Denied employment due to bad credit

[bobbay]

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@guiness56 wrote:

I believe the majority of jobs that do credit checks are looking more toward what type of risk you would pose.  Meaning, are you going to embezzle or steal drugs to get your self out of debt.  The fact that you have bad credit should not, in and of itself, be the issue.  More likely the amount you are in debt would be the bigger issue.  If you were $300,000 in debt and not making an attempt to pay it off would look really bad.

Applying for a job in any type of financial institution and having bad credit could be more of a challlenge.

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Just at thought...

Have you ever seen a over weight doctor or one in less than perfect health?.... Should they take away his/her license to practice away based on the fact that they themselves are unhealthy?  Should an attorney that gets a ticket or have financial difficulties have their right to practice law taken away because they made a mistake or got in a poor situation?  Some of this stuff doesn't make sence to me.  People should be rated/evaluated on their ability to perform their jobs based on the functions of the job.  Predicting what someone might do does not make sense to me unless there are extenuating circumstances where it would be really poor judgement.   As in prior offenses of embezzlement, stealing, selling drugs, ect. but I dont write the rules.  I am also quite sure Bernie Madoff and Alan Stanford had great credit.

Just my perspective.

[Legal_Girl]

Many law firms require potential employees sign documents that allows the firm to run their credit.  And yes, some of them do pull credit reports, especially the larger firms.  I know of other occupations that have been subjected to credit pulls.  You never know for sure what company is going to ask you to sign a document that allows them to pull.  But, just because it is pulled doesn't mean that a bad credit score will cause someone to be denied employment.  

[longtimelurker]

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@bobbay wrote: 

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Just at thought...

Have you ever seen a over weight doctor or one in less than perfect health?.... Should they take away his/her license to practice away based on the fact that they themselves are unhealthy?  Should an attorney that gets a ticket or have financial difficulties have their right to practice law taken away because they made a mistake or got in a poor situation?  Some of this stuff doesn't make sence to me.  People should be rated/evaluated on their ability to perform their jobs based on the functions of the job.  Predicting what someone might do does not make sense to me unless there are extenuating circumstances where it would be really poor judgement.   As in prior offenses of embezzlement, stealing, selling drugs, ect. but I dont write the rules.  I am also quite sure Bernie Madoff and Alan Stanford had great credit.

Just my perspective.

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But we do this all the time.   An employer cannot hire everybody and give them a chance to prove themselves, so they make judgements, which may or may not be correct.   When someone answers an interview question poorly, it may just be a flub, or maybe real-time communication isn't critical for the job etc, but it is STILL going to count against them.  Also, generally interviews can't address everything, references are problematic etc, so some employers bring in as much info as possible, including background and credit checks.   It's up to them to decide how much weight to give them, as seen earlier in the thread (now many years old) an ideal candidate is sometimes hired despite a poor score, in other cases employers decide not to take the risk, as there are lots of other candidates.

It's precisely because there is no way to reliably do: People should be rated/evaluated on their ability to perform their jobs based on the functions of the job.  that companies go to proxies such as good character and good financial management

[OHWWCB]

I just recently got a job with a very large corporation and when they ran my background check, they also included that they would be running a credit report. The background check took unusually long and I was freaked out for over a week that I was going to be denied the job because my credit at the time was in the high 500's. Luckily everything came out okay but I do believe the decision to allow me to have the job had to be manually overriden due to my credit score. I'll never know...