Background Check/CV

Polarbeary

Okay, first of all, calm down

I work in financial services with 5 year background checks and when I started my new job in banking was the first job I have had, apart from airline background checks where they wanted any gaps over 4 weeks proven!

I once stayed at a job for 2 weeks and left, it's obviously not on my CV and I forgot to put it on my screening form - oops! I also left another temp job off my CV - but put it on the screening form and emailed HR explaining and they were fine.

The background screening company queried my gap between jobs (was only 5 weeks) so I simply apologised for my error, explained that I had left it off and they were fine with that.

KiKi

Employment checks like this are there to verify you've done the roles you say you have; it's highly unlikely they're going to care about a few weeks where you were unemployed, so please calm down!

Also, with regards to your question about who makes a recruitment decision: in any company with good HR, they *support* the business to make the right decision, but they don't make it. Sure, they'll identify issues if they do reference or employment checks, but good HR should be about enabling the line to make the right decision, not making it for them. It's the line who recruit, the line who manage and the line who have to deal with that person in their team, so usually it's the line who have the say and HR will input if appropriate. (Note, I said where there is *good* HR! I work with a few banks, and most of them work in this way.)

Good luck!

ratechaser

Polarbeary wrote: »

Okay, first of all, calm down

I work in financial services with 5 year background checks and when I started my new job in banking was the first job I have had, apart from airline background checks where they wanted any gaps over 4 weeks proven!

I once stayed at a job for 2 weeks and left, it's obviously not on my CV and I forgot to put it on my screening form - oops! I also left another temp job off my CV - but put it on the screening form and emailed HR explaining and they were fine.

The background screening company queried my gap between jobs (was only 5 weeks) so I simply apologised for my error, explained that I had left it off and they were fine with that.

THIS.

As others have said, calm down. I've been in banking for 20 years and have made countless hires in that time. In a situation where there is a discrepancy like this, HR have mentioned it to me, but never unilaterally said 'you can't hire this person', and I've never been concerned if it was someone that I wanted to hire.

This definitely comes under the 'minor oversight' category, whatever your actual motivation.

Neno86k

Hi all.
I have a similar issue at the moment. I went through a 2 stage interview process, got dragged through 2 months of screening only to be dropped at the last second because of a ‘discrepancy’ between my screening form and my CV. My discrepancy was as follows: I wrote down one extra AS level on my screening form compared to my CV so I went into more detail and they said that’s ‘dishonest’ bearing in mind I’ve been open and honest about absolutely everything including defaults on my credit report which due to my honesty they were happy to overlook. Might be worth mentioning the ‘discrepancy’ was from my education 15 years ago and wasn’t even about a grade. It was literally cos i wrote down more subjects on my screening form than my CV. In addition to this my current employer didn’t renew their contract with me because they knew I’d been offered a job permanently with a competitor so I’m jobless for the first time in 11 years.

I had to fight for an appeal with a lady who couldn’t care less and the result of that appeal will be shared on Monday.

Thought I’d put my experience here incase it could help anyone and avoid someone else feeling as disheartened and desperate as me.