Can Federal Background Check Find Employment History

Questions and Answers, Groundwork Checks

Can a Groundwork Check Reveal By Employers?

Can a Background Check Reveal Past Employers or Job History?

Information technology's a fact: job seekers frequently lie on their resumes. According toa 2017 surveyconducted by executive search firm OfficeTeam, 46 percent of workers know someone who has lied on a resume. When the company concluding asked this question in 2011, just 21 percent of respondents said that they knew a resume liar.

While these lies can appear on whatsoever role of a resume, including in the teaching section, the OfficeTeam survey institute that the two almost common forms of resume dishonesty concern by employers: job experience and job duties or responsibilities.

The trend of resume fabrication puts employers in a challenging position. About hiring decisions are grounded in employment history and past job experience. Employers are often looking for individuals whose work histories reverberate a pre-existing power to perform the job at hand. If candidates are lying most their by jobs—whether by embellishing task responsibilities, tweaking position titles to make them audio more impressive, or fabricating jobs—how can employers make informed decisions about who to hire?

What a Background Check Can See

Resume lies tin can frequently leave hiring managers asking 1 key question: tin a background check prove previous employers and other details about a candidate's job history?

The simple respond is no. A groundwork check cannot return a list or database of the jobs that a professional has held over the years. Most pre-employment background check services are geared toward uncovering public record data, such as criminal record information, driving records, and credit history. While vital to the hiring process, details such as teaching or employment history are non part of the public tape in the same style as a felony conviction. Instead, records detailing an private'due south work history are held by the employers that hired them.

While employment background checks don't source lists of places where a candidate has worked, groundwork screening companies tin can assist employers in detecting and identifying resume dishonesty. The expert news is that employers typically don't demand a background search that tin can pull together a listing of a candidate'south erstwhile employers: the candidate has likely self-provided that listing while filling out a job awarding or submitting a resume.

A background bank check tin verify the information provided in the "Work History" section of a candidate's resume. At backgroundchecks.com, we offer an employment verification background bank check. By contacting the employers that a candidate lists on their resume, we can help hiring managers make up one's mind which data on the resume is true and which might fall into the category of "resume lies."

Using our employment history verification production, employers tin can share data provided by applicants about past jobs or employment opportunities. backgroundchecks.com investigators and then contact the companies or employers listed on a resume to verify crucial details. These details might include chore titles, employment dates (both start and end dates), and job responsibilities. If a candidate has fabricated or embellished parts of their piece of work history, our verification check volition uncover those lies.

In some cases, an employment verification background check will too include the applicant's reason for leaving their previous job or their eligibility to be rehired by the same company. Nevertheless, note that erstwhile employers will not always be willing to discuss these details in the class of a routine work history check.

Work history verifications differ from reference checks, in that the goal is non necessarily to collect information about a candidate's work ethic, character, integrity, or other details that speak to their ability to perform the job at hand. Request about these details is generally a more than subjective pursuit than verifying signal-of-fact information such as employment dates or titles.

Employers can exist sued for defamation if they speak negatively about a past employee, unless they tin dorsum upward or show the things that they say with bear witness. As a result, 60 minutes managers will typically focus on verifying or denying objective facts about past employees and avoid tiptoeing into subjective judgments.

Employers wishing to explore more subjective opinions of a worker's job performance, dependability, character, and power should make a point of performing professional reference checks. When a candidate provides a list of past bosses, colleagues, or other individuals to speak on their behalf, hiring leaders tin can contact those individuals to discuss other matters. At that place is tacit permission from the candidate for both parties—the professional reference and the prospective employer—to hash out the candidate in significant detail.

backgroundchecks.com can as well perform reference checks on your behalf alongside criminal record screenings and task history background checks. We also offer two other verification checks for education history and professional licenses if at that place are other parts of an bidder's resume that you lot would like to bank check for validity.

Job seekers volition sometimes invent college degrees, lie almost professional person licenses or certifications, or otherwise stretch the truth on facets of their resumes. Verification background checks can put all the details provided on a resume under a microscope to permit prospective employers know whether they can safely rent a candidate based on a resume.

What If I Forget to List a Job?

If yous are a task seeker, you have a significant chore in front end of you when assembling a resume. There is an art to crafting a perfect resume, and it's precisely that challenge that prompts some candidates to be tempted to stretch the truth.

The primary purpose of resumes is for employers to identify, at a quick glance, which applicants are all-time suited for a office. The purpose of resumes for job applicants is to get noticed past the employer. While these priorities overlap harmoniously in many cases, they tin clash if a candidate'southward way of getting noticed is adopting flashy job titles, lying about skills or qualifications, or committing other instances of resume dishonesty.

With that said, there is another reason why a job seeker might "lie" on their resume: omission. Perhaps, while putting together your resume, you forget to list a job that yous held for six months more than 5 years ago. Alternatively, possibly you are deeper into your career and can't find space for your entire professional history without exceeding the usual limit of i page for your resume. In either example, you could present a resume that is missing jobs you have held in the by.

The first question that job seekers oftentimes ask is whether prospective employers can run a background check that identifies any past jobs they did not list on their resume. The respond is no: there is no fundamental database that compiles a list of everywhere that you accept worked in your life. So, if you exclude one past job from your resume, that doesn't hateful your hiring managing director is immediately going to find that information and enquire why you left information technology out of your resume.

However, realize that employers do pay attention to hiring and departure dates when reviewing resumes. If yous forget to listing a job or willfully exclude one, and doing and then leaves a notable gap in your work history, that gap may raise some alarm bells for the employer. If a gap in your job history is long enough, it might cause a hiring managing director to wonder whether y'all are hiding a red flag—such as a piece of work engagement that ended badly. Alternatively, the hiring manager might draw conclusions about your motivation and piece of work ethic if they presume that you were out of work for months or years at a time.

Worries well-nigh the implications of resume gaps are another factor that sometimes leads job seekers to stumble into resume lies. While applying for jobs, information technology'southward not uncommon for a candidate to eliminate gaps from their resume simply by proverb that they worked at a previous chore for a few months longer or started a subsequent position a few months earlier.

While these seemingly small resume "adjustments" might seem harmless, endeavour not to be tempted by them. Employment verifications can and volition flag these resume lies, and most employers will be far more suspicious that you lied on your resume than they would take been nigh a three-month gap betwixt jobs.According to a recent study by ResumeLab, 65 per centum of candidates caught lying on their resumes were either butterfingers from hiring consideration or fired from jobs they already held.

Ultimately, if yous forget to list a chore on your resume—or choose non to list a task due to infinite concerns or lack of relevance to the career opportunity—effort to be every bit honest about information technology every bit possible. Be accurate with your job history dates, and answer candidly if the hiring manager asks you in your interview why in that location are gaps in your resume.

Another strategy is to keep a full business relationship of your professional history on LinkedIn but to curate your resume so that yous are listing but iii to five key jobs from that history. This approach gives yous more space to delve into the parts of your employment history that you lot feel are most impressive or most relevant to the job at hand while leaving an easy way for employers to get a fuller moving picture of the jobs that you accept held over the years.

Familiarize Yourself with Your Employment History

The other benefit of building a LinkedIn contour spanning your entire career is that it allows y'all to familiarize yourself with the consummate telescopic of your employment history. This process is a smart foundational footstep for resume writing. Taking the time to reflect on where yous have worked, the positions that y'all have held, and the dates for each employment engagement reduces the risk of accidentally incorporating inaccuracies into your resume. It as well provides you with an opportunity to think critically virtually how to best present yourself to a prospective employer.

Where in your career did you receive promotions, job title changes, or other mid-job shifts that y'all should note on your resume? Which jobs that you've worked over the years are the closest match with the job responsibilities and qualifications of the position that you are seeking now? How can y'all spotlight your work history in a fashion that volition go a hiring manager'south attention withouttelling a single lie or exaggeration? Spending a few days familiarizing yourself with your professional person history will help y'all answer all these questions, and it will give you the tools that y'all need to put together the all-time resume possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do background checks show employment history?

Technically, no background bank check will ever show a candidate'south history of past jobs. The most common background cheque that employers run is a criminal history search. This search will uncover conviction records, but it won't provide a record of where the candidate has worked over the years.

The type of background check that employers apply to check professional history is an employment verification check. This check takes the work history that a task candidate discloses on their resume or job awarding and checks the data for falsehoods or inaccuracies.

How practise groundwork check companies verify employment history?

An employment verification check involves contacting the previous employers listed on a candidate's resume and asking them to verify the accuracy of key pieces of information that the candidate provided. Specifically, the groundwork check company will ask about positions and titles, dates of employment, task responsibilities, salaries, reason(south) that the candidate left the job, and eligibility for rehire. The groundwork check visitor will then deliver a report to the hiring manager detailing any discrepancies between the candidate's resume and the information that its team gleaned through the verification procedure.

Can you lot lie about employment history?

While information technology is possible to prevarication well-nigh employment history on a resume or job application, that doesn't make it a smart idea. Employers desire to know that they are hiring a qualified candidate, but they also desire to hire someone they can trust. Even a minor prevarication on a resume—such as an exaggerated task title—breaches that trust before it begins to form. A task history verification process tin can easily disprove lies on a resume , making it particularly risky to exist dishonest about past work.

Can an employer know your employment history?

Employers can require job candidates to submit to a variety of pre-employment background checks, including employment history verifications. A hiring manager must first notify you of their intent to conduct a background check and get your express written permission to keep with the bank check.

These requirements are stipulated in the Off-white Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and failure to comply tin leave employers vulnerable to lawsuits. However, if a prospective employer asks you to corroborate a work history check and y'all refuse, they tin dismiss y'all from hiring consideration.

Michael Klazema

About Michael Klazema The author

Michael Klazema is Principal Marketing Technologist at EY-VODW.com and has over two decades of experience in digital consulting, online production direction, and technology innovation. He is the lead author and editor for Dallas-based backgroundchecks.com with a focus on human resource and employment screening developments.