When you venture into a job search, two issues inevitably will crop into your worried "what-if-they-ask" job-hunting head: A company can find out 1) how much money I made at my last job and 2) why I left-and it isn't pretty.

Please stop worrying. Odds are really, really good they can't find out. When a Boston woman I coach called this week to talk about a position she was offered, she was frantic about this salary issue. She wanted more than the company was offering but didn't think she could get it because of what she made in her last job.

"What's that have to do with anything? Besides they don't know what you made unless you tell them," I said.

"But they can find out," she insisted. When I asked how, she didn't know but seemed to think companies have spies that meet with other spies to unearth secret information about you.

Let's set the record straight. First, there is no database that can be checked to see where people have worked and why-if they were-let go, says employment law attorney Paul Calico of Strauss & Troy in Cincinnati. And there is no database of wage or salary information.

Employers primarily find out what happened in your last job by asking the employee and hoping they tell the truth or asking the past employer, says Calico. They might also use the grapevine-which is likely to be spotty and may not be reliable, he says.

"It is possible to have the applicant sign a release that authorizes the prior employer to provide employment information and releasing the employer for any liability, but that is rare," he says.

And there are pitfalls for the prior employer-whether they sugar coat the facts or give negative information. For example, what if your old employer doesn't tell your new potential employer how you caused some major problem with a customer-the reason you were let go. You repeat the same action in your new job and an investigation reveals how the same problem occurred before.

"The new employer can then argue that it would not have hired the employee otherwise. Thus, the former employer may face liability," Calico says.

If your former employer gives you a negative reference, you may argue that a negative reference is unwarranted and prevented you from getting a new job, says Calico.

With all this potential liability in the air, "a lot of companies have adopted a 'name, rank, and serial number' approach under which they will provide only the dates of employment, positions held and perhaps job responsibilities," says Calico.

According to Calico, formal ways they may get the scoop on whether you were dismissed and why are:

If you filed for unemployment. Although not as readily available, those records may provide your employer's statement that you were fired for cause and should not receive unemployment.

It's probably harder to find out how much you made in a prior job. "My experience is that prior employers rarely provide this information since it is considered more private," he says. If you worked for a public entity such as the state or county, salary is public record.

There is another place that someone can dig up data on you-the Internet. Anyone with a computer can look you up in a search engine like Google and find out what you think by reading what you volunteered--a review posted on Amazon.com or what bugs you from that complaint you posted somewhere. So be careful what you say on-line. It's there for the whole world to see.

© by Andrea Kay

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