What Happened When I Didn’t Verify Employee Past Jobs — A Recruiter’s Journal

What Happened When I Didn’t Verify Employee Past Jobs — A Recruiter’s Journal

What Happened When I Didn’t Verify Employee Past Jobs — A Recruiter’s Journal

Monday, 9:00 AM – First Day Jitters

Our new senior backend engineer walked in—sharp suit, polished intro, flawless résumé. Three unicorn startups, a stint in Berlin, multiple “platform rebuilds.” Everything checked out… well, everything *looked* like it checked out. I didn’t bother to verify employee past jobs. After all, he had glowing references (from Gmail accounts, oops), and the hiring manager was sold.

Wednesday, 2:00 PM – Red Flag #1

He was struggling with a basic containerized deploy. Weird, considering his resume claimed he built a CI/CD pipeline at a company that runs on Kubernetes. I made excuses. “Maybe he's nervous. New laptop, new stack.” I still didn’t verify his previous employment.

Friday, 4:30 PM – Red Flag #2

A developer on his team asked, “Is this guy legit?” That’s when I looked him up on LinkedIn again. His timeline had changed since we hired him. The Berlin company was gone, and a new “contract” role had appeared instead. My gut said something was off.

The Mistake: Not Verifying Job History

I should have paused everything and done what I always tell junior recruiters: verify employee past jobs. Not “assume,” not “go with your gut,” not “Google around.” I should’ve used https://offerghost.com or asked for an experience letter. But I didn’t.

By the next week, the guy had submitted code copied from GitHub and passed it off as his own. He didn’t know how to write basic SQL joins. And worse, his previous employers? Turns out, they weren’t even real companies. Just projects on a fancy portfolio site.

The Fallout

  • We had to terminate the hire in less than 30 days
  • The team lost two weeks of sprint velocity
  • Morale tanked—we had to rescope a release
  • I had to explain to leadership why we missed the red flags

The Fix: Verification as a Non-Negotiable

Since then, we’ve changed our hiring process. No offer goes out unless job history is verified—period. We use https://offerghost.com to validate job titles, employment dates, and documentation fast. The platform even flags suspicious timelines and unverifiable companies. It’s like having a lie detector built into your hiring stack.

How I Verify Employee Past Jobs Today

  • Ask for offer letters and relieving letters upfront
  • Run automated checks via https://offerghost.com
  • Check LinkedIn history against what’s on the resume
  • Keep a digital record for audits and legal safety

Summary

Hiring isn’t just about finding talent—it’s about filtering truth. I learned the hard way that skipping one small step can unravel weeks of hard work. To verify employee past jobs isn’t about distrust—it’s about due diligence.

Conclusion

So here’s my advice to every recruiter, hiring manager, or founder reading this: verify everything. Before the welcome email, before the Slack invite, before the badge is printed—verify. And if you want to save time, use a tool like https://offerghost.com. It’s faster, safer, and saves you from writing posts like this one.

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