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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

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.

weinzierl 2y ago
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.
- muzani 2y ago
  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.
VirusNewbie 2y ago
that's weird, usually they let you verify other ways by showing tax returns or something. At one point for Verizon I had to prove I did 1099 work for a company and had to show bank deposits from the LLC! (With amounts redacted).
ctkhn 2y ago
had something like this happen for two of the roles, the verification contractor was put on hold by hr and then never followed up and marked my internship jobs as false. had to call them up personally to get it fixed
ahel 2y ago
welcome to the real world where no one does a good job and everyone is more or less impacted.

weinzierl 2y ago

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.

muzani 2y ago
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.

VirusNewbie 2y ago

that's weird, usually they let you verify other ways by showing tax returns or something. At one point for Verizon I had to prove I did 1099 work for a company and had to show bank deposits from the LLC! (With amounts redacted).

ctkhn 2y ago

had something like this happen for two of the roles, the verification contractor was put on hold by hr and then never followed up and marked my internship jobs as false. had to call them up personally to get it fixed

ahel 2y ago

welcome to the real world where no one does a good job and everyone is more or less impacted.