Most people embellish their resume. You know, make your old job title sound a little more exciting, or make that high school award you won sound a bit more prestigious.
But if you’ve killed 6 or 7 people… Your employer is gonna figure that out sooner or later.
This piece is based on an AskReddit thread. Link on the last page.
1. We interviewed a young guy for a position. We were strongly considering him, so I did a basic e-mail check with his former employers. Everybody said he was terrific except for one guy who asked me to call him urgently.
When I talked to him, he explained that our candidate had actually been fired from the same job for repeatedly posting photos to the company Instagram and twitter which contained hidden ‘items’ that weren’t meant to be in there.
I pushed and pushed to find out exactly what they meant, and it turns out this person we were interviewing to manage our social media had been posting photos which subtly contained his genitals for months on company social media before his former bosses had noticed.
Hal_E_Lujah
2. This guy applied for a driver position at one of our senior care facilities (taking elderly people on errands and to appointments, deliver meals, take clients to the center where they can hang out, etc.)
Turns out he had not one, not two, but TEN counts of elder abuse, with a side of attempted murder and theft. Rescinded his offer of employment real damn quick.
MaxaBlackrose
3. We had a guy include a shirtless flexing portrait on his resume. He was applying for an engineering position. We still have no idea what that was for.
Uveerf
4. A woman in her late 50’s was applying for a retail job. We thought it was odd that she didn’t have any past work experience on her application. When we mentioned that we would have to perform a background check, she went white as a sheet. (continued…)
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She said she wouldn’t pass and looked like someone had just sucked the life out of her. She went on to explain that she had been in prison for nearly 30 years for “murdering” her husband, which she did in “self-defence.”
almostbobsaget
5. Maryland.
He had a charge for catching undersized crabs. (minimum was 5 inches across the shell at the time)
That. Dirty. Crook.
tealparadise
6. We got somebody who failed a background check for selling planes to Iran. He broke the embargo imposed against them by the US when he tried to sell $117 million worth of planes.
Like that wouldn’t come up on a background check…
poormilk
7. A candidate’s blog with his personal description being: “Father, DJ, former sex offender and graphic designer. I hate the 9-5 grind and hope it dies.”
He was applying for a 9-5 job.
GraphicsNightmare
8. Guy had a felony assault charge. Not disturbing in itself but found out later it was from beating his previous boss’ face in after being confronted about coming in late to work repeatedly. The boss survived but apparently had to have his face reconstructed. So yeah….hard pass on that one.
parkerlindsey271
9. A couple of months ago I received a call from our HR manager that they were letting someone go and I needed to be ready to immediately kill their door card and all network/computer access.
I thought it was weird but when I inquired I was told the guy escorted out didn’t pass his background check. I decided to Google his name, and I was immediately blown away. (continued…)
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This guy was a full blown child porn collector/creator! He should never have been allowed near our site (we are next door to a school that is being built so he legally could not have worked there once it was complete).
I found out he had also posted a bunch of videos online of himself performing solo sex acts in our office bathroom. The whole thing was so surreal.
GyahhhSpidersNope
10. I called an applicant’s reference and his former employer said, “I’m not allowed to comment on former employee performance. I can only confirm their start and end dates.
But, why don’t you ask me about the weather?” I said “OK how is the weather there?” He replied, “The clouds are moving lazily across the sky and they are really dumb.”
I found out later that he stole this from a Dilbert cartoon, but he really did say it.
rearless
11. I was part of a group interview for a director position.
The guy was cool, definitely qualified and was breezing through the interview, pretty funny too; I thought for sure he was in.
We get to the end and HR is telling him about the process after if they were to offer him the position and once they mention the background check he quickly responds that he wouldn’t pass it.
We all sit there in silence for a second and he calmly says that he was charged with 3 counts of felony armed robbery so likely wouldn’t pass.
b8ble
12. Turned out the guy had appeared in a video for the band Chumbawumba.
CorgiRawr
13. One poor guy who applied had been registered as a sex offender. But actually its not what youre thinking and it wasnt at all his fault. (continued)
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He still got the job as he came into the office with a 15-year-old police report and court transcript, which explained he had got drunk during his first week at college and took his pants off to take a pee in a fountain. He was found half-naked by a lady the next morning asleep in the fountain.
This was at a time when the police were being really hard on public nudity, so he was tried as a sex offender. Just goes to show you what can happen if youre in the wrong place at the wrong time and do something stupid.
lux_nox_ez
14. Man applying for a job as a construction estimator. He owned a construction company and was convicted of defrauding various city and county governments. Pretty much the last person you’d want doing estimates. The next guy who applied was a registered sex offender. I was on a roll with that position.
rchaseio
15. His profile picture on Facebook was upside-down male genitalia. I assume it was his.
Using the penis as a nose, he had cleverly balanced a pair of eyeglasses over the genitals and drawn pupils on the testicles to create the image of a gentleman/elephant (?) wearing a pair of glasses.
He got an interview, got the job and developed in to one of my best technical analysts. Don’t judge a book by its Facebook cover, I guess.
GreyFoxNinjaFan
16. We did a background check on a guy who it turns out had sued every former employer for an on-the-job injury. Usually right after 90 days, when most trial periods end. I did not hire him, but somebody I knew did.
So I warned them that the background check showed that at the 90-day mark, he would try and get injured on the job and sue them. They took that to heart, and so when the three month period passed, they were one step ahead of him. (continued)
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On his 92nd day, he showed up to work with a lawyer, claiming that his office chair had hurt his back, that the lights above his cubicle were giving him migraines, and his monitor was making his eyes hurt. The company was prepared with their own lawyers.
Much to his anger and surprise, they gave him an ergonomic keyboard, a monitor filter, and a special little area where the lights were better. And an ergonomic chair. And then they made it known that they would be contacting his former employers, many of whom he had sued saying he was unable to work anymore.
He stopped complaining. And then he was let go in the next round of layoffs.
punkwalrus
17. He was a lovely, personable guy, tired of working nights. Looking for day job so he could spend more time with his family. Check: multiple domestic violence charges.
Soft-spoken, polite, early 20’s. Admitted a gap in his work history was due to three years in prison for violating parole for a little trouble he was in as a juvenile. Check: little trouble = murder.
The scariest part was that he was charismatic and enthusiatic. I never would have guessed.
isitabee
18. I did a background check for one guy, and I found out that he had lied about every single job that he had. Going one job back, he claimed that he was a manager at a shoe store that went out of business.
Then he said that he was in the military for four years as a communication specialist. I found that he was in the army for three months, but got an honorable discharge because he couldn’t make it through Boot Camp.
He claimed before that he was the manager of the evening shift at a chicken plant; turns out that he was a janitor for only a few months before he was fired for job performance.
He claimed he was a manager of a hotel before that, and it turned out that his mother was actually the night manager, and she was fired because she kept bringing her kid to work.
punkwalrus
19. My wife Interviewed a candidate for a manufacturing job. She proceeded with background check and the FBI showed up within 20 minutes of her search. (continued)
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They wanted her to pretend to hire him and have the dude come in so they could arrest him. She said, “No no no! I do background checks so we DON’T have a shootout in the parking lot!”
FBI arrest the guy that afternoon at the address he put on his application. FBI could not tell my wife what the guy did, only that he was extremely dangerous and wanted under a ‘closed/eyes only’ file.
StarbuckPirate
20. I got an email last week from someone claiming to be a convicted paedophile, asking me to hire him. Most of the email reeked of a lack of remorse, as he made himself out to be a victim.
gigli_allin
21. I run a lot of background checks at my job. It was a bit darkly humorous when we were filling a position at a rehab facility, only to have like six finalist candidates in a row screen out with recent drug charges.
AlphaTheRed
22. I had a great guy interview and wanted to offer him the job but on a quick background check I found that he was a former local politician who drunkenly hit another car and told the guy he hit that he wasn’t going to jail because he was a councilman.
A few months after that he pulled a gun on his wife and kids. He was a nice guy just had some major anger problems. It looked like he had changed his life around and wrote a book about the experience he had dealing with depression and coming home from war.
I decided to hire the guy and he was one of the best workers I ever had.
BecameAGoodFriend
- 23. I was working at a pretty remote site up in Northern Alberta, Canad and the mounties showed up.
Turns out one of the welders was one of the most wanted men in Canada, and had been hiding up there for some ridiculous amount of time… He apparently murdered a gas station clerk in a botched robbery. This is why you should do background checks.
ooo-ooo-oooyea
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