“The bigger the lie, the more they believe.”
– Detective James McNulty on the wire
When I discovered this tactic, I had legitimate reasons to mislead employers about my work history. Not only had I worked for startups – which recruiters hate, but I was also seeking to work multiple jobs at the same time. 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.
If you are interested in working multiple jobs at the same time, it’s absolutely vital that you freeze your The Work Number report. Be sure to read our compendium on TWN here.
This is a substantial problem for anyone who is overemployed (OE), because you do not want to use your current employer for your second job. If you tell the truth and tell Job 2’s recruiters that you are working at your real Job 1 employer, once you have secured the job, Job 2 will sometimes call in and request verification of your employment. This is happening with increasing occurrence, although there are no reported stats, there are increasing reports about this occurring ever since the beginning of 2023. When it is reported, it’s because when your new employer finds out, it endangers your job with both jobs.
Obviously, you also want to avoid leaving a gap on your resume. As of now, the only other choice is to extend your dates of employment at the previous employer. But if you’re lying about that, why not simply fabricate a completely new employer?
The problem is the inevitable background check. In order to solve all of this, you need to find a way to lie, and still pass the verification. In order to pass, you must hijak the background check.
Hijack the Verification Process
All these problems disappear, so long as you prepare to be to be covered for the background check. This means either lying about your last role, or simply using someone else to verify the employment for a job that you did actually work at. The key in both cases is that by claiming that you worked for your last employer through a staffing agency, the background check then goes through the staffing agency and not the employer. In this way, you can extend your employment dates, change titles, claim different compensation, etc. with no way for the background verification to prove otherwise.
There are two ways to proceed on this – either redirecting the verification for your last job or fabricating it completely.
Redirecting the Employment Verification
In this method, you are covering the employment verification for your last employer, and simply redirecting it through a system that you better control. When the verification service asks for the employer’s contact information, simply provide someone’s information that will cover you. You’ll need to make sure the person is not only trust-worthy, but is experienced enough to handle these requests in a way that does not raise any concerns. Because if the verifier does have some concerns…
How can this Backfire?
A sharp verifier will call into the company’s headquarters and ask for the employment verification service. If you worked for this company as a W2, they will provide a record of your employment there. That could be a major problem if the dates provided by the company are different than what you have provided, and they will withdraw the job offer. These services are usually offered as an option on the corporate switchboard, and ask for your social security number and some other identifying information. In return, it provides the dates and title. We’d advise you to try this yourself, to see what information is being provided – whether you are lying or not.
The thing to keep in mind, is that most verifiers are administrators not investigators. In other words, it is not their job to try and prove you are lying, rather, just to verify the information that you have provided. If you stay “under the radar” and handle the verification properly, then the verifiers will not make it to this point.
Fabricate your “Last Job”
The safest route, and the option we recommend, is to completely fabricate your last employer. We have advice on how to handle this, and ways to minimize the lying (e.g. if you worked at Accenture, instead state that you worked for Deloitte). We have addressed some other options to consider in another post.
The advantage here is that this guarantees that no one will ever disprove your work history. Think about it – if you fabricate your employment at XYZ company, how can someone disprove that? There will be no record of you at XYZ company – you can explain that it was through a staffing agency. A professional investigator will then need to track down who your direct manager would have been, and at any large company that is nearly impossible. And even if they did identify who the person is, no one is going to answer a random request on LinkedIn or a phone call about a verification for someone they do not even know.
When you consider the options, complete fabrication is the safest option – so long as you can portray confidence when discussing your background. One way to gain confidence is to understand that ethics in business are very different than in your personal life.
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 (see here), 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 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. Make sure to use a service that is trained to make sure your background check goes through without anyone noticing.