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...)

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.

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.

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.

Source: I've worked at a couple unicorns, 2 FAANGS, current Meta eng, all did full 10-year lookback background checks

At my current gig (SWE at a big corporate place) they outsourced all verification to another company who verified my employment and college enrollment was when I said it was.

Job 1 was hard to verify because my company used a PEO (https://www.adp.com/resources/articles-and-insights/articles...). It’s basically Corporation as a Service. Where you are “co-employed” by the PEO for purposes of health insurance, payroll management, taxes, etc. Bit for everything else the company is your employer.

That means IRS statements and your W2 show you working for companies like Insperity or Rippling (a YC company) even though that’s not the company you worked for.

The company I did work for had been acquired. Luckily, I’m still friends with the CTO of the startup even though he had moved on. I sent the background check company his LinkedIn profile and phone number.

The next company was Amazon and they use TheWorkNumber.

The next company I could verify by doing some type of OAUTH between the background checking company and my company’s payroll provider.

Previously, I’ve been able to log into the IRS website and get old W2 information to verify employment.

I think it's because they don't actually read your resume, and it's just about SEO optimization.

So at least one company does check.

[1] I do have a completed bachelors now...honest!

It depends where you are applying. FinTech and related fields will most certainly review background checks including contacting your college and verifying your high school diploma, criminal history and much more. This is not just best practice, these companies have a requirement to perform these steps and in some cases have B2B contracts and SOC1/2 requirements stating that background checks are performed on all full time employees and any contractor that has access to customer data.

It becomes more hit-and-miss in the other tech companies you mentioned as all the companies you mentioned have third party relationships with FinTech. Some departments will do all the same background checks and will otherwise do basic background checks that may catch lies on your college or high school statements and employment history.

TL;DR Just stick with the facts on your CV and do not volunteer too much information that may lead to more digging in the same spirit of everything dyingkneepad said.

Resume fraud is prosecutable in plenty of jurisdictions as well (Australia and the UK at the very least).

I mean it's not like we're studying the resume and looking for inconstancies. Generally I just picked one specific line, one specific claim, and drilled into it. I generally want to give you a chance to do the whole "STAR" thing, but about some specific technical you claim to be one of your biggest wins.

I never have (or have done to me) called any of the references. That feels like a step too invasive for a generic senior engineer gig. Maybe for management I would care more, but I don't interview for or apply to those.

Re: 'resume prank', I generally consider a fancy college to be a detractor. It mostly shows your parents drilled you in highschool, and not much else. It's basically a moot point.

Some of these systems are relatively automated but almost every company uses a third party. Very few employers will do the phone calls themselves. If you worked at small startups, they will often call the CEO's personal phone number. So, you'll need to tell them to pick up the phone. They will verify things like title and dates you were employed.

I've had five different employer in the valley. Personal references never got called - which I always found funny. Some places wanted references before they even gave you an offer! Those guys are a waste of time, btw. They always sent insane low ball offers. Like if you said your minimum was $200k/yr salary in the first interview, they'd send you an offer for $150k/yr. I was floored at such idiotic behavior. You went from having little chance because I was using you for practice anyway to literally zero.

However, lying to people is generally a bad idea, as it can get you in a lot of trouble later in some places. Verification is often still done via employment records, school credit/diploma stamped copies, contract investigators, and psychological profiling.

Some jobs have very invasive screening processes, and will dig into your personal life beyond what most feel is justified. Some places do credit checks, court record searches, family interviews, mental health history checks, and drug tests.

Some people do glean resumes off social media to spoof credentials, but are often ejected from the building in less than a day. On rare occasion, the truly incompetent ended up in court for contract breach.

Crazy people try unethical things all the time... and statistically one will meet a few eventually. Generally, people that shoulder a lot of responsibility do not like getting conned, and get very good at spotting sociopaths. =3

It also depends on the country, what you can ask and get varies wildly depending on the place.

I always found refernces to be ridiculous. I never ptovide any and one company that asked got on touch with my good friends (ex-coworkers or not) whi explained that I was the nest Jesus, with an incredible background in technology and management skills that would make Trump pale in comparison.

They wanted to talk with my prevous boss but, what a shame, it is illegal here. They would have had good feedback as well, though not new religion grade as the ones they got (and they told me that they were great).

I did less great on IQ tests where I ranked between a chair and a fly but apparently this did not matter after all.