Background check - legal question

Kayce

Hi All,

I received and accepted a job offer and am currently going through the background check. While I have done background checks in the past, this one stands out as they are asking for contact details of all managers within the last 7 years of employment (even-though the recruitment agency is only asking for 2 references). I've already reached out to the recruiters, who said that I should just enter the two references and mark all other periods as unemployed (even though I wasn't unemployed during those times). Which I did, but now the company performing the background check is asking me to provide a statement of fact concerning the periods of "unemployment", including the reason for unemployment and to manually sign it. My question is, whether creating such a document, which would basically be a lie, could cause any sort of legal repercussions in relation to this company or anything else?

Maybe Im overthinking it, but I feel uneasy about signing something that isn't factual...

Any advice would be appreciated!
Kayce

_Brian

Yea, you would be starting employment based on a solid document signed as a lie.

If found out anytime it could lead to termination of employment.

Kayce

_Brian wrote: »

Yea, you would be starting employment based on a solid document signed as a lie.

If found out anytime it could lead to termination of employment.

I thought it might.. Isn't it weird though, that the recruitment agency is basically instructing me to lie (instead of correcting how my profile for the background check is setup)?

Jim2007

You are obviously going for a position where background checks are taken very seriously, possible a financial institution or similar... these days most of these institutions do business internationally and as such must comply with the laws in all countries where they do business and in many of those countries background checks are mandatory and much more detailed that what you might normally experience. They are usually carried out by ex-police types who know their stuff.

Your agencies advice was incredibly dumb to say the least, presumably the background check now no longer matches the resume they submitted... which is probably why they are seeking the statement of fact - to give you an opportunity to double down on the lie. You can also expect that it will be fact checked by the company - they would not have asked for it otherwise.

I honestly don't know how you can roll this one back. You will obviously have to admit to the lie... but how to explain it: if you say you did what the agent told you, you will appear easily led or liar if the agent disowns you, if you say just did not want them to check, they'll want to know why..

Do you have any contacts with the client company that might be approachable?

Kayce

Jim2007 wrote: »

You are obviously going for a position where background checks are taken very seriously, possible a financial institution or similar... these days most of these institutions do business internationally and as such must comply with the laws in all countries where they do business and in many of those countries background checks are mandatory and much more detailed that what you might normally experience. They are usually carried out by ex-police types who know their stuff.

Your agencies advice was incredibly dumb to say the least, presumably the background check now no longer matches the resume they submitted... which is probably why they are seeking the statement of fact - to give you an opportunity to double down on the lie. You can also expect that it will be fact checked by the company - they would not have asked for it otherwise.

I honestly don't know how you can roll this one back. You will obviously have to admit to the lie... but how to explain it: if you say you did what the agent told you, you will appear easily led or liar if the agent disowns you, if you say just did not want them to check, they'll want to know why..

Do you have any contacts with the client company that might be approachable?

Thanks for your reply!

I do have the email thread of the recruitment agent advising me to put it down as unemployed.. however, this morning I not only received an email from the company performing the background check to provide the statement of fact as mentioned above but also an email from a different person in the same recruitment agency asking for proof of why I was unemployed... honestly, the whole thing seems so unprofessional to me, like they have really bad communication between themselves and like more hassle than the job is worth.. more than anything I dont want to sign a document that is an outright lie..

Unfortunately I dont have a contact in the actual company, everything has been going through the recruitment agency..

OMM 0000

Recruiters are sales people, tend to not be the brightest, so following their advice was risky!

Personally I would not lie on the background check.

If you can't find the contact details of some of the managers, just tell them that.

I can barely even remember the names of some of my previous managers.