So, Mefites, what do you know about employment background checks?
June 19, 2018 8:00 AM Subscribe
Why would it take an so-called "employment background screening" company a month or more to complete a single background check, what exactly do they do, and is there anything I can do to expedite the process?
I applied to a certain company in February of this year, I went in for an interview on May the 18th. It seemed as if I got the job, all I had to do was wait for the results of the drug test and background check, and I would be able to go to orientation in three weeks. At the end of the three week period, the background check was not complete.
What exactly are these people looking for? I gave the company my employment history, a copy of my diploma, and my social security number. I have no criminal record, at all. How complicated could it possibly be? Why would it take five or six weeks or more to complete this process?
I applied to a certain company in February of this year, I went in for an interview on May the 18th. It seemed as if I got the job, all I had to do was wait for the results of the drug test and background check, and I would be able to go to orientation in three weeks. At the end of the three week period, the background check was not complete.
What exactly are these people looking for? I gave the company my employment history, a copy of my diploma, and my social security number. I have no criminal record, at all. How complicated could it possibly be? Why would it take five or six weeks or more to complete this process?
getting hold of court records in places where they're not searchable online and you have to send a specific name search request or even a runner out to the courthouse can take days, and if they didn't start the process right away, that could do it. takes just as long whether there's anything to find or not. confirming education records doesn't usually take long, but they could be waiting on a call-back that's probably very low priority for the person waited on. the people who maintain those kinds of records aren't exactly unhelpful by design but they are very much poor-planning-on-your-part-does-not-constitute-an-emergency-etc. kinds of people in my experience.
also if they contract out the background checks to another company, they pay more for rush work. so if the employer's a big company, maybe they have a standing order for X number of background checks, submitted in batches, with a running three-week deadline, and the subcontractor was backed up and waited a little too long to put in requests. a delay doesn't have to mean they've been checking up on you for three full weeks and aren't done yet, it could mean they just started yesterday.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:14 AM on June 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
also if they contract out the background checks to another company, they pay more for rush work. so if the employer's a big company, maybe they have a standing order for X number of background checks, submitted in batches, with a running three-week deadline, and the subcontractor was backed up and waited a little too long to put in requests. a delay doesn't have to mean they've been checking up on you for three full weeks and aren't done yet, it could mean they just started yesterday.
posted by queenofbithynia at 8:14 AM on June 19, 2018 [5 favorites]
I took a different position within my organization that required a background check and it took over a month. It takes longer the more jurisdictions you have lived in and the more companies you have worked at.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:14 AM on June 19, 2018
posted by Rock Steady at 8:14 AM on June 19, 2018
If you have lived overseas for a period of time they could be trying to get info from there. It's usually very difficult to do that. There are also often delays if verifying employment or education requires more than a phone call to HR or school admin. If they need IRS documentation, for instance, it can take awhile to produce.
I work in a staffing role and most garden-variety situations (life-long American, nothing unuusal on the screening, all verifications easy to get) take only a few days. It's pretty rare, but not unheard of, for something to stretch longer than a couple weeks.
posted by GamblingBlues at 8:17 AM on June 19, 2018
I work in a staffing role and most garden-variety situations (life-long American, nothing unuusal on the screening, all verifications easy to get) take only a few days. It's pretty rare, but not unheard of, for something to stretch longer than a couple weeks.
posted by GamblingBlues at 8:17 AM on June 19, 2018
Probably not helpful for you at the moment, but I have been successful at getting a pre-employment background check to move faster by providing a copy of the last pre-employment background check I got. They should give you a copy of the report when it's done, and if they don't, you can ask for it.
posted by asperity at 9:01 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by asperity at 9:01 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Paperwork can cause delay at the start and end of the process (where the employer first talks to the vendor, or vice versa when the results are generated and delivered.) Also, internal HR workflows can take time.
As GamblingBlues says, if a request goes international, that can extend the duration: someone I wanted to hire had a degree from a university outside the U.S. and confirming that wasted days and days.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:04 AM on June 19, 2018
As GamblingBlues says, if a request goes international, that can extend the duration: someone I wanted to hire had a degree from a university outside the U.S. and confirming that wasted days and days.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:04 AM on June 19, 2018
Just so you appreciate your own situation, it can take 6 months or more to get a background check from the US government.
posted by ubiquity at 9:04 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ubiquity at 9:04 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I used to work at a boutique firm that specialized in backgrounds in the hedge-fund industry.
Our process involved the following:
- verifying every educational credential
- verifying all relevant past employment, including often very detailed (and occasionally very tense!) phone calls with former colleagues/managers
- search of address histories, property records, campaign contributions, voting records, etc.
- court record search, including liens, arrests histories, and any actions (criminal or civil) to which you may have been a party
- credit check
- general "background" check including searches for news stories in which you're featured, social media, websites you might own, etc.
When everything was clicking the whole process would take about a week. However, any one of those steps could end up taking a lot longer. If you have a really common name, the court record searches and newspaper searches could be an absolute nightmare, for instance. Sometimes college records departments can be painfully slow, especially during the summer. Former employers might be reluctant to verify employment of workers when there was drama. Etc.
That said, a month would be about the absolute longest I would expect a check to take (anything longer than a month for an employment verification, for instance, we would simply report as "unverifiable: stated employer refused" or something similar), and anything beyond that would suggest to me that there's a problem: either the background check company sucks and is taking forever, there's been some kind of mix-up or mistake either on their end or your prospective employer's end, or they found something they didn't like and they're trying to figure out how to proceed.
posted by saladin at 9:25 AM on June 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
Our process involved the following:
- verifying every educational credential
- verifying all relevant past employment, including often very detailed (and occasionally very tense!) phone calls with former colleagues/managers
- search of address histories, property records, campaign contributions, voting records, etc.
- court record search, including liens, arrests histories, and any actions (criminal or civil) to which you may have been a party
- credit check
- general "background" check including searches for news stories in which you're featured, social media, websites you might own, etc.
When everything was clicking the whole process would take about a week. However, any one of those steps could end up taking a lot longer. If you have a really common name, the court record searches and newspaper searches could be an absolute nightmare, for instance. Sometimes college records departments can be painfully slow, especially during the summer. Former employers might be reluctant to verify employment of workers when there was drama. Etc.
That said, a month would be about the absolute longest I would expect a check to take (anything longer than a month for an employment verification, for instance, we would simply report as "unverifiable: stated employer refused" or something similar), and anything beyond that would suggest to me that there's a problem: either the background check company sucks and is taking forever, there's been some kind of mix-up or mistake either on their end or your prospective employer's end, or they found something they didn't like and they're trying to figure out how to proceed.
posted by saladin at 9:25 AM on June 19, 2018 [3 favorites]
I had a horrible experience where they wanted every W2 from everything on my resume. Some jobs listed on my resume I wasn’t paid, so I had no W2 (think startup that promised equity if it came to fruition that never did). The background check was overseas so it took longer and was rigid.
It was incredibly frustrating. I had to dig through boxes to find W2s from 7+ years ago. Some companies didn’t respond, for some reason they needed company verification too.
posted by geoff. at 10:56 AM on June 19, 2018
It was incredibly frustrating. I had to dig through boxes to find W2s from 7+ years ago. Some companies didn’t respond, for some reason they needed company verification too.
posted by geoff. at 10:56 AM on June 19, 2018
Best answer: I have regularly had employment/education checks take 3-4 weeks. It depends on how quickly your previous employer (or whatever company they have farmed out their reference check calls to) responds.
If there's a state or federal level background check involved, it depends on the amount of background checks being requested throughout the state, and how backlogged they are. At one point in my state, we were experiencing 6 weeks turnaround for a new background check, 3-4 for just confirming that someone already background checked was still clear and transferring their clearance from their previous employer to us.
It's an unpredictable process because your new employer actually has very little control over it; gathering all the information depends on the cooperation and efficiency of every other organization they are verifying with. Just keep in touch with your employer and let them know you're still planning to come to work!
posted by assenav at 11:05 AM on June 19, 2018
If there's a state or federal level background check involved, it depends on the amount of background checks being requested throughout the state, and how backlogged they are. At one point in my state, we were experiencing 6 weeks turnaround for a new background check, 3-4 for just confirming that someone already background checked was still clear and transferring their clearance from their previous employer to us.
It's an unpredictable process because your new employer actually has very little control over it; gathering all the information depends on the cooperation and efficiency of every other organization they are verifying with. Just keep in touch with your employer and let them know you're still planning to come to work!
posted by assenav at 11:05 AM on June 19, 2018
Best answer: I had a background check held up because I put slightly wrong dates for the time I worked for a temp agency, so the information on my resume didn't match what they got from my employer. Eventually HR asked, I checked records and confirmed that I had screwed it up, I still got the job.
I've also had a reference just not submit forms (even after I asked if they would and made it as easy as humanly possible), and eventually the employer decided that two was good enough.
posted by momus_window at 11:44 AM on June 19, 2018
I've also had a reference just not submit forms (even after I asked if they would and made it as easy as humanly possible), and eventually the employer decided that two was good enough.
posted by momus_window at 11:44 AM on June 19, 2018
If you're in a large city, a police records check can take a long time. In Toronto, my basic record check took about a month. My extended check (vulnerable sector search: I work in a kids' hospital) took seven weeks.
My colleagues hired in smaller cities got the results of these checks over the counter while they waited.
posted by scruss at 11:46 AM on June 19, 2018
My colleagues hired in smaller cities got the results of these checks over the counter while they waited.
posted by scruss at 11:46 AM on June 19, 2018
Have any of the companies you worked at been bought, merged, etc? I had a slow process because of that and had to supply all my previous w2s and even with that I had to call to make sure my uploaded documentation was reviewed in a timely fashion.
posted by typecloud at 12:01 PM on June 19, 2018
posted by typecloud at 12:01 PM on June 19, 2018
Best answer: Do you have a really common name? A name issue (thousands share it on LinkedIn alone) caused a friend's gov't-job background check to drag on for months.
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:14 PM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 1:14 PM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]
I have participated in background checks with several law enforcement agencies. They have taken anywhere from 2 to 6 months. Staffing levels and case loads can have a dramatic effect on this.
posted by ericales at 5:19 PM on June 19, 2018
posted by ericales at 5:19 PM on June 19, 2018
Response by poster: Wow. Thank you for all of your responses. I called the company soon after I posted this question, and apparently my background check is complete. I guess I just have to wait for some poor schmuck to walk my life's story from South Carolina 😆😆😆
posted by jdotglenn at 8:20 AM on June 20, 2018
posted by jdotglenn at 8:20 AM on June 20, 2018
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posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:02 AM on June 19, 2018