Do NOT quit your current job until you have assurance from your new job that you are officially hired.

If you're worried about not having enough time to gracefully exit your old job before starting the new one, that should have been part of your counter-offer to the new company. It's not necessarily too late to do that still, and the new company should be understanding with pushing back the start date, especially since they are the ones dragging their feet with the final steps. THEY are the ones causing the delay and the humans involved should be sympathetic to that. If they are not, you don't want to work there anyway.

This is normal. Background checks - of the sort where they actually try to contact old employers and verify employment history - are a total joke, especially ever since everyone in HR started to 'work' from home. I've seen background checks come back a full month after the person had already started their job and had access to all of the internal systems and were collecting paychecks. Most companies won't deny you the job just because the background check is taking a long time. And if they did, that would be a bad PR move for them I think.

But how do I start the new job? I still have my old job, and I'm afraid to quit until the background is done, is this wrong? Should I just go for it?

I get how people without a job can start, but how do I start? Feels risky to resign from current.

If it’s a reasonable company, they will be willing to move your start date upon (polite) request, justified by the delay. In my recent job change, there were a couple of things that moved the timelines (only a couple of weeks, not months like your case), and the recruiter adjusted my start date like it was SOP.

Re resigning: make sure you have some concrete evidence of passing all contingencies in the hiring process (even go so as to ask the recruiter if any steps remain). Only after that, give your notice.

I had the same issue. I got every W-2, a paycheck stub from every job, a boss contact from every job, all my school transcripts, and pretty much any and all paper work I could come up with and uploaded to the background check ppl.

Then I bugged the background check people literally every 2 to 3 days and asked the status.

I would push back your start date until it's confirmed though to be honest.

How long did it take you to finally get approved?

I don't even have a contact with the background people, I filled out information on the third party site, and they finished report within a day or two. But they couldn't reach the companies, and didn't ask me about any proof, just wrote a report that they couldn't reach them.

I had a company like that and my companies HR department handled it directly. It took me two weeks specifically because of that one company.

If you have w-2s, paycheck subs, and Boss contacts I think you HR company can handle it also.

Also you can make a W-2 online if you lost yours. just download the template and use a paycheck stub to fill it out.

> I'm fine waiting for months and pushing the date, but will they still want me?

Yeah, most big corporations will understand you can't give a 2 weeks until you're cleared to start. For you, this is a life impacting decision, for them it's just business as usual.