I'm saying that the entire concept of "verifying employment" is a whole lot of bullshit, however.... a patently obvious attempt to avoid being accused of saying something subjective that could end up turning against you in a lawsuit if what you said led to them not getting hired.... and of course, answering with dates of employment *IS* still saying something, so you could still end up a day in court.... you won't lose, but the risks on that end are the same with absolutely anything that you might tell them, and there can be plenty of things which can be said that are no less objective about an employee who was fired for being repeatedly late, for instance. such as the number of times they were late for work in a 4 week period, the number of times the employee had been spoken to about it (the notion that tardiness is unacceptable in the first place is usually implied, but will generally also be explicitly described in the employment contract that the employee signed in terms of what the employee's expected hours of work will be, and which could be produced in court, if matters came to that) and even how much time the employee was given to correct the behavior after the first warning before you decided to discharge them.
Further, just verifying dates of employment tells people absolutely nothing that the employee themselves could not have communicated to the employer on their resume or in an interview, and if a person doubts what the employee has communicated to such an extent that they should ever feel any need whatsoever to actually confirm it those dates, then they probably shouldn't be hiring that employee in the first place.
Finally, of course, there is about the single most subjective thing the employer can truthfully say, "the employee did not fit into our company's corporate culture". It's one heck of a lot more informative than just giving data that the employee themselves could have regurgitated, and I've actually heard this exact line from employers, by the way... I can see how it might lead to a defamation suit, but as I said... since the employee won't know beforehand exactly what was said, absolutely anything you might say could lead to such a suit, so how could saying that lead to losing a defamation lawsuit, exactly? The concept of "corporate culture" is invariably be a highly subjective thing, but if it is the company itself that is talking about its own corporate culture, then how is not entitled to be subjective about that ideal? It's something that actually *belongs* to the company, after all... No jurisdiction to my knowledge can ever tell a company that they aren't allowed to fire somebody for being late, for instance.
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And then, of course, when using such language they aren't really saying anything subjective at all about the employee themselves... they are saying something that is objectively true about something that they are lawfully entitled to hold subjective views about, which is how much they liked what the person was doing. It answers the question, and best of all doesn't leave the impression that the former employer is afraid of legal recrimination when they haven't actually done anything that was wrong. And honestly, in such a case, the company's biggest mistake in that case was probably ever hiring the employee in the first place... and if the company is genuinely afraid of some sort of lawsuit, then saying *THAT* is probably the most honest thing they could probably say... because of course, if it actually led to any kind of lawsuit, then it would show that their fears or concerns were entirely justified, and they would have had every legitimate right to be regretful of ever having hired the person in the first place, no matter how arguably subjective such a concern may be.