Something to hide? Well, I wouldn't want anyone to know about that time I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute after stealing $1,000,000 ... might get a fine for unauthorized skydiving ....
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Very interesting - thanks. So they hire a third party to call around.
Actually, at least one of my former employers doesn't exist any more. Another one is iffy due to Katrina. And yet another one is so disorganized that if someone called them to verify a past employee, they'd say "Who? Never heard of them" and hang up.
So a background checker, looking for discrepancies, would think, "AHA! CAUGHT ANOTHER ONE!" You know the old saying, if you carry a big hammer, everything starts to look like a nail ....
And then there's the extended time spent traveling, or being the stay-at-home S.O. Large blocks of unverifiable time.
Ah well, such is life. At least I don't have a criminal record. But wait, my name is fairly common ....