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Ask HN: How much employee resume verification is done in practice?

by NewUser76312 on 3/3/25, 5:48 PM with 80 comments

• by PaulHoule on 3/3/25, 6:21 PM

  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.

• by not_your_vase on 3/3/25, 6:10 PM

  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...)

• by nostrademons on 3/3/25, 7:23 PM

  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.

• by dyingkneepad on 3/3/25, 5:57 PM

  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.

• by advisedwang on 3/3/25, 6:21 PM

  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.

• by burner420042 on 3/3/25, 7:33 PM

  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.

• by ChrisMarshallNY on 3/3/25, 6:40 PM

  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.

• by gnopgnip on 3/3/25, 6:44 PM

  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.

• by zabzonk on 3/3/25, 6:27 PM

  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.

• by bigtimesink on 3/3/25, 6:27 PM

  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.

• by throwawayfang98 on 3/3/25, 6:26 PM

  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

• by telotortium on 3/3/25, 6:24 PM

  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.

• by rich_sasha on 3/3/25, 6:51 PM

  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.

• by 1-more on 3/3/25, 7:15 PM

  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.

• by crmd on 3/3/25, 6:30 PM

  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.

• by scarface_74 on 3/6/25, 5:17 PM

  They verified my jobs over the past 5 years.

  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.

• by koakuma-chan on 3/3/25, 6:44 PM

  > 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.

• by turtlebits on 3/3/25, 6:16 PM

  IME, HR does background checks and uses a 3rd party to validate employment history and education. Usually hiring manager or recruiter does reference checks.

• by thorin on 3/11/25, 9:49 PM

  My current employer asked for my degree certificate and I was quite surprised as it was 20yrs since I graduated. They were also quite keen on getting correct start and end dates for jobs. I suspect it's more to do with how process driven the hr department is where you're applying.

• by tombert on 3/3/25, 7:09 PM

  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!

• by smb06 on 3/3/25, 7:15 PM

  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.

• by endlessvoid94 on 3/3/25, 6:46 PM

  At my small company, only reference checks when we're nearly ready to give an offer. For education, never.

• by LinuxBender on 3/3/25, 5:52 PM

  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.

• by bobnamob on 3/3/25, 6:16 PM

  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).

• by wallflower on 3/5/25, 2:50 PM

  If you ever get a full background check done on you by a 3rd party service like First Advantage or Hire Right, please ask for a copy of the full background check if they provide that option. Like several here have said, minor discrepancies like date mismatches will be found and flagged. Having a copy of your corrected background check will be invaluable for future background check requests.

• by tayo42 on 3/3/25, 6:25 PM

  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.

• by cm2012 on 3/7/25, 2:05 PM

  Big companies have HR teams to check, small companies almost never do unless the owner has a special interest in it.

• by NotAnOtter on 3/3/25, 6:18 PM

  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.

• by bradlys on 3/3/25, 7:18 PM

  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.

• by Joel_Mckay on 3/3/25, 7:03 PM

  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

• by BrandoElFollito on 3/4/25, 1:40 PM

  As others said, it depends on the company.

  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.