You should be super honest on the background check forms, even if they don't align with your resume and I've seen this a few times with Codesmith alumni. They have a semi-sketchy process for getting verified and they will verify your entire time in the program as experience on the OSP, even though it was 4 weeks and the evidence they give you in writing fooled several people I tested with who thought it was a verification letter for a SWE role.
Assuming the hiring company is using a large common company like HireRight or Checkr, they are checking for two things:
1. Do you have any red flags: e.g. a criminal record that might be relevant to the job?
2. Can they verify the information you put on the background check?
The report they send back isn't a pass/fail, but it's more like "able to verify"/"not able to verify". Sometimes a totally legit job can't be verified because the company refuses to respond and has no obligation to.
Ultimately it's on you and what you want to do. You can put it on there following the program's advice and get verified as per their instructions. Or you can omit it and risk losing the job if you have a blank experience section and it comes back as no experience to verify... when they were under the impression you had like 2 years of experience.
Anyways, when I talk about Codesmith, I get super attacked and I have a bunch of fake accounts following me now that manipulate voting on my posts, so I don't really want to talk more about Codesmith, but feel free to message me privately for completely blunt advice on how to handle it based on your resume, the hiring company, and the company doing the background check.
u/TheeKingInTheNorth wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
As someone posed to start a Codemsith cohort in 2 weeks, this really bothers me. I’ve asked people who work there as well as people in this sub who claim to have gone to Codemsith and all of them have said that they don’t tell you to do this lying bs about work experience.
Now
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
u/TheeKingInTheNorth: I've seen all sides of this and it's not binary. People's views depend on two things: 1. where they are in the program/what point in time, 2. the person's background and their personal resume.
Number 4 below is most important (and the rest is for reference), because a lot of people don't know that step is happening. If you asked those people "how did Codesmith verify your OSP work or provide you with a reference?" I bet most of them will say, I don't know, they didn't need it. Some of them will say, oh I just filled out a Google form - don't really know. And then others will think the references are totally fine and not even mention that it's something controversial.
This is all either secondary (second hand from a primary source), or first hand sources shared with me.
1. They strongly and firmly tell people in lecture to not lie on their resumes.
2. They also strongly and firmly tell you that Codesmith is so intense and advanced that the experience you get there should be framed to stand out from others.
3. The resume building guide they give you doesn't tell you to lie. If you follow it through, you'll end up with a very robust looking resume that some people consider overstating of experience (i.e. 10 minute quick fix on an OSP sounding like it was company-changing resume bullet point). This is largely on the student and the career support coaches who review them.
4. They do background verification checks that I have flagged before and continue to flag as being ethically questionable. You can judge for yourself. They do not lie when you read it carefully, but a reasonable but uninformed person reading might be making false conclusions. They finally created an actual charity for OSLabs a few months ago, which only further complicates this IMO because the person signing these letters is doing so as a member of the charity. Only people that need this would see it so people who don't list OSPs or didn't need a reference wouldn't even know this is happening.
5. Salaries being high is sometimes about this, but often times not:
1. Most common: Codesmith tends to have a number of experience people that other programs don't have and that group of people have outcomes akin to a career accelerator, not a bootcamp.
2. A number of people with no experience that get those jobs to get "years" of credit for their OSPs and carefully weave through. This is the more sketchier route.
3. I've seen some people with no experience who were honest get mid-level jobs based on skill at non-top tier, but good, companies.
4. People with truly zero experience and no existing professional experience (e..g lawyer, accountant) tend to fall in the "under $120K" bucket or don't get jobs.