Turned down employment because of history

neilio

For any company I've worked for, and I've been involved in several recruitment campaigns, and some of these have had a lot of personnel changes too... all candidates are sifted, with one of the selection criteria being, "has this person worked for the company before, when did they work here and what were the circumstances of leaving?" It's always been pretty simple to find out the answers by talking to HR. I'm just surprised to hear this not happening elsewhere.

Fireflyaway

Even if he were sacked from elsewhere they could take back the offer. Virtually all positions are subject to references / background checks. Its like credit. You may have a great credit score but if ABC bank checks their file and sees you defaulted 10 years ago they could still choose not to trust you again. I'm surprised he applied or at least didn't mention the incident and try to explain he has changed etc. If not mentioned on his application his reason for leaving, that could be deemed deception and be enough not to get hired.

Mersey_2

d) gives rise to a potential claim for loss of opportunity in normal circumstances.


But I agree with others. 'If' he was dismissed [it's not totally clear whether he resigned on threat of dismissal], why did he apply here AND why didn't they notice prior to offering him a position?

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Mersey wrote: »

d) gives rise to a potential claim for loss of opportunity in normal circumstances.

On the withdrawal of a job offer owing to unsatisfactory references? Does it?

Malthusian

I don't think it's inconceivable that a company could lose its records of an old employee who hadn't worked there for 10 years. Or that they may have still had a record of a John Smith but wouldn't know whether it was the same John Smith who was applying now.

Companies change their record systems, or they get taken over and their systems get merged onto other systems, or records get lost or destroyed.

For the same reason I don't share the surprise that someone may chance an application to a different job in the same company, hoping that all had been forgotten.

That said, I can understand someone applying to a company where ten years ago they had committed a hideous error or punched their boss at the Christmas party and been sacked for gross misconduct, hoping it had all been forgotten and forgiven. Where it falls down for me is that this was after at least four offences of some kind. (Two verbal warnings + written warning + whatever the final straw was that brought the sack.) Under those circumstances I would just stay away from the place because it seems too unlikely that all the records and all of the people who remembered would be gone. I certainly wouldn't accept a job offer when I had others on the table.

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Malthusian wrote: »

I don't think it's inconceivable that a company could lose its records of an old employee who hadn't worked there for 10 years. Or that they may have still had a record of a John Smith but wouldn't know whether it was the same John Smith who was applying now.

Companies change their record systems, or they get taken over and their systems get merged onto other systems, or records get lost or destroyed.

For the same reason I don't share the surprise that someone may chance an application to a different job in the same company, hoping that all had been forgotten.

That said, I can understand someone applying to a company where ten years ago they had committed a hideous error or punched their boss at the Christmas party and been sacked for gross misconduct, hoping it had all been forgotten and forgiven. Where it falls down for me is that this was after at least four offences of some kind. (Two verbal warnings + written warning + whatever the final straw was that brought the sack.) Under those circumstances I would just stay away from the place because it seems too unlikely that all the records and all of the people who remembered would be gone. I certainly wouldn't accept a job offer when I had others on the table.

The warnings could easily have all been for poor performance, which I would have thought was easier to forgive and forget, if they had a good ten year work record since, than punching the boss.

As far as the company not knowing goes, I don't find this surprising at all - it depends on the kind of job. If it's the kind of job where you get hundreds of applications and HR sift them, then maybe. The kind of jobs I interview for we get very few applicants - we don't really get applicants at all, they go out to employment agencies who then contact people individually - and there wouldn't be any HR involvement until after we had arranged an interview and made a job offer.