How to Survive the Employment Background
Check
If you leave your job under negative
circumstances, can your ex-employer reveal it during
employment background checks?
If you're not sure what a background check might
reveal about you, then be proactive and do one on yourself
just to be safe. Click Here!
In some U.S. states, most of what rightfully
belongs in your personnel file is not confidential. For
example, in California, only medical information (e. g.,
physical exams) is confidential. Additionally, you might
have signed a release form when you hired on, authorizing
your employer to give out employment-related information
about you, without consequence. Even if you didn't sign
such a form, it might be in a policy manual and you
likely agreed in some way, shape or form to abide by
company policies. (Some states consider policy manuals as
binding, implied contracts.) Similarly, your prospective
employers might require you to sign releases authorizing
them to collect information about you during background
checks. As if all that isn't enough to put you on edge,
states are starting to pass laws that allow employers to
speak more candidly during employment background checks,
without the risk of defamation lawsuits.
Still, you might be able to relax. It's not so
much what employers can say, as it is what they're
willing to risk saying. In many states, the laws
related to employment background checks allow you to sue,
if your ex-employer intentionally states false or
misleading information that prevents you from landing a
job. However, employers are still hesitant to even state
the truth, because former employees might try to sue
anyway. It's a burden of proof thing and it costs
employers to go to or stay out of court. Even if
employers are in the clear, they risk worker-bee juries
siding with the "little people" against the "big, bad,
corporate giants."
You have other things on your side, too. Not
every employer has legal eagles on staff, who can
correctly interpret the laws. Therefore shy away from the
complexities or are just plain naive about what they can
legally say. There are plenty of nightmarish lawsuit
myths and rumors floating around, too. As a result, all
but the bravest employers play it safe and try to avoid
background-check legalities in the first
place.
If your ex-employer plays it safe, they will
give out only scant information, such as your name, rank
and serial number. The typical equivalents for employment
background checks are listed below.
-
Dates or confirmation of
employment
-
Job titles held
-
Final salary, but some employers won't give
that out unless you authorize it in
writing
-
Other "safe" facts, such as
company-sponsored training classes you
attended
But, there's always a but.
Employers face yet another lawsuit dilemma,
which might make them more willing to spill the beans
about you. Laws in some states permit employers to sue
other employers, if during employment background checks,
they omit or lie about serious employee acts, especially
if the employees again commit the same or similar acts on
the job. Employers might also get sued for "negligent
hiring" if they don't screen employees through background
checks, and someone suffers injury because of it. Two
rather serious examples are convicted child molesters
working with children and substance abusers working in
the transportation industry.
So far, we’ve focused on employment background
checks only at the company HR level. Painfully honest or
spiteful former coworkers, supervisors and managers are
another matter. Some HR departments try to further limit
their risk, by issuing guidelines that instruct employees
in the do's and don'ts of former-employee background
checks. The "do's" are typically along the lines of name,
rank and serial number, as mentioned earlier. The
"don'ts" might instruct employees to reveal nothing and
let the HR department handle background checks.
Unfortunately, not every company is diligent about
limiting background checks at the employee level. Worse,
not every employee reads, remembers or adheres to the
guidelines anyway. Regardless, HR might allow employees
to speak candidly with company-authorized employment
agencies and background investigators.
Professional investigators who offer employment
background checks know that employers might be fearful of
lawsuits, so they cleverly phrase questions to reveal
volumes while limiting risk. For example, instead of
asking, "Why did this person leave your company?" they
might ask, "Would you hire this person back?" A vague,
evasive or simple "No" answer doesn't reveal much in the
way of potentially libelous information, but the
investigative minds will read between the
lines.
Prospective employers are always going to want
to check on where you worked in the past. Checking your previous
employment locally do a lot easier to do been checking
and another state or another country. Sometimes you can put
down that you worked in another country. Well one of the easiest
ways to deceive a prospective employer is to put down the
work for company that went out of business. Now don't be too
obvious about this. If you write down that
three of your six past employers are out of business,
some red flags will pop up. It'll know right away
either you're a liar, or you jinx companies. Another way of doing
this is to list the right employer that you work for but
to write down a different division department or
section. By
putting a grain of truth in your resume and makes it less
likely that you will be caught.
Writing down that you're self-employed is
another easy way of getting around an imperfect
past. Since
your prospective employer can’t check your references
he'll have to depend on other ways of finding out the
validity of your resume.
8) 25 things that will raise red flags to
a prospective employer
1.
A dated employment that all starts and ends on exact
beginning of the multi year why January 1st December 1st
so on so forth.
2. You can take a company
that has recently merge with another big company and say
that you're applying records were lost a in the merge which
is very common occurrence. When companies merge, many
personnel departments that maintain the records are laid of
and keeping things together as a result can get
confusing.
Therefore if you can write down that your previous employer
merged with another corporation, and there’s been some delay
in getting your records or verification, you can buy
yourself sometime.
3.
Another good way of putting down that you had experience
is to saying that you are a volunteer
somewhere.
That way you don't have to produce any paychecks or W-2s.
Call around town to volunteer organizations and find out
if there are any departments that might have people with
skill sets that you're interviewing for. The American Red Cross
s has a history of using computer
programmers.
It's highly likely that you can put them down on your
resume that you did work there. It’s an easy way for you
to add some experience on your resume but powerful
because you did the work for free makes you look like a
damn good person.
4.
If you're going to write down that you're self-employed
don't get too carried away about all the skills the job
you had all a wonderful experience. Remember, if they feel
that you're too good to be true their red flags will pop
up into my start to dig deeper or doubt your whole
resume. If
you write that you were self-employed keep it basic, and
keep it believable.
5.
On the older jobs you held, feel free to put down
references and positions that are completely made up,
since many people do retire often out of the older
companies.
6.
Make sure that the company that you say you worked for in
the past it is similar business of the line that you're
hiring for now are trying to get a job for and
now. Human
resources people generally prefer hiring prospective
candidates that came from a similar industry from similar
companies even competitive companies
preferably.
Therefore if you’re making up a company that you
supposedly worked for, make sure that you pick
a company
that they feel is similar to the one you’re interviewing
for.
7. Don't be too carried away in use references
or supervisors that no have forwarding address or aren't
reachable.
Human resources people will smell a rat and start digging
deeper into your resume. Try to avoid doing this
if at all possible. If you're going to use
bogus references, it's OK to have one or two who are no
longer reachable. Preferably, have a few
friends in place who will give stellar recommendations
for you.
Here are more red flags pulled DIRECTLY from a
US Government Guide to Hiring Practices fro Government
Employees:
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