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Losing your job is a tramatic enough experience but it is made much worse when the company goes under and leaves you with nothing and no employment references.

This is made even worse and continues to carry negative effects when out looking for a new job and having no verification of the previous employment. This puts the applicate at a great disadvantage compared to the competition which likely does not have this problem. The lack of a reference will affect you most seriously getting your next job, but will continue to affect you for many years to come every time you need to find a new job.

Executives and human resources employees are all risk adverse. Why should they care about you when there are other people with the same qualifications that have spotless references? If you are applying for a job with a high salary or responsibility level, then it will be even worse.

You might go many months without finding a job and not really understanding why. Having a job reference that can not be verified or having a bad reference can and will sabotage your job search, and you will usually have no idea what the problem is. This coupled with other factors, such as your age, can really kill your chances. They would never admit to age discrimination, and they don't ever have to, they can point to your lack of a verifiable job reference.

A bad reference can kill your chances for a job. Every good job has multiple applicants. A potential employer is not going to worry about it, they will just file your application and resume away and go to the next applicant.

You have to worry if your experience and background is good enough. You should not have to worry that one of your references is destroying your chances.

Few companies melt down in an organized way or preserve HR records. Almost always, even when the writing is on the wall, it still comes as a complete surprise. Nobody gives any thought to job records. Usually there are changes in executives, staff is reduced, and it just goes downhill from there. Sometimes, there is no formal bankruptcy or close-down procedure. Paperwork is dumped and the physical property is sold off. Blue Planet hopes to change that, but it will be a big job to communicate with companies and preserve their job records. Everyone reading this site can help. However, at this point another approach will be used to recreate employment records for employee references.

It is recommended that you network with fellow employees including bosses, peers, subordinate and if the job is a sales job, your clients.

There are various websites and publications that tell you what to do about references if you worked for a defunct company. Of course, what they mostly recommend is networking with fellow employees BEFORE the company goes under. That is great advice if the company is gone. They tell you to network with your former bosses, peers, subordinates and even clients if it is a sales job. Assuming you actually do this before the company is gone, it might help, but chances are it will not.

There are lots of reasons. After a company goes under, people move, they move on and usually don't want to be bothered. Even those who say they will provide you a reference will soon get tired of it, or can't be bothered once they have found a new job. If they have found a new job, they will simply not be available when a HR person needs to get information. Neither is HR or an executive going to make repeated calls to reach your reference. Also, a potential employer talking to someone at home with the kids crying in the background is going to be real impressive. If you were a supervisor or worse, the boss, then you have little hope of the networking option. Chances are you will be blamed for the disaster, true or not. You can bet these references are going to sabotage you. Another problem with using peers or subordinates is that any one of them is going to know only part of your employment picture. The new company is not going to call a bunch of different people to piece together your references. They are not going to do any research on your behalf. Why should they bother when they have a big pile of resumes and applications with easily verified references?

On the other hand, let's say you knew that the company's days were limited and you have done your homework. Let us say you networked with other people and they came through for you and you landed a decent job. Now, a year or two or even more have gone by. A job has come to an end or you need to find a new job more to your liking. Chances are the people who helped before are no longer available. Contact information is likely out of date. Even if you contact them, chances are they can't be bothered. Memories and interest have faded. Even if some say yes, you really have no idea if they will follow through or what they might say. What do you do then?

As we said, if you have done networking and have contacts for co-workers, that is a big help for recreating your job reference. We have a number of techniques, but tracking down former employees of the same company and department is a big part of it. We do all the work that no potential employer is going to do. We talk to your contacts once and they are not bothered again. We collect information from many sources and put together the full picture.

Then, when you need a reference for that job, you have one. The references we provide are truthful and accurate. We do not make up references. Our corporate culture is based on integrity and a high degree of ethics. Our references are based upon information that the client provides which is then verified and expanded upon through networking with other employees. The more networking we do with employees of a particular company the better the reference information will be and the faster we will be able to put it together. We also research public records, news articles, corporate reports, and many other sources of information. We can check employment dates with Social Security assuming the company paid the FICA tax into Social Security. We pay commercial sources for information as well.

We offer commissions and rewards for the job records of defunct companies, and this allows us to provide the exact information the original employer would have. If it is not possible to obtain the actual records, we than reconstruct them according to specific and well planned guidelines.

Outsourced and reconstructed personnel records is a new concept, a new industry that we have pioneered. However, it really is not that unusual. It is not all that much different than a credit reporting agency which collects a vastly larger amount of information than we do, aggregates it all together, and then sells it back to its subscribers.

Our fee for a reconstructed standard reference is only $89.95. This includes our standard one month of service handling 20 incoming reference calls with a live operator and a toll free 800 number. Each employer gets a separate 800 telephone number. If you need to use our service for more than one month, our standard rate of $49.95 applies to the second and all subsequent months.

Should you use our service, obtain employment and then separate from that employment in the future and use our service again, the rate is $49.95. The information we collect is saved for at least ten years and immediately available from our networked data servers.

We also offer an enhanced reference which is $179.95 for the first month and then $69.95 for any subsequent months. This form of reference is more expensive due to the increased time it takes to research and write, together with the much longer telephone conversations that will take place with potential employers.

The standard reference includes name, social security number, date hired, date separated, salary upon hiring, salary upon separation, title and job responsibilities. The enhanced reference includes more information on responsibilities, major tasks accomplished and goals reached, performance reports, and much more verbiage covering other questions a potential employer might ask. This enhanced information is presented to our trained operators in a sophisticated manner so that they can answer questions and conduct the conversation as if it was all from memory. It will not sound like they are reading a script, rather it will sound very natural. Our employees are highly trained professionals.

After you sign up, our client member area provides more information and details on the process. We have extensive forms to be completed, and we provide guidelines for what information and documentation would be helpful. If you have documentation of the employment it should be collected and sent to us following the guidelines provided. It will be then used in the research procedure and promptly returned to you.

There are some limitations on our services. We reserve the right to refuse to provide a reference for you if the information we obtain is extremely derogatory and/or if the position involves public safety, and under some other select circumstances. Research fees will not be refunded. The portion of the fee which actually covers providing the references of $49.95 (or $69.96 for an enhanced reference) will be promptly refunded.

Reconstructed Standard Reference $89.95

Standard Reference- Additional Months $49.95

Temporarily payment is made to dschramm, Blue Planet CEO. Our service is billed as a subscription for one month. Your service will be completed within that time. You will only be billed once.

Reconstructed Enhanced Reference -- $179.95

Enhanced Reference- Additional Months $69.95