Best and worst crimes for employment?

[DGuller]

Wow, seems pretty fucked up.  It doesn't seem helpful to deny a person useful employment for getting caught soliciting a prostitute.

It's an issue of character and judgement, just like any other brain fart, like shoplifting.

Personally, I never understood the logic of making it criminal to sell what we otherwise give away for free, but hey.  It's a PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUE for all those Libertards out there.

I can understand that on an individual level.  If you got a stack of 100 resumes, you may as well set some minimum criteria to narrow it down.  Running around naked in a kindergarten when you were 2?  Probably doesn't indicate a big risk factor, as the candidate is now 35 years old, but I've got 99 other candidates, so why take a chance?  The problem is that every employer gets 100 resumes, and if they all weed out those with misdemeanors, you've got a social problem for those who made one mistake in their life.

[Capetan Mihali]

Usually, it's the context of the misdemeanor charge that determines your fate, and the number.  The arrest is one thing, the disposition is another.  Stet, Nolle Pros, PBJ...those can give you a fighting chance.  Guilty?  Done.

That's a whole other topic I'm interested in. Here at least, if the charge is dismissed, or even if you get acquitted in a full-blown trial, employers can still see that you were charged and what offenses you were charged with. Unless and until you manage to get your non-convictions expunged.  In N.C., you get to do this once in your entire life, and it costs a couple hundred dollars.

I wonder how much employers take the disposition into account, or if they just look at the charge, and how much the charge itself sways them.

[Caliga]

The OP specifically said they were all misdemeanors.

I forgot.

[Capetan Mihali]

There is no ranking.  Either you have a criminal record or you don't.  When we are swamped with several hundred applications for every opening, it isn't even a question.

The latest statistic I saw is that is that 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. has a criminal record of some sort.

[Caliga]

Keep in mind that I would probably be a hell of a lot more lenient if I was hiring for a fast food job or something.

[Admiral Yi]

If I were hiring someone to drive a forklift I wouldn't give a rat's ass if he had been busted at a rub and tug.

[CountDeMoney]

I can understand that on an individual level.  If you got a stack of 100 resumes, you may as well set some minimum criteria to narrow it down.  Running around naked in a kindergarten when you were 2?  Probably doesn't indicate a big risk factor, as the candidate is now 35 years old, but I've got 99 other candidates, so why take a chance?  The problem is that every employer gets 100 resumes, and if they all weed out those with misdemeanors, you've got a social problem for those who made one mistake in their life.

As someone who's done background investigations and vetting for both public and private sectors, there are very, very few professional background services that do more than cursory database look-ups for criminal and traffic charges, and they're not privy to anything less public than you are.  If you can't find it in the system through public records searches, neither can they.  SO IT DIDNT HAPPEN NOW DID IT

The only time you run into issues is if you're applying someplace that will run your fingerprints;  in the FBI database, all submissions for fingerprints have a date and an ORI, which is the originating entity.  So, if you said you were never arrested, and hello, there's an entry from the Ohio State Patrol dated September 1992, you're going to have trouble explaining that one.  I had mine run a couple years ago, and the fucking list went all the way back for every job, license and permit I ever had.  You just can't hide your prints. 

Everything else?  Meh.  Unless you have a law enforcement organization run your driving history, nobody's going to see the basic traffic shit that rolled off of it from over 10 years ago. 

The background agencies contracted by HR departments--and so many of them are based in fucking India now, THANKS MITTENS--aren't going to find anything that's not in the public arena.

In short: if you want the job bad enough, and it's not for a LEO or anything that requires a TS or TS/SCI or anything like that, fucking lie.

[CountDeMoney]

I wonder how much employers take the disposition into account, or if they just look at the charge, and how much the charge itself sways them.

Usually it's only the disposition they care about;  hence, their question "have you ever been CONVICTED of a felony or serious misdemeanor (including serious traffic charges)?".

PBJ?  Not a conviction.  Nolle Pros or stet docket?  Not a conviction.  "Guilty" is a conviction.

[Ed Anger]

if you want the job bad enough, and it's not for a LEO or anything that requires a TS or TS/SCI or anything like that, fucking lie.

If they do and I hired that person, they better hope I never, ever find out. I will rip a hold in time/space moving so fast to terminate.

[CountDeMoney]

if you want the job bad enough, and it's not for a LEO or anything that requires a TS or TS/SCI or anything like that, fucking lie.

If they do and I hired that person, they better hope I never, ever find out. I will rip a hold in time/space moving so fast to terminate.

Well, duh.  But as you've probably figured out, I ain't been too much of an employer-friendly fucking mood lately.

[Monoriu]

There is no ranking.  Either you have a criminal record or you don't.  When we are swamped with several hundred applications for every opening, it isn't even a question.

The latest statistic I saw is that is that 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. has a criminal record of some sort.

That still leaves me with 75%.  That's good enough. 

[garbon]

Not all states allow concealed carry. Also - being denied a job for a crime against nature?

AFAIK the only one that still doesn't is Illinois (and DC if you count it as a state).

There are states that allow them in theory, but in actuality routinely deny them to the point that they don't really allow them at all.

I'm aware of that (e.g. California) but that wasn't exactly the point he was making.

Well actually that would be subsumed under my point which was to combat you assertion that stupidity is why you wouldn't have a CCDW.

[OttoVonBismarck]

When I was a manager at DOD you had security concerns, at ICE it's a little less strict. However from my position there is a really elaborate civil service process. I can't even look at applicants until after they have been distilled from many into a relatively smaller number, and I have absolutely no say whatsoever in how a list of 2,000+ applicants gets wittled down into a more reasonable number.

That being said I can tell you the Federal government has specific policies in place that for many positions they take it very seriously that your application gets treated identically to any other applicant even if you have a criminal conviction. Certain job specifications have certain built in requirements that override this, and can disqualify people based on certain things.

I oversee office workers, and you could have several DWIs and it wouldn't hurt your chances of your application ending up on my desk. For driving jobs or equipment operations? I think more than one DWI it actually says on the job posting you can't apply.

In a general sense, when talking about misdemeanors I'd probably rank them (in order of severity to me personally).

1. Any type of larceny. It's true tons of employees commit petty theft, but if you've committed a theft egregious enough to result in a misdemeanor it puts you in the category of "thief" to me, and you never trust a thief. There's no real mitigation to it for me, can't trust them.

2. Sex crimes. I'd rank solicitation pretty low, sexual battery (I'm assuming groping a woman on a train or something), I'd rank pretty high on a list of misdemeanors. Those types of guys often become outright rapists and I want no part of that.

3. Weapons charges. Not really a big crime but a big lapse in judgment, some things can happen in the heat of the moment but you have to deliberately choose to carry an illegal gun. Illegally carrying a gun would be a bigger judgment lapse to me than someone carrying a 3.5" knife in a jurisdiction with a 3" knife law.

4. Police problems. Again, judgment problems. Anyone can get into a beef with a cop, but you have to want to get in trouble to have it escalate to charges.

5. DWI. A single DWI is nothing, 2+ is a serious problem, but even a single DWI is more serious than the rest of these.

6. Drugs. Sliding scale, pot possession I wouldn't even notice, pills or something I dunno. People who are popping pills are usually pretty far into fucked up land.

7. Everything else (rowdiness / public intox etc / fighting) - All of these show someone who did something stupid in the heat of the moment. As long as it's been awhile since it happened and there aren't multiple incidents I'm not too concerned. Anyone can get into a fight, or get too drunk on the streets or break into a vacant building while out drinking. You do it 3-4 times and get charges it shows you've suffered the consequences of these actions and continued to put yourself in the situation where those actions will recur, and that means you're basically as unhireable as a thief or train-groper. Age will factor big time too, I'll look twice at a 35 year old guy doing this versus someone who did it at age 17-24.

[OttoVonBismarck]

CdM is spot on about how you should lie by the way. I've read tons of articles on background check firms, and the WSJ ran one itself on the author of one of the articles (he knew he had a minor misdemeanor in a given state) I believe none of the $50+ background check firms found his conviction, and most contained outright incorrect information (wrong past addresses, wrong past court records etc.)

Even the federal government outside of a band of jobs that involve national defense, law enforcement, scientific research and etc barely conducts any background checks.

[Monoriu]

The way we do it in HK is that the applicant has to go to the police for a "certificate of no criminal record".  The police will do the background check.