background check

In your experience, do potential employers do a background investigation:

a) before the in-person interview?
b) before an offer of employment?
c) after your acceptance?

2nd question is, can they legally perform an investigation w/o your written or verbal approval?

Thanks

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Comments

networker050184

Usually after accepting the offer in my experience. I don't think they can do one without your consent, but I'm no lawyer.

VAHokie56

networker050184 wrote: »

Usually after accepting the offer in my experience. I don't think they can do one without your consent, but I'm no lawyer.

This was the case with contract positions I have been involved in

Heero

Yeah. Usually it will be after you are hired, or after the decide to hire you, but before they actually do it. They do not need your consent to do a basic background search because they are just looking for public information on you, though it is scary what can turn up as public information. For something like a credit check, they do need your approval.

My current job, the background check was before I got the offer, but after they decided they wanted to make me the offer.

Akaricloud

In my experience it's always been right before an offer. Most places don't want to spend the time/money/resources to do background checks on all applicants but yet don't want to offer jobs before they run one.

Moki99

They definitely do social media checks. They google your name, facebook, etc. I lost a job offer because I had left a buddy of mine a rude comment as a joke on one of his youtube videos and his response included my full name. I deleted my comment and had my buddy delete his but it still showed up in the Google cache. I had to use the google cache removal tool but it was all too late.

Akaricloud

Moki99 wrote: »

They definitely do social media checks. They google your name, facebook, etc. I lost a job offer because I had left a buddy of mine a rude comment as a joke on one of his youtube videos and his response included my full name. I deleted my comment and had my buddy delete his but it still showed up in the Google cache. I had to use the google cache removal tool but it was all too late.

Indeed they do. I remember staying after hours at my old job hanging out with the helpdesk manager eating popcorn and facebooking all of the people who had applied for jobs on a projector. It's quite easy to get tossed aside for something you publically posted.

DigitalZeroOne

Some companies can extend an offer but have it contingent on the outcome of the background check. I have never seen or heard of a company performing a background check without prior approval, however, many local governments have open information about arrests and tickets, as long as you know the persons first and last name, or even a partial first and last name. So it is relatively easy to just go online and look up someones information.