Ask HN: How much employee resume verification is done in practice?
We all know that it's commonplace to 'put your best foot forward' on resumes as an employee, and sometimes this can lead into bending the truth a little bit.
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.
My Aunt Ruth(less) attempted to murder her mentally retarded sister with insulin and did time. Later on she applied for a job at a nursing home and failed to check the box about prior felony convictions. Got the job anyway. My father-in-law was in the hospital at the time and we were terrified when Ruth, who was visiting, changed his IV.
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.
To be fair, there is a LOT of turnover in construction, which is probably why.
Why would more turnover imply more reference-checking?
They've been burned more times and therefore do more investigation to keep that from happening in the future
At some places they took my word for everything.
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...)
Do you know what a full background check shows?
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.
I once failed to get hired by an F100 company because of that last sentence. It was a small business that had gone under after a few years after I moved away.
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.
> Calling all of your previous employers will get them your dates of employment and nothing else.
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.
We're not talking about references. We're talking about potential employers calling the companies listed on your resume to verify your employment history, either as part of the interview process or as part of a background check.
> Eh, HR at previous employers might share whether you were a problem employee.
HR departments are trained to say exactly two things: whether or not the person worked there and the person's dates of employment. Anything else can result in a lawsuit.
Okay, so he got the interviews, but did he pass them?
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.
I'm curious about this more from an employer's perspective, especially as a smaller operation (contracting firm).
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...
On the technical side, if you have actually worked with certain stuff you will have gone through certain experiences that everybody else has gone through. Some tools are absolutely necessary but horrible to work with in certain ways. Some libraries are a pain in the back to use, but are unavoidable. Compiling certain components may be a huge pain.
Stupid example: the person claims they know CSS, and you bring up the subject of aligning a div for the first time.
Ironically, for some roles (more on the people and marketing side), a candidate that managed to convincingly act out a fabricated employment history would be demonstrating the very skills required for the job they're interviewing for.
I remember telling an interviewer that I could provide links to decades' worth of repos, with full, high-Quality source code for multiple shipping apps, and very detailed checkin history. I could also reference Web sites, with many years' worth of extremely well-written blog entries and tutorial series.
I was told they weren't going to look at it, because I "probably faked it."
It was at that point, that I realized that no one wanted me, and I gave up looking. I guess that I could have said that if I had been able to fake that stuff, they should hire me right away, because I'm a leet wizard, but I'm sure they said that, to evoke exactly the reaction they got, and I was better off, not working there.
I won't go, where I'm not wanted.
Google verifies with a third-party background check service, but the service fucked up my resume. I had an employer that had since gone bankrupt (actually, all my employers besides Google have since gone bankrupt), and they couldn't find the business, so they just did the closest string match to the business name, which happened to be a local grocery store whose name was one letter off. Sure enough, I come back as never having worked there, because that's not the company I wrote on my resume, doofus.
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.
I think it is a risk reward thing for the background check services. False negatives do not nearly hurt them as much as false positives. They are incentivized to process candidates quickly and must limit the time they work on each profile. Doing deeper and time-intensive research has not benefit for them, so they find a plausible reason to put laborious profiles in the bad pile.
What you call lazy and incompetent is probably a system working as intended where the collateral damage is accepted approvingly.
Personally I don't like applying to these companies because the false negative rates makes it feel like a lottery. I'd rather just do the other lottery and start a business.
When verification is done, it's typically right before making an offer. So getting interviews with a fake resume doesn't tell you anything about getting past verification.
Agree, I've actually seen it done after the offer most frequently - I'm guilty of this too as a hiring manager - the offer always has a mention of background checks being a contingency. It's like buying a house, no point in doing inspections until you have an executed offer that both parties agree to.
I think that many established corporations, these days, outsource verification, and the background check companies can get very deep. I have heard of them returning massive dossiers, with social media posts, etc.
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.
> and another company wanted my Facebook login (and password).
"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.
Yup.
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.
Most medium and large employers, employers in an industry with compliance requirements will match your previous employer, dates worked and job title through "the work number"/experian. This happens alongside the criminal background check, credit check. For an entry level role verifying your degree. But that would not happen until after the interview, if it went well.
Curious about the order - I'd think doing semi-automated checks on a CV is much cheaper than an interview, and would work as a filter.
probably costs something for each verification though? Or you have some limit for different plan levels?
Can it possibly cost more than a day or three worth of engineer-hours, depending on how many rounds of interviewing are involved?
In my experience, none. I've worked for several investment banks, financial software companies, education stuff, engineering, consultancy etc. etc. As far as I can tell (referees would have to ask me for permission to release details) , none of the people that hired me ever chased up reference. This is in the UK.
As someone who had a juvenile record I can confirm that companies do background checks. The felony misdemeanor as a minor still followed me for 7 years into adulthood.
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.
Again, "as en European", it seems crazy to me that something you did when you were a minor can still follow you into adulthood.. crazily dystopian
I got a copy of my background check a few times. They contacted my university (who has my graduation date wrong). I'm not sure if they actually contacted previous employers (who usually just confirm start and end dates) or just checked theworknumber. Contacting references is hit-or-miss.
Same experience here, they sent me a copy of my background check with an incorrect graduation date. I don't even know how that would have happened. I have my diploma and transcript but no one asked me about the discrepancy.
Some companies definitely check references. I've had multiple companies contact me as a reference for an applicant and ask for a brief phone call or to write a quick blurb on some website form. Just make sure you ask before listing someone as a reference.
At my last job (Senior SWE at a startup that's been around for 10 years) the company had an interview step after the technical interviews where 1) you the applicant step through your résumé with the Head of Engineering and talk about what you did at each of the jobs on it and what each manager at each place would say about you and 2) afterwards that interviewer calls one manager from each of those jobs (including your current one, but that can be a coworker) and asks what you did there and how you were as an employee. So I found myself having to get contact info for people from 8 years back and then talking to them like I'm a lawyer prepping a witness. Kinda wild.
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.
All my ~software jobs checked every last thing - work places, start and end dates, manager name where available, and education transcripts. No criminal checks involved though.
In my previous companies for most post-screen candidates we would reach out behind the scenes through our personal networks (or worst case via our investors networks getting an intro) to a person with a chain of trust back to us who has worked with the candidate.
> 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.
I think it's because they don't actually read your resume, and it's just about SEO optimization.
Every big company i have worked at (2) didn't really reach out to anyone from my previous job to verify my details. Every startup I've worked at (3, all early stage) did extensive background verification on all my claims. Guess the risk for early stage startups getting a new hire wrong is more pronounced.
IME, HR does background checks and uses a 3rd party to validate employment history and education. Usually hiring manager or recruiter does reference checks.
Yep, for some compliance frameworks like SOC 2, background checks for all new hires is a requirement. A third party service is often used.
At my workplace, we do employment and education verification. We don’t do criminal background checks because it isn’t strictly necessary in our space.
This is my experience as well, although I've also found that some of the companies they hire to do these checks are borderline incompetent.
The last time I had a background check, despite providing the name, address, and phone numbers of past employers to the background check firm, the resulting report indicated in several cases they had instead called unrelated companies in unrelated industries in states I had never lived or worked in. There were no repercussions when those companies (understandably) had never heard for me. Presumably, HR had checked the box that the check was performed, but they didn't actually care about the result.
One of the cases they flagged as "unable to verify employment" was a stint at a company I had founded, where I'm still listed as the LLC manager on my state's business registration website, i.e. a simple Google search for company + my name would have sufficed. (The name of the construction firm in a neighboring state that they repeatedly called instead wasn't even similar.)
At my small company, only reference checks when we're nearly ready to give an offer. For education, never.
FAANG generally will only do background checks at the offer stage, not during interviews. They use various third-party employment verification firms who will generally ask your previous employer for your title and dates of employment. I presume if you were a new graduate they would confirm that you have graduated.
Most FAANG and FAANG adjacents will background check after interviews so you're rolling the dice on getting blacklisted.
Resume fraud is prosecutable in plenty of jurisdictions as well (Australia and the UK at the very least).
google argued with me. a lot. I went to school but didn't graduate. not something they were prepared to deal with. never claimed I had a degree. but the fact that they called the school and the school said I didn't have a degree was a huge red flag.
I did a startup. the year before we were incorporated I was doing prototypes and fund raising. We called the company and you're weren't employed until 20xx, but you listed 20xx-1 as the start date! now you're in trouble.
How much employee resume verification is done in practice?
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.
People put their high school on their CV? Why? I haven't even included my university for most of my career—it just hasn't been relevant.
In a past job, I interviewed someone whose resume was 7 pages long. It included a typing speed contest he won in high school. He was not fresh out of school, he'd been working for about 10 years.
I asked him in the interview if he thought anyone reads all of his lengthy resume, and if he thinks a typing contest from nearly 15 years prior is an important detail for potential employers to know about him. He said he likes to be thorough.
I did not recommend hiring him.
How much did the resume factor into your decision not to hire?
(caveat, this is approaching 20 years ago and memory gets fuzzy)
The interview reflected the resume in many ways. He had experience that aligned to the role. Most questions received extremely long answers that didn't necessarily give me more information than a much shorter one would have...and I say this as someone who prefers to ask open-ended questions that get the candidate talking. It was just endless fluff and exposition that didn't really go anywhere or add anything.
He was nominally qualified, but I could not imagine working with him given how he communicated in his resume and interview. I also didn't want to inflict his communication style on clients, as he would have had to interact with clients directly in the role.
Yes and even if not many companies will ask for this before the interview process even starts. Not every company, just those that have an obligation to do so and sometimes that obligation is self induced when the company was first formed. It can take a long time to remove requirements from contracts and SOC documentation.
[Edit] I should add that I have had candidates that I really wanted to hire but were later rejected for having misinformation on their application form or in their CV. This was in FinTech.
If they're fresh out of college and don't have much experience, it might make sense, especially if they were a top achiever. Or if they are applying for a local small company and want to signal they are from the area.
I'm not sure how common it is, but I know I had a good job offer at Amex rescinded because I lied on my resume about having an Associates Degree [1]. I don't blame them for rescinding it, I had lied about it and I can't really get mad at them just because they found out.
So at least one company does check.
[1] I do have a completed bachelors now...honest!
FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies all use background check agencies. They called all my past employers, wanted transcripts, W2s, paystubs.
Source: I've worked at a couple unicorns, 2 FAANGS, current Meta eng, all did full 10-year lookback background checks
Having been on both sides of the equation, including at FAANG, I would say 'just enough' for it to be disadvantageous to lie.
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.
I had job titles and companies come up flagged as a difference on back ground checks. One time I left off senior on my resume, and a other time it was was becasue i was hired through a contracting agency to work for the company.
Varies on the company. Meta does a relatively thorough background check as of this last year. They verify past employers and other background check stuff using HireRight. If you accept an offer in their NYC office, they do a more extensive background check for some reason. Maybe that kind of background check is outlawed in CA and WA but isn't in NY. I have no idea. I only know cause I've gone through the team match with them. (Don't recommend - never received an offer even after being in team match for 9 months)
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.
In general, many facilities have policies that mean they will not provide references for former employees.
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
>>In general, many facilities have policies that mean they will not provide references for former employees.
We get around that by asking: "Would you hire this person again?" and we get a 80% answer rate. Tells us everything we need to know.
Indeed, anyone "memorable" in an 8000 staff location would indicate drama.
lol =3