Background Check on Unpaid Internship

Hey Monkeys,

Saw some posts regarding unpaid internships and background check, so I’d be super grateful if someone could help solve my worry.

It is about an unpaid internship and the forthcoming background check for a BB FT offer in the US.

The situation is, I did an unpaid equity research internship a year ago at a major Asian securities company where I was hired directly by the team and analysts without HR intervention. No document was signed, but the analysts knew me and I worked there for four months. So there will be no record of my work in the HR system, but I can definitely provide references and contact details such as official work emails and phone numbers and I have spoken with my supervisors.

Seriously, this is not those “you pay $2k and get an unpaid job” thing. Strangely this is just a common practice in my country, extremely common especially within large securities companies, and everyone knows it.

So when it comes to a background check, I can give the third-party agency my supervisors’ contact details. But if the agency calls the HR department, they’ll have nothing from there.

Anyone knows how this is gonna play out? Thanks.

 

You should 100% be fine. Worst case scenario is they reach out to you and ask what the deal is, and you provide references and explain the situation.

Honestly, reach out to your references and ask them to give the HR department a heads up/what to do. They should be able to help you navigate the process for getting it cleared up better than I can.

 

Thanks for the comment.

Yeah I’m sure my team will vouch for me, but not sure if they can get the HR to confirm that. Not sure if the case is legal, but it is very common, and local companies can all live with that and no problems with that in background check. But since I’ll be working for a BB, not sure if they can go with that...

 

Just contacted the other interns I was working with and no one has signed anything. But our analysts are more than happy to pick up the phone and vouch for us, and I’m sure that, if the third party agency wants to verify the credibility of the analysts, the agency can check with HR and find those analysts aren’t my classmates or my brothers.

I technically did not lie at all on resume. I don’t know if there will be any issue with background check though

 

I had a background check a few months back. The process of a background check involves flagging certain issues. In the event there is an issue the analyst (person doing the check) will reach out to you. In my case they reached out to me about Society/ Unpaid positions. They are no big deal. They require references but I believe they want to know about whether you were paid at that role for tax reasons.

In your situation , you should be absolutely fine.

Array
 

Thanks. That’s a relief.

I’m concerned just because the organization is a big financial house and is like the mid-tier BB equivalent in my country.

There was a debate last year on hiring unpaid/unofficial interns without going through the HR system, but large firms live with it for cheap labour, and everyone in finance is familiar with it. And there are a great number of rubbish career advisory firms trying to sell u this type of internships by working with rubbish analysts.

Mine was not pay-for-internship type though. I guess that’s why the analysts are happy to vouch for me; otherwise they’d be in trouble. Hope there are no issues.

 

Hi, I have a similar situation and was wondering how did your background check go. I got a PE internship in the US by family connection, but because of my international student status, working off-campus has to go through a time-consuming and tedious process. So they let me in off-record. My boss and manager can definitely vouch for my experience, but HR won't have any record. What was the background process like for you? Did it raise any red-flag issue?

 

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