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Background verification wants documents from a startup that no longer exists. Who do I even ask? — CareerVerse

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Background verification wants documents from a startup that no longer exists. Who do I even ask?

Anonymous27 Jul 2026

Six months at a fifteen-person startup. They ran out of runway, the office shut, and the founders are still on LinkedIn but haven't answered me in two weeks. The company domain is dead so my work mail went with it.

The new employer's verification vendor wants a relieving letter and salary slips. What I actually have is the offer letter, three payslip PDFs I'd saved to my personal drive, and bank statements showing the salary credits landing every month.

No relieving letter, because by the end there was nobody left to relieve me.

Has anyone cleared a check with a shut-down company in their history? Does the bank statement route genuinely satisfy these vendors, or am I heading for an awkward call with someone who just has a checkbox and no authority to interpret anything?

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Anonymous27 Jul 2026
Tell the new employer's HR yourself, this week, before the vendor escalates anything. A company going under is completely ordinary and any experienced HR person has handled it before.

What goes badly is when it lands on their desk as a flagged discrepancy in a report rather than as something you disclosed upfront. Same facts, totally different reaction.
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Anonymous27 Jul 2026
Cleared one with a company that had shut down. Payslips, bank statements and the offer letter got me most of the way, but the thing that actually closed it was a signed statement from my old manager, sent from his personal email, confirming my dates and title.

These vendors want a human being to attest, not just paper. Keep chasing the founders, but also work out who you reported to — a former manager is usually much easier to reach and counts just as well.
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