were different people. Sure, you could differentiate them based on social security number, but if you are keeping a blacklist that contains that information too, I’d say they doubles the odds such a list is illegal.
I once worked for a now defunct dot-com and at sometime a manager had “filed” a letter to the staffing company that the dot-com used. At a later date, several years down the road, they mentioned this to me.
So, if the company you are/have worked for out-sourced HR to a company like this then there might be some deragatory info on you out there. My current company has stated that if you leave without a two-week notice that they will provide negative feedback if someone were to call about you later on.
Hrmm… At one point, there was a company that compiled results like these, kinda like a FICO, and sold the info to prospective employers. The idea was that they doing this en masse woukd save the target company’s HR team the time and hassle. It flopped like so many other dot-coms.
What did they think you lied about, and which reference would have told them about it?
I thought boffking might respond to this, but I would speculate that it was something like along the lines of: He said he would be staying long term, then one of his references said something like “boffking is a fine lad. In fact, he will be attending <university that is some distance away> this fall.”
In other words, they wanted a permanent hire, he said he would be a permanent hire, they discovered he had no intentions of staying permanently.
We have a list of people who have left the company within the last year who aren’t elgible to be hired as employees or contractors until at least 12 months after separation without extenuating circumstances and legal/HR approval, but I wouldn’t call it a blacklist. It’s just company policy.
I figured that was the case, too. If you’re just out of high school chances are you don’t have a lengthy resume. So when the place calls Mrs. Jones who lives down the street from you and whose lawn you’ve been mowing for the last four years, she wants to impress them and says how she is so proud you got into XYZ college. Whoops.
Due to possible liability issues, Human Resource departments really don’t share much official information between companies any longer.
A typical call to check on former employment will involve the following questions:
How long did he work there? To see if it sort of matches the resume.
Is he eligible for rehire? If yes, he left on good terms, if no, he was fired. Nobody gives a shit why you were fired and the former company will not say. It is just a small bit of information for the prospective employer.
The answer to salary questions is, “that is about right.”
That is about it. If a former employer says something that will eliminate the job seeker from new employment that opens up the former employer to possible damages of lost income. There is no blacklisting. Your former employer has no interest in what you do in the future. Preventing you from getting a new job could open up the company to liabilities, and preventing liabilities is the role of HR.
The days when an HR department could call and get actual information about misconduct are passed. HR protects the company, it has no interest in whether you are going to hire a former employee of the company, it is no longer their problem.
And, arguably, an employer has an incentive to encourage shitty ex-employees to work for competitors. No better way to derail the other company’s R&D by making sure they hire the crappiest engineers and most incompetent managers.