Is this for a government entity or a private commercial firm? Did they ask for a list of family members/friends/past roommates or just your social security number and previous addresses?

I think most private/commercial firms just pay the $35 or whatever to look at your police record (and maybe your credit history?) and see if you have any aliases.

When a government entity says "background check", I'd assume that they interview your closest family members and maybe roommates to see if you have drug, alcohol, or gambling addictions; or any financial problems that could lead you to get blackmailed.

Note that the above information is based on some family and friends, and not on my own experience.

Really, the only way to fail a commercial background check is to lie on your application.

Depends who's doing it. I've been through the background checks to work at NSA, which I imagine is about as thorough as you're likely to get - and that is thorough, and is a smidge intimidating - but looking back even that was really pretty painless except for filling out a lot of paperwork to document where I was at all times. More typically they're probably just going to pop your name into a couple of databases to see if you have any criminal record. They might check up on your citizenship status, driving record, financial status, but unless it's a job where they really seriously care about security I doubt anything short of literal bodies falling out of the closet is likely to be a problem.

You can't fail, mups, only your employer can. And that's because they'd be dumbshits to underestimate the power that is mudpuppie.

You had to know that the little episode at that Joan Jett concert would not stay comfortably in the past . . .

It's for a university, and it's because I have access to confidential correspondence (though not social security numbers).

I have a pretty shitty credit record. I think that's why I'm worrying. I don't have access to any financial info (or money, or accounts), though, so why would they check that?

Any time, however short, spent in a Mexican jail may be a red flag for them.

I hear.

so why would they check that?

They might check your credit record to see if you are the type who could be susceptible to bribery either to falsify documents for other employees or to sell confidential data to outside sources.

But honestly? I think you'll be fine unless you're defaulting on a lot of loans. If we're talking about some large balances on credit cards and a couple missed payments then you'll probably be just about average these days.

When I started work here, they did a background check to make sure I'd really gone to the schools I said I did, as well as worked at the companies I said I did. (They may have also run a credit check, but I'm not sure.)

The company that my HR dept. outsourced the task to were total failures, though, because according to them I never went to grad school and never worked at the company I spent 4 years at in Chicago. Turns out that the registrar's office at my grad school and the company I worked with had changed phone numbers in the meantime, and the genius background checkers couldn't be bothered to use directory assitance or google to find this out -- all they reported to HR was that I had "falsified" my application. So after I spent all of about 60 seconds getting the right numbers, I had to call and track down all the right info.

So it turned out fine in the end, but it was a pain in the ass for a couple of days.

I had to do one of those too for where I'm working now (same deal with access to student records, but they're locked up and we don't have access to them, just to the sealed box they're in.)

IIRC the exact paperwork, it was just a school/employment/credit check and wasn't too scary. Basically they just wanted to make sure I wasn't a criminal who would steal things.

I'm sure you'll be fine.

What Sperose said.

I've been through this sort of thing many times. Working once with children, once with the U.S.G.S. Those where the big ones. They just verified my application against X numbers of years of work going back and any criminal record. Easy Peezy. Mud, you'll do just fine.

I passed one for high security clearance to work at BigMilitaryContractor five years ago, and I have the Sketchiest. Credit. Evar. Oh and I tend to move on average of every 18 months. And I don't tend to stay in contact with old landlords/roommates/acquaintances very well. Plus my beloved old moms has managed to lose both my birth certificate AND my SS card, so thankfully I have a valid passport (which you'd better believe I keep both current and in a safe place, because as of now it's about the only thing that proves I'm a real person to the US gummint).

Aside from the utter pain in the ass or having to dig thru some boxes of old papers to find job references / former addresses and so on, it was completely non-eventful.

I've been through multiple iterations of these. I am relatively certain that so long as you don't have a criminal or drug history, you will be more than fine.

The check I went through to work at my current job involved mainly 1) having to remember all the addresses I lived at in the past 7 years, and since I'd just gotten out of college that made for a lot of places, and 2) putting down contact infor for several of my bestest friends and/or roommates, and then telling the friends to expect official-looking fluff questionnaires soon in the mail about my trustworthiness and/or reliability and to pleasepleaseplease fill out and return those as quickly as humanly possible. Total fluff. I didn't have to supply my credit card numbers either.

My last job (at a non-profit foundation) did a background check, and it was mainly to look for any criminal records; there was a credit check, but it was the most perfunctory credit check I've ever seen, so I assume it was mostly just to see if I'd been sued or declared bankruptcy or something. (They actually gave me the report once I was hired, so I saw the info they had received.)

I freaked out a bit too, because I have had a number of credit bumps, but it was fine -- they didn't even show up on the report.