Employer credit checks

[Anonymous]

   When employers do a background check on you, do they check your credit report, your credit scores, or both?   For highly competitive positions with lots of applicants, would they actually have a hard cutoff of credit scores that you would need to have in order to be offered the job?

   Have any of the practices changed given the current economic environment?

[Brusilov]

In my experience giving authorization to have credit checks done as part of your background check doesn't generally equate to them checking your credit at time of applying for a job.  For my specific sector (IT Security) these are only done for higher level positions prior to promotions, however I could see banking firms being more strict about this sort of thing.  I remember being nervous about this exact same thing, and even proactively mentioned my poor credit rating to my future project manager and he said as long as I didn't have any public records I should be fine.

[Anonymous]

what is it about public records that is so bad?  what if you had a federal or state tax lien or levy?

[cobaltnv]

I do not want to sound harsh, but what is good about a public record? The information in a public record show some of the more egregious problems with credit. Bankruptcies, tad liens, foreclosures, judgments, past due child support all show either poor judgment and/or inability to pay off debts. 

[Anonymous]

When my employer did a background check on me it was just a criminal check - no credit check.

[203bravo]

Many companies farm out their employment screening to other specialized companies - I've dealt with "HireCheck" for years. 

Whenever I check the information, their program looks for certain triggers that are predefined by job title and lets us know if those conditions are met or not.  Don't usually see the actual credit information.

Companies will tend to value your actual credit jacket more if you are in a position of trust - handle large amounts of money, access and signature authority to checking accounts, ability to authorize large purchases, etc.  The thought is that employees have a higher reason to "steal" if they are in a deep debt situation and have creditors, CAs continually calling.  It's a good idea not to put someone in a position of temptation.

[Anonymous]

it depends on the nature of the position....my employer ran quarterly credit/criminal checks...the position was in a private household for a high profile client......the impression was that if a high risk employee (poor credit) may be susceptible to bribery or compromise security for $