To finish off my career I left my IT job at a hospitality company and took a new job in IT at a financial services company. I had worked for the hiring manager before so the job interview was a couple of texts. Basically hourly work 3-4 days a week. So less hours and weekly pay would be same or more.
Unfortunately since I was going to be hourly part-time I could not work for the financial services company directly but would need to work though one of their approved consulting companies. The hiring manager set things up and the Indian consulting company started the process.
The Indian consulting company and a company who required every company listed on application I had worked for since college. Including exact day,/month/year that I started and stopped. They also wanted a copy of my college diploma. I graduated in 1976. Eventually I found my diploma in a box.
At one point when the background check was done I was given a start date of the next Monday. Friday I was told they had forgotten about fingerprints.
I setup an appointment to get those done
They sent me a laptop that would not finish setup. Was told to contact their help desk. I called and got a phone call back but due to a crappy connection and his Indian accent I just could not understand what he was saying. He hung up. I guess they tried to call once or twice but I was not yet working for the company so not sitting and waiting for a call.
When the fingerprints were completed they said they had sent me forms to complete to my email address at their company. I did not know I had an email address. So back to getting the laptop to finish setup. Called back and opened another ticket and got a call back. Still hard to understand. He then got me on a Teams call where better and could understand. He told me the help desk people do not like to pick up these kind of tickets as they take awhile to fix. He reloaded all of Windows and got it to complete setup.
Finally got on the company email and found the additional documents I needed to sign. They would not let me print, sign, scan and return as an attachment. Had to be signed using Adobe software. No Adobe software on laptop. Sent to my other work email, signed them and the sent them back. They were not acceptable because I spelled the month vs using a numeric. No mention of any required date format. At this point. I had left my other company. So I contacted the help desk to get Adobe loaded on my laptop so I could sign the documents with a numeric month. That took another day or two.
By this time I had probably spent 20 hours on onboarding tasks and no one is paying me for any of that.
Finally everything was complete. They said they were required to verify I had left my old job before I could be given a start date. (Never had that happen in almost 50 years of working for large corporations). They do that via Equifax. Equifax has another division that handles payroll type of information from companies. Companies send them payroll info and then if you apply for a loan or job they can find out info about current or former employment. Not part of their credit reporting business. So they had to wait until their third party looked up my info in Equifax and it said I was no longer employed at former company. That can take 2 - 3 weeks. I went on Equifax website and looked up my own info and could see it indicated I had left former company. Yet the third party still could not see it. At one point the Indian company asked me for W2 to verify I had left former company. At that point I realized the Indian company had never onboarded a US citizen. W2 are sent out in January and do not indicate employment status.
So at that point I went to Europe on vacation for two weeks. Was going to anyway. Nice vacation in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
Came back and finally started.
Started the onboarding process in June, started at new company in mid September.
I now record my time on one Indian company's tool, get it approved and send it to another Indian company who prepares my paycheck and then I get a check from Paychex. All the hours for the month submitted at end of the month. Get a paycheck on the 15th of the next month.
Unfortunately since I was going to be hourly part-time I could not work for the financial services company directly but would need to work though one of their approved consulting companies. The hiring manager set things up and the Indian consulting company started the process.
The Indian consulting company and a company who required every company listed on application I had worked for since college. Including exact day,/month/year that I started and stopped. They also wanted a copy of my college diploma. I graduated in 1976. Eventually I found my diploma in a box.
At one point when the background check was done I was given a start date of the next Monday. Friday I was told they had forgotten about fingerprints.
I setup an appointment to get those done
They sent me a laptop that would not finish setup. Was told to contact their help desk. I called and got a phone call back but due to a crappy connection and his Indian accent I just could not understand what he was saying. He hung up. I guess they tried to call once or twice but I was not yet working for the company so not sitting and waiting for a call.
When the fingerprints were completed they said they had sent me forms to complete to my email address at their company. I did not know I had an email address. So back to getting the laptop to finish setup. Called back and opened another ticket and got a call back. Still hard to understand. He then got me on a Teams call where better and could understand. He told me the help desk people do not like to pick up these kind of tickets as they take awhile to fix. He reloaded all of Windows and got it to complete setup.
Finally got on the company email and found the additional documents I needed to sign. They would not let me print, sign, scan and return as an attachment. Had to be signed using Adobe software. No Adobe software on laptop. Sent to my other work email, signed them and the sent them back. They were not acceptable because I spelled the month vs using a numeric. No mention of any required date format. At this point. I had left my other company. So I contacted the help desk to get Adobe loaded on my laptop so I could sign the documents with a numeric month. That took another day or two.
By this time I had probably spent 20 hours on onboarding tasks and no one is paying me for any of that.
Finally everything was complete. They said they were required to verify I had left my old job before I could be given a start date. (Never had that happen in almost 50 years of working for large corporations). They do that via Equifax. Equifax has another division that handles payroll type of information from companies. Companies send them payroll info and then if you apply for a loan or job they can find out info about current or former employment. Not part of their credit reporting business. So they had to wait until their third party looked up my info in Equifax and it said I was no longer employed at former company. That can take 2 - 3 weeks. I went on Equifax website and looked up my own info and could see it indicated I had left former company. Yet the third party still could not see it. At one point the Indian company asked me for W2 to verify I had left former company. At that point I realized the Indian company had never onboarded a US citizen. W2 are sent out in January and do not indicate employment status.
So at that point I went to Europe on vacation for two weeks. Was going to anyway. Nice vacation in Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
Came back and finally started.
Started the onboarding process in June, started at new company in mid September.
I now record my time on one Indian company's tool, get it approved and send it to another Indian company who prepares my paycheck and then I get a check from Paychex. All the hours for the month submitted at end of the month. Get a paycheck on the 15th of the next month.
