Ok, first of all - I know what I did is really stupid, and I definitely should not have done this. I pretty much learned my lesson, but need to decide how to proceed.

I have been working for a number of years, spending about 3 years at my previous company. After 3 years I got bored, and joined a young startup in a founding role. I thought the experience would be cool, but instead found myself in a pretty toxic environment, with an unfunctional business model.

My CV up until this point is pretty rock solid. Being scared of fucking up how the storyline of my CV looks like, I - not thinking long enough about this - decided to basically hide the last 3 months (time that I‘ve spent at the startup so far) from everywhere.

I just went through a couple interview processes, and got another job. During the interview process I had multiple conversations with recruiters, and also the leads from the new team.

At each of the interviews I mentioned that I‘m still at the company that I have spent 3 years at, never mentioned the startup.

I got the contract, and signed it already. The tricky part is - now there is the background check which is more elaborate than I thought it would be. I‘m trying to decide what to do about the 3 months inconsistency in the employment dates that might be uncovered.

From what I see, there are the following choices:

- come clean to the company that has extended me the offer. Seems like a fair option, but awkward af. Especially because now it will seem really untrustworthy (my fault of course), and I am only coming clean AFTER having signed the contract and seeing the extent of the background check

- try to go through with the background check, but indicate the correct leaving date for the previous role (3 months ago). Hoping that - after the verification will be marked as green - nobody will compare the actual dates. If the HR from the new company does compare the report dates, I go into the same awkward conversation from option 1.

- state on the verification that I am still working at my previous company, and hope that their HR does not answer.

- prohibit the background check company from reaching out to my previos company, and upload my contract and pay slip. The issue is that the latest pay slip i can use is from 3 months ago.

I should state that I am based in EU, and my previous employer is EU based as well.

Now, I feel like the dumbest person in the world for doing this, and have been really stressed the last week or so. I know that there is no good way out of it, but I really want the new job - and I have put a lot of effort into actually passing the interviews and getting the offer.

Any advice would be highly appreciated.