Interviews were easy and went great. I was impressed with the workers there and the benefits looked great. I was offered the job, signed a great offer and started their background check process. That's when it went south.
I received a letter telling me they were considering not hiring me because there were some discrepancies between public records (which I did not have access to review prior to applying) and my resume and I had 10 days to respond. This was related to job titles and employment periods. I explained these discrepancies, noted that I did make a couple of mistakes on time frames for one position, provided evidence to support my explanations for these discrepancies as I was instructed to do following conversations with the individual who was responsible for the background check process. I was told to provide everything to the background investigation company. I did so and they confirmed they would forward the information at the end of the 10 day response period. That period ended and I received another letter saying they were withdrawing the offer. The issues noted in that letter were the exact same issues noted in the original. This suggests to me that the information and explanations I provided were completely ignored. I called everyone I could to get a better understanding of what happened. The individual who was responsible for the background check gave no explanation other than reading the issues noted in the letter I received. Provided no information about the possibility of appeal, which is interesting for a law firm. I was extremely frustrated by this because I went through and passed a background check for a DoD security clearance for my current job. So apparently you can be trusted with classified defense information in the US but not handling email for a law firm.
My suspicion is the HR person that handled my check was just lazy and ignored the follow up, choosing instead to accept the provisional background check report without reviewing the final report at all. That there was no appeal process or ability to get better detail about the review that happened is absolutely ridiculous. That this company decided to refuse employment due to easily explainable discrepancies between a resume and records that can't be easily corrected or reviewed is even more ridiculous.