[Ben]

Hi. I’m a non-residence and I did an intern before in my home country.

I am aware of the background investigation. I wonder if the company is going to check the intern history like this, will I be contacted before hand to provide the contact information?

I wonder whether I should contact my previous intern firm beforehand. I am afraid that if the background investigation teams directly make a phone call overseas and the person who answers the phone does not respond immediately, I would be in trouble.

Thank you very much!

[Son]

Hi Ben, Big4 is pretty thorough when it comes to these things. As a part of my background check they actually contacted my former employers in Europe, but I believe it was an email inquiry. If you give your old company a heads-up that might smooth thing up, just remind them of the dates of your internship to make sure their response matches your resume if they don't maintain detailed records. I don't think you'd be in any sort of trouble if they don't respond though, it's only an issue if they say they've never heard about you. But even then you should have an option to explain everything to the recruiter.

AUD - passed
REG - passed
BEC - passed
FAR - passed

[Ben]

Thank you, “Son”.

Will I get notification when the background check starts and ends? I just think that if I contact my former employer now, they will forget about this reminder if the background check happens maybe three or four months later….

And also do they require official transcripts? I know ordering official transcripts takes certain amount of time and I don't know when I should start doing so.

[Son]

It's been a few years, but I remember they sent me a consent form to sign before starting the process. I'm assuming you'll get one as well and that will signify they're beginning the verification. There's an option to request a copy of your background check report on the consent form, which I did – and got a hefty envelope with all the information that was transferred to my Big4 upon completion of the check.

As a rule, the company running your background check will contact you with any questions or requests they have prior to escalating them to the recruiters. For instance, they did need a copy of my transcript (in my native language) and reached out for that, but a simple scan was sufficient for my particular case. If you have a scanned copy I'd hope that would be enough for you as well.

AUD - passed
REG - passed
BEC - passed
FAR - passed

[Author]

Replies