But I'm curious in practice how much actual employee resume verification is done? Do people even check if they've graduated the colleges they say they have, or have evidence of employment of somewhere they've noted down? What about job titles?
I'm also wondering how thorough current FAANG-type companies are. This topic came to mind after seeing a 'resume prank' video where someone came up with a ridiculous and troll-ish resume (with rude and offensive jokes in the bullet points), but had 'Stanford', 'Amazon', etc, and so he got about 30 out of 100 interviews applying to top (US) tech companies. Is this fakery something that would get someone caught further down the line perhaps?
Just been very curious how this all works in practice lately. I've done some hiring in the past and typically I'll just call contact references (who I can't even ensure are real people tbh). Of the few times I've requested a transcript, I take it at face value and have no way of telling if it's doctored.
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.
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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.
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...
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.