Does your employer charge for job verifications?

[neatdesign]

I recently applied for a GREAT job at a university, to work in their study abroad office. I had three interviews last week -- back-to-back -- which all seemed to go extremely well. The department seems interested in hiring me, and the HR rep who interviewed me says I'm on the short list. But, soon after the interview stage my application processing hit a wall. Here's the short verson as to why:

On my application I had provided the HR dept numbers for my former employers to call to verify my employment. The day after my interviews I got an email from the University saying that they were having trouble getting through to Capital One's HR dept. I thought that was a bit odd, as I had called that number on several occasions and never had a problem.

I called HR and was told that verifications are now done through a website -- TheWorkNumber.com -- as well as a phone number (which is only accessible after registering on the website and getting a PIN). Satisfied with this information, I passed it along to the University. Later that same day, I got a second email from the University stating that it is against policy to pay for someone's employment verification. WHAT?!? PAY?!?

That's when I went to the website and discovered that this third-party provider, TheWorkNumber.com, charges $13 for a one-time employment verification. If you want to verify income, that's an additonal $16. The HR rep at Capital One never told me there was a fee for this service. (When I called HR back to voice my concern about it, I found out why: The HR phone reps didn't even know there WAS a fee, this was the first they'd heard of it!)

I was extremely embarrassed by this, having forwarded this contact information to the University and not telling them about the fee (because I didn't know). It was also extremely frustrating to have to deal with this unexpected situation, knowing that a hiring decision cannot be made until this issue was resolved.

The only thing I could do was to offer to pay for it myself. The University advised me yesterday that they appreciate my offer but were going to bend the rules and pay for the verification themselves. What makes me angry is that we shouldn't even have to have had that dialogue in the first place.

So... FYI to all of you thinking about applying for new jobs. Check with the HR depts of your former employers BEFORE you apply to find out if they charge a fee for employment verification. I had no idea and had to find out in a very embarrassing way. Hopefully this will not be used as a reason not to hire me...

~ Jenney

[sweeps]

Thanks for the info. My employer also uses The Work Number so I checked on it. Although I as an employee am not charged for the service, a verifier (mortgage company, prospective employer, etc.) is required to pay $9-$12 depending on what information they needed.

[vsjhoc]

I haven't heard of a third party employment verification service, can't believe that they charge, and can't believe that a prospective employer wouldn't pay. Would your prospective employer accept a copy of your W2 (or W4, whichever one is the year-end statement of wages and taxes)?

And how are you supposed to find out if your current employer would use such a service? "Hello, Current Employer's HR Dept, I'm just wondering ... oh, just out of curiosity .... not because I'm looking for a new job or anything ... "

[boefixepa]

That's absolutly obsured!!! I now our HR girls sometimes get annoyed with all the forms and stuff, but charging for it is RUDE!! It's part of the cost of having employees!! You can't get any type of loan with it really and we put the jobs we had to show we had them!

I think it's really sad, but I can forsee this becoming the norm for large corporations. It's less expensive for them to outsource the information and then charge someone to retreive it. Look we've created a whole new industry because we can't trust a persons honesty and must 'check' to make sure they are telling the truth.

On a side note, as a company we've been told that if someone is calling to check a former employers work history all we can say is yes they worked here. We are NOT allowed to say anything as far as how good or bad of a job they did or why they are no longer employed for legal reasons. So I think as this trend progesses an old w-2 will be the wave of the future.

[Gruntina]

I work in HR department myself and do VOE letters for our employees and ex-employees but we do not charge anyone for verification. This is new to me! We have strict guidelines of which information can be carried over to the phone and etc as this is confiden ional information.

Scary thought that a 3rd party vendor would have confidentional information unless it was signed in agreement when one become hired at a company. It seems against the codes and workers policy.

[sweeps]

Originally Posted by Gruntina

Scary thought that a 3rd party vendor would have confidentional information unless it was signed in agreement when one become hired at a company. It seems against the codes and workers policy.

That is pretty much the norm at any medium to large company. Payroll, retirement plan administration, health plan administration, employment verification, background checks, even hiring and firing in some cases -- outsourced.

[vsjhoc]

Originally Posted by Sweepsplayer

That is pretty much the norm at any medium to large company. Payroll, retirement plan administration, health plan administration, employment verification, background checks, even hiring and firing in some cases -- outsourced.

Even the work itself.

[poundwise]

I didn't know about this, but I am not surprised.

In many instances, you must pay a fee for background checks, etc., so this is just another one of those types of fees that will be passed on to us.

[jodi]

I have never heard of this for employment verification, although I did have to pay a $75 fingerprinting fee when I started my last job (NY state job) so they could do a criminal background check. DH had to do the same to apply for a substitute teaching position. Different situation, as we had already been hired, but still - it can get expensive to get a job!

[Gruntina]

This makes me feel more honored to work for the company I am at now. Its a World Wide Incorpration company with over 6000 employees. Really strong work ethnics there! I am so grateful.

[neatdesign]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's hearing about this for the first time.

I don't even necessarily have a problem with outsourcing this sort of work. My problems are mainly three-fold:

1) There was no logical reason for me to contact Capital One's HR before submitting my job application, because historically all anyone ever needed to do was provide the contact number(s) for their former employer(s) for the purpose of employment verification. Luckily for me I'm a former employee -- but what if I was a current employee? How do I find out this information without letting on that I'm looking for something else?

2) Capital One's HR didn't tell me that the service involved a fee before I forwarded the information to my potential employer. Not only that, but the HR dept reps themselves didn't even know about the fee until I TOLD them about it! If the HR reps don't know about it, how the heck are current and former employees supposed to know about it!?

3) Now that there are fees-for-verification services, it raises the question: Who is assumed to have to pay the fee? On one hand, it makes sense for the job applicant to pay it, because they are the ones who are looking for a job. On the other hand, the employers are looking to hire and fill a position, and they can probably allocate part of their budgets to pay for this sort of thing. This is such a new phenomenon which obviously isn't that well-known, so the etiquette questions haven't really been discussed, much less resolved. Unfortunately it puts both the job applicant and employer in a delicate position.

~ Jenney

[neatdesign]

Originally Posted by Gruntina

This makes me feel more honored to work for the company I am at now. Its a World Wide Incorpration company with over 6000 employees. Really strong work ethnics there! I am so grateful.

My former employer (Capital One) is a world-wide company as well, with thousands of employees -- but they still use a third-party provider for their employment verifications. They didn't do this a year ago. Who's to say that your company won't do the same eventually? I'm not sure work ethic has much to do with it -- it all comes down to $$$$$.

~ Jenney

[Thrifty Ray]

Originally Posted by neatdesign

3) Now that there are fees-for-verification services, it raises the question: Who is assumed to have to pay the fee? On one hand, it makes sense for the job applicant to pay it, because they are the ones who are looking for a job. On the other hand, the employers are looking to hire and fill a position, and they can probably allocate part of their budgets to pay for this sort of thing. This is such a new phenomenon which obviously isn't that well-known, so the etiquette questions haven't really been discussed, much less resolved. Unfortunately it puts both the job applicant and employer in a delicate position.

~ Jenney

I feel that if anyone should pay to do a job verification, it should be the prospective employer. They are the ones who will benefit from the information provided.

If the verification is favorable- they can proceed with more confidence...
If the verification is not-favorable- they've probably just saved themselves some time and headache down the road.

Therefore, I feel it is 100% the prospective employer's responsibility.

[Fern]

Outrageous.

[Gruntina]

Hmm.... I can not really say it boils down to $$$ It only take 5 min more or less to check a history of an employee or ex employee and to type a VOE letter and send it in mail. It only takes a couple minute for verification via the phone for a company to check the validity of a phone call. Makes me wonder how much the 3rd party vendor charges the company to do the work.

Bigger companies have more workers and workload is spread out among workers better than smaller companies who have more responsibilities for one position. Maybe it’s a gimmick to making a company believe they are spending less money and hiring fewer workers to do the verification of employment letters when resorting to verification of employemtn letters(most have SSN#)? I can uderstand saving money cost when it comes to advertising or using IKon paper copier company and the sort... but hard to imagine for verification of employment.

[neatdesign]

I agree -- employment verifications don't take a whole lot of time to complete. However, although I'm not in the field of human resources, I imagine that employment verification is probably considered "busy work" for the most part. So when a business can eliminate a one or two $40-$50k/year positions and replace them with something that costs far less to do this same "busy work," in most cases the business will choose the latter.

After all, by eliminating employees, you're not just cutting out their salaries, but also health care costs, 401k contributions, disability coverage, etc.

I don't think it's a gimmick. When you look at the sheer number of employers -- many of them well-known -- who use this service, it's pretty obvious that it saves them money or else they wouldn't use it.

~ Jenney

[Saving in So Cal]

If this happens to you and you are asked to pay, you might contact your state's labor department to see if this type of practice is permitted in your state. In those states with good worker protections (or that don't think it's a good idea to have impediments to a person's ability to find work) probably do not permit such costs to be passed on to employees. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why the University made an "exception" in your case.