Excluding Past Employment on Resume and Job Applications

Question

I have a friend who was recently terminated during their probationary period at a workplace. The reason cited was a performance decline. This person was overqualified at the position, but needed money as they had just moved. They are worried about now finding a better fitting positing in the same field.

Two Questions:

Can this person omit working for this employer on their resume and/or job applicaiton? - Point to consider, they can explain this gap in employment as they were also taking several distance classes and had just moved with their spouse.

Can a prospective employer determine that they had been employed there? An answer covering what is theoretically possible and what an employer actually does would be helpful

Answer 1

If the application or background investigation asks to list all employers. You have to list them. If you are discovered then you will risk not getting the job or can even be terminated at a later date. If they ask about the employment gap in the interview, and they are caught in a lie that can also end with the same results.

How you can get caught?:

• Have one of the companies or references mention it. All they need to say is that you left their employment to move to city X and they found a job with company Y.
• You mess up be mentioning something in the interview.
• Leave a mention of it on social media including sites like LinkedIn or an old resume posted on a job board.
• Work in a country that requires paperwork exchanges between employers.
• It is unlikely that somebody in the new company knows you and knows about the missing company, but it can happen.

Why do they ask? They want to know about bad job experiences and if you were ever fired.

Answer 2

Yes, they could choose to leave it off the document. Whether this gets noticed or not is another story to my mind.

Yes, it is possible that a prospective employer may have connections at the company and discover that so-and-so did work there. While this may come up in an interview, there are likely more than a few ways to handle the question as the interviewer may say, "I heard from such and such that you worked at Company XYZ. Why did you leave there?" One could mention fit or something specific that they noticed and have changed to correct to prevent a repeat in the future as one idea.