Background check - third party company

[Ciara]

My new employer (foreign) is using a third party agent in Beijing to do a background check. I had to upload my degree cert, and sign an authorization about a month ago. I have never had this before, but was told by hr that it is part of their recruitment process.  I have heard nothing since, apart from one email asking to verify my home country address.

 

I don’t have anything to hide, but feel a little nervous all the same as I don’t know what they are checking! Does anyone know anything about these third party companies and what they check, or how long it takes?

[Harv31]

I'm in a similar situation. Signed all the authorization forms with the 3rd party about 1 month ago but haven't heard anything since. What happened with your case?

[Ciara]

After about a month, I got an email from them asking for clarification about my most recent position. On my CV, I had given a title of the job as the job I actually did, whereas the official job title was slightly different. The HR at my place had told them that the job title I had put didn’t exist (job title was ‘EAP Instructor’ and I put ‘EAP Instructor and course leader’ as it sounds better and better describes the job I did)l So they asked the reason for this ‘discrepancy’ and I answered simply..and didn’t hear from them again! It was like they were looking for something to ask. Anyway, they must have been satisfied with my explanation as about a week later I was told by my new hr that the check had been completed.

 

My partner also got asked something, which became a bit of a pain as it involved making calls to the UK. The company called our universities to check our degrees (seems pointless as we have to get them authenticated). Mine is relatively recent so no problem but he did his BA ages ago, before there were even computer records! So he had to get in touch with this uni, someone had to look in archives etc. But it was sorted in the end.

 

I really think the whole thing was a bit silly, and still don’t know what they were looking for since we already have to give them a criminal record check, authenticated documents, references etc. There seemed to be little communication between them and HR, and they didn’t really do very much!
 

if I were you I would ask your HR to check with them where they are in the process, if you are worried. But in my experience, it seems normal that you don’t hear from them for about a month. Hopefully, you won’t get any questions like what I described above, but if you do probably won’t be a big deal. They def check degrees and job titles of your most recent job. That’s all I know for sure.