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Newest Job Qualification — A Good Credit History
Alien54 writes quotes an article from The Day that says "In the past, only banks and financial service companies routinely ran credit checks on potential employees. But employers in other sectors increasingly are including [credit checks] in the screening process to assess applicants' honesty and integrity, traits not readily gleaned from a résumé. US employers' use of credit checks increased 55 percent over the last five years, according to Spherion, a recruitment and staffing firm with offices around the country.... "The credit check has become a general measure of responsibility and organization," said industrial psychologist Carl Greenberg, senior vice president of Spherion. "If you cannot organize your finances, how are you going to responsibly organize yourself for a company? Organization is a measure of responsibility."
Nope. If Mr. Smith mazes out all his credit cards because he didn't buy proper insurance for little Suzy, and had zero savings, and then can't afford the minimum payments because he bought too much home and a new car, then he doesn't get a new job. Credit scores are actually a decent way to judge someone's ability to judge risk and handle finances. It rewards a conservative attitude, but also penalizes those who avoid credit totally. Seems a pretty legit factor for employment to me.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
That said, I don't think employers credit checking is the real problem here. As far as I've understood, US credit checking companies are usually inaccurate sleaze-bags who generate overall scores based on amazingly inaccurate information. Atleast here in Norway, there are reasonably strict rules on what information credit-scoring companies are allowed to hold, for how long and they have to tell you whenever somebody checks you up. As far as I can tell, it's working wonders for privacy. Fix the information itself and the rest will sort itself out :)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
It's a bullshit tactic, no argument, but why are you leaving out the part where someone without money shouldn't be running up debts? They aren't called magic money cards, they are called credit cards, and they are called that for a reason, you get purchasing power in return for your promise to pay the money back.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
A good reason to tune out, join alternate economies, and work for the end of this society and western capitalism.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Sure, that's fine.
If I'm an employer, I'm supposed to hire someone who only has bad choices available to them?
- They could decide to steal from me. Bad choice, but maybe it seems better than some of the alternate ones.
- They could skip work a lot. Bad choice, but maybe it beats the alternatives.
It seems like this is an argument in favor of employers doing credit checks.
Travoltus:
"I already told my HR department 3 months ago to never even think about this bullshit tactic"
"b) It makes it impossible for people with poor credit histories to recover from it; therefore, those who are economically down in the dumps, are forced to remain there."
Is it your, and your company's, responsibility to try and make poor people's lives happier? What about the responsibility to the owners, shareholders, to make money? Business is not a charity, if you want to do charity then volunteer or support government programs that do this kind of work.
Also, you seem to have a view of poor people as 'down in the dumps' victims who are not competent enough to realize that it's bad to spend willy nilly on credit. If indeed poor are as stupid as you make them out to be then I think the school system is not doing its job teaching the concept of savings and interest payments.
Blah blah blah.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
No, it relegates the stupid to permanently poor status - because if you are poor, you are brain dead to run up any significant credit card debt. Heck, even if you aren't poor, it's stupid to have any credit card debt.
So? Putting bills on credit cards makes things worse.
Sorry, no. Babies don't 'just happen'. Just like bad credit *you* have to take deliberate action for it to happen. (And modern birth control very, very, very rarely fails. Use birth control and don't have sex during the females fertile period and the odds of something 'just happening' drop to essentially zero.)
Right. That's why people lived for centuries in hot climates without air conditioning. The problem isn't lack of air conditioning - but lack of conditioning themselves for hot weather.
Hardly. Protein != meat. It's quite possible to have a meatless diet and to quite healthy.
Spoken like a true Liberal!
"It's not my fault!"
Why does not Slashdot not have a moderation choice for +5 liberal diatribe?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Advice you might take yourself.
Other than pedantic assholes - who cares? None of the posters above me were talking about credit checks - they, and I, were talking about credit card payments. Pay the fuck attention idiot.