I recently attended a Mac Specialist convention at my local mall in hopes of getting hired on with Apple. I did great during the group interview, and I am pretty sure I'm getting a personal interview. When I got home from the group interview, I had an email asking me for information to submit to HireRight, the background check company. I have never committed any type of crime (clean driving record, criminal record, etc) but I do not have a great credit report. To summarize, I got a couple of credit cards when I was too young to know how to manage them, subsequently my credit rating stinks. I do have a cell phone that I always pay on time, but the cards have given me a bad rating. Do I even have a chance at passing the HireRight background check? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
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Can anyone ease my worries?
- Thread starter herbivore
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There are some companies that run a credit check, but I would guess they are a small minority. Recruiting is an expensive and time consuming process so many companies stick with verifying your work history because its most applicable to the job you will do in most cases.
Truth be known a lot of companies do not even check education. My old company was one of those.
Truth be known a lot of companies do not even check education. My old company was one of those.
some companies do it because an employee with really bad credit might be more likely to steal. They use it as a reflection of character. While I doubt it would ever be the deciding factor, it could become an factor when deciding between two otherwise similarly qualified candidates. This is becoming more and more common.
Credit checks are usually only done for prospective employees who would have direct financial responsibilities within a company. For an accounting position, for example. It's possible they could do one for other types of positions, as a sort of measure of general level of responsibility, but it probably wouldn't be a decisive factor in the hiring decision--not if the employer is sensible, that is. (If you don't want to hire people who've done stupid things in their youth, then who exactly are you going to hire?)
I really doubt this is going to be a factor in their hiring decision.
I really doubt this is going to be a factor in their hiring decision.
Are your debts currently under control? Many people have poor credit as a result of nobody ever explaining to them how credit cards work by the time they're old enough to get one.
I don't think the "character" implications will by themselves sink you unless, as strider said, you're absolutely neck-and-neck with another candidate who has better credit, and at that level whether they like you personally will probably have a bigger impact.
What might cause you problems is if you have bad credit and you still owe people more money than the job itself will reasonably help you pay down. That puts you in a situation where you'd have a strong incentive to nick something every now and again and sell it on eBay or Craigslist to help yourself out.
I don't think the "character" implications will by themselves sink you unless, as strider said, you're absolutely neck-and-neck with another candidate who has better credit, and at that level whether they like you personally will probably have a bigger impact.
What might cause you problems is if you have bad credit and you still owe people more money than the job itself will reasonably help you pay down. That puts you in a situation where you'd have a strong incentive to nick something every now and again and sell it on eBay or Craigslist to help yourself out.