B-School Verification process

Even if it does come up I wouldn't worry too much. When/if the school asks about it, explain the error. Given that it was a summer job from a few years ago, this probably isn't a deal breaker for the school.

I lied on my application by extending the employment date of one of my positions by 4 months to cover an employment gap. I was unaware that most school's conduct background checks and now I am worried this will severely affect my chances for admission. My questions are as follows:

Wow, I think you'll find the people here very reluctant to help you. We all killed ourselves writing good, honest applications, and people like you potentially take away spots from the rest of us.

With that said, here's my piece of advice: honesty is the best policy. I'll let you decide how that answers your questions.

One should never lie on any part of their application. everyone signs an affidavit when they submit their application. This might severely damage your chances at the schools you applied to.

Schools run background checks only after you accept their admit offer. My advice is that you contact those schools before admit offer and try to correct the issue.

I'll echo the previous posters and say it was a very bad idea to lie on the application. Schools take honesty and ethics very seriously and after some of the well-known "scandals" the past few years - eg. Scoretop, HBS, Duke - there is a very low tolerance for dishonesty.

That said, it's always better to come forward and admit to your wrongdoing than to wait to be caught.

Hmm the only honest thing for you to do is withdraw your app.

Since that won't happen, what are you going to do? Lie and say you made a typo on your app? Or come clean and said you lied to cover your gap? Honestly, your best bet is to crap your pants and pray it doesn't come up.

Umm are you serious or is this a joke? If you did lie, then I would echo zoinnk's sentiments that you would find litte sympathy here. I hate to be mean, but you probably just cost yourself your admit. Not to mention that even if you somehow make it through and the school doesnt catch it, your conscience would bother you...should have come clear man...haven't you read that the adcomm usually doesnt hold it against you when you come clean?

Now if is IS Kroll, I am almost 100% sure this would come up. I think the "limit" where you can get by is 3 months of not having to explain gaps. In fact now that I think about it, you would probably have lied about "Reason for leaving" as well. Thats gonna raise many flags.

I don't have any suggestions for you..can't tell you what to do. All I can say is get yourself mentally ready to have your admission rescinded - would hate to be in your shoes. Sorry if thats mean, but its true.

Just realized you dont actually have an admit yet... guess that makes the pain lesser. I would come clean NOW - tell them you made a mistake, even if costs you the admit. It is NOT worth it.

If you confess, you're done. No chance to get an admit.
I can guarantee you that there are hundreds of other ppl waiting in line.

So just pray hard that nothing comes up...but yea brace yourself to apply to other schools (and not lie about this again).

Also depends on the time frame of and position of the job. Was this your first job out of school, your most recent? Say for instance if you held your current position for 5 plus years and this was a job prior to that, chances are they may not check up on it. That's just a guess though.

What Kroll will do is call the employer you listed to verify you were in fact employed there, your title, and the dates of employment. If there is any differences between what you put down and what your old company's HR department reports (which in your case there will be), then they will report that to the school. When that happens, the adcom will probably call you for an explanation - at which point you will have to come clean.

There are certain things you could (although I wouldn't advise it) exaggerate, like your role in a project or your salary because your former company most likely won't release that information, but dates, title and company are really the NO NOs. They are the absolutely easiest to check, and I would say as a result that you're stuck.

Here is what is most likely included:

Education Verification
Confirmation of an Applicant's highest level of education is highly recommended for pre-employment screening. A trained interviewer will verify dates of attendance, major areas of study, degrees earned and transcript information.

Employment Verification
This pre-employment screening tool is used to confirm information and details provided by the Applicant regarding prior employment. Information verified or obtained in this employee background check includes but is not limited to specifics related to the identified company, contact information, the Candidate's start date and termination date, title upon departure and eligibility for re-hire.

County Criminal Record Search
The County Criminal Record Search is an extremely effective means of determining if an Applicant has a criminal record. Law enforcement officials report charges resulting from arrests on felony, misdemeanor and other offenses at the county court level. The County Criminal Record Search is conducted in counties where the Applicant is most likely to have any information filed, such as current and former counties of residency. EasyBackgrounds uses researchers for this criminal background check that physically visit the courthouse and check for records by hand. Records are available dating back 7 years.

Credit Reports
Credit reports used for employment background check purposes are not the same as a standard credit report. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) specifies that certain account information must be stripped from the employee background check credit report before it can be used for employment purposes.

I'm in total agreement with the important parts above. Lying on your application in any substantive way is utterly dishonest. Shame on you.

That said, I'm 100% positive that there is a LOT of exaggeration, if not outright lying, on many, many applications. Unfortunately, most of the people who do so are never caught. Chances are, you won't be either. So while I'd encourage you to come clean, I'm pretty sure you won't, and the adcom probably won't catch this.

Even still, if I found out that a classmate of mine had done something like this, I'd probably never trust him/her again.

Agree completely. The travesty of the whole thing is that since even Kroll (who can do ANYTHING) can't really confirm the details of applications (roles in projects, etc...) because of the sensitive nature of businesses, those of us who are using true, anecdotal evidence may be trumped by overzealous (and under-qualified) applicants who make something up. Unfortunately, the adcom will not always know the truth.

It is what it is though. All you can do is be honest about your accomplishments. The reality is that wherever all of us go to school, we will likely have numerous classmates who have lied on their applications. This isn't so much cynical as it is realistic.

My take on it is this guy probably will not get caught. Take a look at CBS, a highly ranked school that just checks CURRENT work experience. Now imagine how many people could have lied about previous experiences/employment gaps there. As far as I know Wharton and NYU have been doing thorough background checks with Wharton switching it up every year but most other schools just limit to current employment some lower schools don't even check. So on that note its unfortunate people like this will be in a TOP MBA program when someone more deserving who told the truth will not. Sadly thats how the system works.

so i have a question, throughout my career i have worked for the same company, a rather large one...so whenever i worked for different organizations within the same company, we had different internal titles but from HR perspective we had like a "universal job title"..

for instance..if i worked as a product manager, my internal title would be "product manager", however from HR perspective it would be Specialist 3rd level etc.. after our company merged, they finally got around to introducing new titles i.e more specific to job/role etc, more inline with the company we merged with... I am not sure if i should use the old titles or the newer more job/role specific title.

Another example when i moved to our sales organization, since its a customer facing organization, the sales organization gave us fancier titles..

I am just picking titles as i had on my business card..not sure what our HR has it on its record..luckily my current title is the same on HR record and our organization.

Hey guys, I also have a question. I am an international student and I have been active at a non profit, where there is no such thing as a HR department, and most of the people who work/volunteer do not speak english. How does Kroll work with this?

Also, what about when you work for your small family business? How do they verify that?

Thanks everyone and good luck.