Chumbak is right. Different companies have different policies. From my experience, since larger companies (especially publicly traded ones) post their official job requisitions, they go through a full recruitment process. No matter you are an internal candidate, a contractor working for the firm or an external applicant you would have to go through their application submission, sekection, interview, offer and acceptance. As this process is largely driven through decision made by hiring manager and since you've got most of the part straightened out the only sticky meat is your BG check. References, Education and Drug tests are easy peasy - you got that part. I cannot claim that I know about Employment verification though. Like Chumbak said, some companies might be stricter about EV and might want to check with previous company's HR. But if in your resume you mentioned your previous company was a client and that you were contracting with ABC then you may get a pass. But even I do not know how that works. Curious too to learn from other posters.