When I discovered this tactic, I had legitimate reasons to mislead employers about my work history. I had worked at a number of startups – which you would think would make you more hirable – but recruiters hated it. I also had a gap on my resume that I had to hide. To avoid mentioning any of this, I needed a way to claim that I was working for a completely fabricated company, role, and title – and yet still pass the background check.
Additionally, I started working multiple jobs at the same time (aka “overemployment”) for two years. The issue for me was getting Job #2 or Job #3 without informing the prospective employer about my current job.
If you are interested in working multiple jobs at the same time, be sure to read how to prepare for background checks with OverEmployment.
Let’s say you want to have a role of “Director of IT” at McDonald’s Corp. You can start telling employers tomorrow that you worked at the company, and they will never be able to prove it wrong.
In the below blog post, I’ll explain the vulnerability that companies created for themselves for this to work, and then provide you guidance on how to do this yourself.
If you have concerns about the “morality” of lying in an interview, we recommend reading our post about how ethics in business are different than your personal life.
How Employers did this to Themselves
I personally think it’s crazy that employers have used staffing agencies to find lower-wage employees, but that’s been the trend over the last 10 years. And that’s your key to hijack the verification process.
The trick here is that for large companies, and sometimes even firms with 100-250 employees, much of their company’s hiring comes through staffing agencies. So it’s expected that although you worked at McDonald’s, you actually got paid by Wipro or whatever staffing company. That staffing company handles your benefits, pays you, is your direct report, handles your raises, and keeps all records for you. McDonald’s has no record that you worked for them, even if you actually did. And a job verification check would never go to McDonald’s to verify your employment.
Therefore, in order to counterfeit your experience, you simply fabricate the company you want to work for, your title, and whatever dates of employment that won’t conflict with the dates of the real jobs on your resume. Then, when the employment verification asks for reference information, simply state that you were employed through a staffing company, and use that company for the verification.
Now, you’ll have to take some steps to process the verification request. An alternative is to hire Background Proof to handle everything, but if you wish to do this yourself, here are the steps you’ll need to take:
- Setup Website: Setup a website for the ABC staffing company. This does not have to be anything sophisticated, because 80% of the staffing firms out there have “fly by night” websites that were probably done in Squarespace, and look terrible. But I absolutely recommend spending some time to make it look legit – you don’t want to raise any potential red flags or draw attention to yourself during this process.
- Corporate Switchboard: Create a corporate switchboard for handling the reference check. This is easier than most people realize, now that there are VOIP providers such as Vonage. They can walk you through how to create an official-sounding switchboard.
- Human Resources Department: On that corporate switchboard, you have an option, “Press 3 to verify employment for a person” and instruct them to leave a voicemail with their request. Then, when a background check occurs, you simply respond to the request with the info on your resume, and unless it’s a government FBI agent, no one is going to second-guess this.
- Prepare W2s: Lastly, you’ll want to consider creating some W2’s to cover for you, just in case. It’s always better to be prepared. However, in most cases, if the staffing company verifies you, you’ll almost never be asked for W2s. Who keeps their paystubs anyways?
It’s important that the party verifying your employment is both trustworthy and knowledgeable about the background verification process. If you use a friend, you’ll need to make sure they are guaranteed to be available when the verification request comes through. Any delay could raise suspicion.
Another issue that many job seekers forget about is making sure that the company covering your employment actually looks like a company. For example, if your friend covers you, a quick LinkedIn check will prove that this person never held a job in the office he’s claiming. Or a verifier might look at the email address’s domain name, look at the website, and make sure there is a contact phone number – and when none of that looks legit, they start investigating further.
The advantage of using a paid service for this is that we are an actual staffing agency, and everything is setup for your verification to go through quickly and quietly. You should hear absolutely nothing about our agency or employer you are claiming through us – and that is exactly the point. We make sure your background check goes through without anyone noticing.
Covering for the Verification
In whichever case you decide, the most important task for you, as the job seeker, is to make sure the verification is covered, and goes through smoothly. We have written extensively on this, and recommend reading through those guides carefully.
It’s important that the party verifying your employment is both trustworthy and knowledgeable about the background verification process. For example, if you use a random friend, they need to be immediately available when asked, they need to know how to respond to the employment request in a way that does not raise any alarms, and it needs to paint your experience exactly as you want it to.
Another issue that many job seekers forget about is making sure that the company covering your employment actually looks like a company. For example, if your friend covers you, a quick LinkedIn check will prove that this person never held a job in the office he’s claiming. Or a verifier might look at the email address’s domain name, look at the website, and make sure there is a contact phone number – and when none of that looks legit, they start investigating further.
The advantage of using a paid service for this is that we are an actual staffing agency, and everything is setup for your verification to go through quickly and quietly. You should hear absolutely nothing about our agency or employer you are claiming through us – and that is exactly the point. We are trained to make sure your background check goes through without anyone noticing.