Checking employment history has been reduced to merely a means to weed out padded resumés. No employer with half a brain would actually say anything more than to confirm employment, title, salary, job description, date of hire and date of departure. Any other information can and often does result in a lawsuit.
It’s really not hard to identify the right candidate, provided that right candidate is among those interviewed. They’re often not, which is the hard part, even in bad economic times. Of course, I’m talking about people with a certain propensity and skillset that anyone in the field would recognize. After that, it’s all personality and whether or not they’d be a good fit for the company culture.
My husband and boss hired a woman who sounded good, said all the right stuff etc.. What they didn’t know is she is a chronic abuser of FMLA. From my understanding, this is a serious issue to many employers (perhaps you would know that better than me). Currently, they have two FMLA abusers and there is little to be done about it. They have to document the time and it has to reach a huge amount before they can be relieved of their employment. Of course, this little bit of info couldn’t be told to them by her current employer.