just wanted to rant really - I've was offered a job a week ago and before I started they had to run a background check, which is fair enough. However, this particular company doing my check is so horrible incompetent it's taking forever for them to get their act together, it's like they've never had to do a check on someone that isn't from the US before! I try to tell them that England is 8 hours behind, but this does not seem to get through to them and so I've had to dig around and find paystubs from 5 years ago (grrrrr) to fax them so that they know I haven't made everything up...

Ahhhhh! Anyone else had troubles with these companies? i hope that now I've had this one I won't ever have to have one again, but I have a suspicion that won't be the case...

They're useless. My employer wanted to run checks too, and I strongly suspect the company did nothing whatsoever with them (other than taking the fee - from my employer at least), as the information they wanted would not be released without my consent.

At one point, I offered my employer a copy of my police check that was done for the K1 visa. That seemed to satisfy them, though they never actually took it...

Rental background check companies are going to be even more useless. I listed my addresses in my home country, but I can guarantee they'll take the $40 (from me this time), sit on it a few weeks, and say "no results" (mind you, to be brutally honest, I don't care with this, it's the end result, not my problem if they're not thorough).

My previous company did a credit check and background check. My US credit histrory is stellar (nothing on there at the time of the employment hehehe), as for the background check, they only did FBI check after I offered them my police/NBI certificate from the K1 visa application. Glad I kept those

actually, nina, england is 8 hours ahead...... if it's 1200 where you are, it's 2000 there. they'd be behind if they were west of you.

I had the same problem and it was probably my lowest point in the whole transition process. Having had months of job searching finally got interview, they liked me but had to contact England and couldn't manage it (suspect their phones were blocked for international dialing). In the end they actually adopted a to hell with it approach and ired me anyway ........ never been so relieved

Haha, that was a typo... of course I know they're ahead, I've coordinated my long distance relationship for months based on that knowledge!

Not 8.... 5.

It may be 5 for you, but for me, they're 6 hours ahead.

Depends on your time zone.

And it's 8 in my time zone!

The joy of being in California Although the weather's a bit crap today.

It's funny...I don't know if my company ran a background check or not. If they did, I am not aware of it. I gave them references here in the US and they haven't really called anyone, as far as I know.

Wouldn't surprise me at all. In the employment world, background checkers are the second-simplest 'money-for-jam' behind "recruitment" (don't start me on someone who lodges a form job description on Dice, spends four hours between that and talking to me, and when I get the job, they pick up a check for a quarter of my annual salary. But anyway ...

When I started working they ran the background check, they told me that it was the easiest and fastest one they had ran... it came back in one day, my then manager said that all they did was check with USCIS... he mentioned that when he hired someone who had lived in three different states it took over a week to get it back because they had to gather information from different places instead of just one.

I dont know if the fact that it was a bank the one that was running the background check made a difference.

You are still lucky because employers in UK speak English and issue paystubs. I interviewed with a couple of companies here who insisted on talking to my Russian boss! And it's 11 hours difference

I had to fill in some forms for some sort of government check cos I'm contracted via my company to a Federal agency. Those forms were more detailed than what I had to fill out to emigrate!