I'm tempering my payslips. Need suggestions/opinions.
Context: I worked for a startup for 3 years (backend). My last working day at this company was in December 2023. Ever since I've been looking for a job. I kept rejecting offers throughout 2024 in search for a better compensation (over 100% hike), and before I could realise it, 2025 arrived. Needless to say I made pretty bad decisions - I wasted an entire year of my life just looking for a better opportunity. It's not as straightforward as it sounds, I'm not a fool; but let's just go with that to keep things simple - I have a year of career gap.
Main issue: Now the thing is, companies tend to reject me due to my career gap. I've been fully transparent with them throughout, but that 1 year gap keeps causing issues. I've come up with a plan to tackle this. I'll edit the date of my previous company's payslips to 2024 (it's 2023 originally). The rest of the details on the payslips will be kept intact. This will allow me to mention my last working day as December 2024 (instead of Dec 2023), and share the edited payslips (july-dec 2024) as proof of employment. Now I'm aware that companies conduct background checks on payslips. I wanna understand what exactly they check from payslips for background checks, or how this entire process works. So I'll accordingly decide whether or not to executive this plan.
Firstly good thought process. As they say something is better than nothing, hence u r atleast among those people who are ready to take risks. Good.
Now coming to the real business of background checks, it's different for companies in service based, product based, startup, let me touch upon each of em:
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Service based: Forget about tampering, u will caught immediately, they do 3 checks, one in your relieving letter from previous company, u will see a signature and a person's name, they will confirm with them the reason, plus your tenure over official email. Second is provident fund, no matter how u change ur payslip your pf history, that is employee provident fund will show accurate transactions, its in unified portal in u wanna know. Third, service based are veryyy thorough, so they will even check your leaving date or LWD from other HRs
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Product based - product based only focus on the relieving letter, last salary slip. And only sometimes check provident fund, so u are 50% safe here. Better odds
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Startup - They don't care, literally, they want employees who have cracked their 3-4 rounds interviews. They will only see ur payslips/ relieving letter for formality. Forget about provident fund, in many cases startups don't have background verification teams as well. So u have the best odds here.
Just a caution here: Ensure the company is young and is generating good revenue YoY.
That's it, if I were in your shoes, i will definitely give startups my first preference, but anyway, the trick is to somehow manage even if you get caught, so keep a fake stress/psychotherapy or whatever sob story ready to convince the HR. Remember to act very humble with your HRs, who knows even service based company HRs might let it go because kindness can fool anyone.
Last caution: DO NOT apply in TCS at all, they will do such a thorough background check, details of which even u might not be aware.
Anyway good luck, 🤞 and one last thing, never ever feel guilty that u r doing a wrong thing, this is very common, a lot of people does it, many of my known associates and friends did it. Also most importantly companies nowadays are treating employees like sh*t expecting them to work 70 hours and exploiting them. So it's only fair that we do the same, and trust me it won't impact company in 0.00001 %. Because eventually u will settle there and do the job they expect.
Carpe diem!
Good points! Such well detailed reply!
Also, every major organisation has a background verification email ID. So the new company verification guy may email the previous company’s verification id to confirm the employment detail- though I don’t know if everyone do it.
Thank you so much for such a detailed response. I'll definitely focus on startups. Work there for about a year and then switch.
Everything is fair in war and Jobhunt. Product based companies would look at only skills. E away from any service based.
Great response from @ShadowStriker_002 already, adding to it You should definitely go for startups who don't care about gaps and only focus on skills and fitment, once you spend sometime there feel free to switch to any company to be back on track
They will check:
Can check PF or NPS deposits
Can ask for bank statements
Can call/email ex organisation for details about last working day etc.
So don't try it, you will get caught
Better alternative:
Ask any of your friends to deposit some money in your account
Claim you were doing independent contracting.
Instead of forgery, put that much effort on skills mate 🤷🏻♂️, they'll excuse your not one but 4 yr gap
They check your "Skills", here u go 🤝🏻
