I just got a job offer from a major bank in Switzerland and signed the contract few days ago (entry level IT position). Now there is supposed to have a pre-employment screening with a third party company. However, I haven't received any email from this third party company yet. I have submitted a disclosure form (with the past 5 years of residence) to the company before signing the contract. Is there anyone that has a similar experience here? Do you know if this third party company need more information? And how long is it usually take? I am asking because I want to resign from my current job after this pre-employment screening is cleared. I don't think I wouldn't pass this background check, but just to be on the 100% safe side, I want to clear this process and then resign.
The third-party company generally won't engage with you unless they have questions, or if they find something that requires clarification. Generally they will contact your previous employers, determine the length of time you were employed there, your job role and duties, etc. They will also do a credit check.
I don't know what it's like in Switzerland but a financial institution I worked for previously also required a criminal clearance from all countries I had lived / worked in.
Turnaround time for my last financial institution was usually 3 months.
If you are confident that you've been honest with your CV, experience, and that you have no major credit / debt concerns, then the background check is merely a formality and you can feel comfortable resigning from your role. If you think they might find something suspicious, I would hold off.
Hope that helps, and good luck with your new role.
Hi, thank you very much for your reply. I expect some email because I think I need to sign some consent form otherwise I don't think my current employer would give away / confirm my information. And I have this experience with renting apartment and my company'HR wouldn't confirm my information (because the renting agency didn't have my signed consent) and in the end, I asked a written confirmation from HR and send it to the renting agency. And I also don't think if they could get my criminal or credit check without me signing something to agree giving them the information. Otherwise I am confident there shouldn't be any problem with the background check.
^^^ this is a good point from roegner, they will also confirm your qualifications and the validity of the granting body. I had real trouble with that one, because my country uses a different grading system to what the background checkers were expecting.
Regarding whether your HR will confirm or not, this is the type of instance where the third-party company will contact you directly and ask you to intervene.
But generally they'll only do this if absolutely necessary. As mentioned, the disclosure form likely confirmed your consent for 'relevent parties' to be contacted.
I have been earlier part of the pre-employment screening that includes detailed verification of documents like educational qualifications, work permit, work experience reference checks for last 7 years, previous 10 year residence & criminal record verification. It was also outsourced to a 3rd party.
In my case the 3rd party sent me an email with a login to submit all the required information along with scans of the documents. They also provided me help to get the required documents for ex. criminal records register etc.
In my case I asked my recruiter to push the 3rd party to get this done asap so the whole process was completed in a weeks time, just before the end of month for me to resign. I was proactive to contact all my work references to be available and able to respond quickly to their call.
I have worked for a few US companies and a Swiss one. All had different processes. The Swiss one did only the Permit, degree & references checks by themselves. The US ones did go a bit further. However, I think the ones that deal with customer data ex. consulting, cloud, banking etc have a very detailed process using 3rd parties.
I'd really like to press the Thanks button, but i didn't find one. Could you kindly point me to where it is?
And I just received the HR email, they say that there won't be additional info from my side needed to perform this background check. Which means there won't be any information input in the third party platform. I don't know what this means.. Because all that the company have which is on the disclosure form is my past 5 years of addresses (and they probably would pass this info to the third party company). No contact info for HRs from my former and current employer. I can not imagine how they would contact them and verify my employment history. This must be a lengthy process for what I can see...
I will not resign from my current job unless the verification is complete and the offer is final. From what I have seen the employment offer is subject to successfull background verification. I think the bank will also not onboard you unless all formalities are done.