Quote from: Zumbagirl on January 08, 2013, 12:51:33 PMSince you are going out job hunting a name change may help, but not if the company does background checks. They will find out anyways.
It depends on what kind of "background check" they do. If they pull your credit report or trace your SSN your old name will most likely show up unless you're either transitioning very young (i.e. before or right after turning 18, before you had any "adult" records tied to your report or SSN) or FOTB (reports typically don't transfer internationally). If you have
any criminal convictions under your original name you'll have to mention that if they check your criminal background or you may face legal problems by not disclosing an alias you were convicted under. For reference/past employment/educational checks you should be fine
if you've informed all applicable individuals/institutions
and they've updated your records; if not when they go to verify you'll probably have to explain or they'll think you're lying about your credentials or wonder about a "gap" in employment (which is a major issue these days).
Since you mentioned that you're looking for a job in NY, although that state lacks TG protections it's more favorable than average if you're going stealth. In that state, employers need to know about your former name only if they have a practical reason for the information (e.g. they can ask if any records like those mentioned in the last paragraph are under any other name, but are not supposed to ask about previous names in general); although realistically that probably won't help most TGs except for the very young/FOTB exceptions I mentioned it does help guard against employers seeking extraneous information. (You can thank immigrants who historically assumed more "American" names to assimilate for that rule, so employers wouldn't be able to seek their national origin!) By contrast, in California, they can ask for any former names as long as they don't ask why the name was changed (which is useless for TGs) because the law took root when the issue was companies asking women for their maiden name and learning their marital status rather than when immigrants were flooding the country. In most states there is no written rule about if a company can or cannot ask about prior names, but the general consensus is that any such inquiries should be restricted to what's necessary to perform whatever checks they do (e.g. someone who was adopted or had their name changed in childhood typically doesn't need to mention their birth name unless it's a high-security job where they trace you back to your birth certificate, but if you've been married or divorced and changed your name you'd probably need to since you'll most likely have some unchanged records floating around).
