Hello! There's been a lot of discussion about the documents you need to provide when hired and the background check. HR Nerd here to help answer some of those questions.
I did something similar to the character when I was 38. I lost my job, there was a recession and no one is hiring a recruiter in a recession. I had 15 years of professional work experience and decided to take a step back and try to get an HR Assistant/HR Coordinator job to get more generalist experience which I was lacking. When I had all 15 years on my resume, no calls. As soon as I cut off 10 years and only had the last 5 the calls started coming in and I got a job as a HR Coordinator. I didn't have to lie about my age, and I got the job on my merits, not my age. I included my education, but you never put the year of graduation on your resume - it's not supposed to happen, but it open the applicant up for age discrimination. I don't remember what Liza's resume looked like, but not including graduation year on your resume and omitting information is not lying - a resume is not a legal document.
The application is a legal document and that is where using a different graduation date (if asked on the application) could get her fired - falsification of a legal document. However, processes are put in place now to protect candidates from potential age discrimination, if the application asked for graduation date, anyone outside of HR would not be privy to that information.
As for the documents. You present ID for your I9 and that is done by HR. There are very few jobs (such as a CDL driver) where there is a business reason for the manager to see the actual license. For an assistant position - there is no business reason. Those documents would be presented on the first day and HR has ownership of them. Personnel files are set up so that no information about protected class (age, race, sex, national origin, religion for example) can be viewed by the manager or anyone outside of HR.
As for a Background check - those are run by HR and should be run post offer. most checks are generated by the SSN, not the driver's license. The SSN check is for eligibility to work in the US (nothing about age comes up in the SSN) and any convictions and usually only 7 years back. Because of new employment discrimination laws, not as many credit checks are done. If they are done it should only be job related (ie the driver for the Brinks money truck) but an assistant having bad credit is not job related and should not be used in determining employment for the job. Lastly, ONLY HR sees the credit and background check. So again, the only issue I can see up to this point is if she put the wrong graduation date on her application and the check came back otherwise.
If HR was told by the hiring manager - we have a great young candidate, she's about 26 and if it comes back from the BG check or I9 that she is not and there are no "policies" violated, then Liza did nothing wrong. HR cannot come back to the hiring manager and say - 26? I saw her DL and she's 40, born in 1975. The HR Manager would be in BIG trouble and Liza would have a good lawsuit on her hands, especially f she was terminated post offer as a result of a protected class status.
OK, probably more information that you wanted, but if she had not created a fake ID, the character really did nothing wrong that would warrant termination. Leading people to believe you are younger than you are is not grounds for termination. (falsifying an application with incorrect dates will). It just bothers me that more employees don't understand their employment rights.
