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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."
So because Mr. Smith had to max out his credit cards for Little Suzys cancer medication, he doesn't get the new job?
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
So, what if a candidate's credit history is a result of not finding a job. I've seen stories of (especially) IT people with long careers summarily right-sized out of their jobs. I've read articles (Enron?) of employees who lost their life savings and retirement funding because of (ironically) mismanagement at the top.
So now a candidate must show good credit? WTF? And if a candidate is in this financial situation because he (she) can't get a job, an employer who dismisses such candidate because they have bad credit perpetuates their situation. Shame on them!
From the article:
I call bullshit. This is an unadulterated power play and invasion of a candidate's privacy. And I suggest all out there looking for work decline the credit check as a part of the interview process.
I also think some public vetting of companies who use credit checks as part of the interview process would be interesting.
of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer.
Do you think the employer wants to hear the part about the divorce and paying alimoney and child support? They probably don't care about that part...
Definately not a utopian society we live in.
I had my identity stolen years ago and my credit was ruined.
Does this mean that as a victim, employers are allowed to victimize me by denying me employment? Yep.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: Laws exist to protect big business, politicians and the financial top 1%.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Drucker once wrote that you should seek to staff an organisation based on the strengths you could find, not the lack of weakness, because that way led to (at best) being average.
Who cares if your R&D department cant remember to pay their bills? If they are good enough it'll be cheaper to hire someone to handle all that tedious interfacing with the real world while they prove that P=NP and engrave the steps onto the back of an atom using a method they developed in the bath.
In fact the business world *already* does this. The reason I have a purchasing department and a finance department and a contracts department is because I, as an engineer, am more valuable when I can forget about problems which are more efficiently dealt with by someone else.
Now I tend to pay my bills mostly on time, because it's the lazy option. I can even see how this might be a valid test for someone who was going to work in commercial or administration. But for most staff? Work out what the job needs to be sucessful and then ignore the other flaws - after all, managing flawed but brilliant people is why you have middle management and a HR department, employing their strengths to make you money.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
It's another example of ways to keep the poor... well poor.
And I'm not typically the type to rag on that bandwagon. But lower income families typically do not always have the luxury of being able to manage credit. Especially not in a way that would result in a good great rating.
This also doesn't take into account things that were beyond the control of the potential employee. Unless you are going to allow potential employees to speak up for the problems on the credit report, then I see this as discrimatory.
Strike that. I find it discrimatory period.
I'm a damn good employee at work, but my credit rating is horrible. I've fallen on my face too many times and have struggled to get back up. I hold myself above water now, but not enough to even begin repairing my credit. If something happened and I lost my job tomorrow, not being able to find new employment isn't going to help that situation.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
My buddy wanted to be a cop, long story short his credit was bad because of his friend, and when the did a credit check they told him he cant have the job.
Turns out you're most likely to accept a bribe with bad history.
I can't make any judgements about the average-joe-with-bad-credit, but for myself (I have a "medium - low" score, it's not absolute trash, thankfully), I can say that while it certainly is my fault, I seriously question that it would have anything to do with how responsible or hard-working I am. The reason is that I incurred 90% of the damage to my credit while I was 18 and stupid. Yes, at that time, it might be true that I was irresponsible and would have been a bad employee (although it wasn't, really). I just had no idea how to deal with anything in the real world because it had never been a concern before. Some people might claim that if I'm a "new person" now, with my life and finances in order, I should be able to recover quickly. Since I'm in school and not making much money however, those debts are not going away soon. Nor do you find credit card companies to be quick to forgive. I think it will be at least 10 years before my credit is really on the mend, and I don't begrudge the lesson that high interest rates, etc will teach. But I think denying me a job on this account is quite out of order. In short, it presumes too much.
"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
What if some staffing consultant company one day decided that people who eat bran for breakfast are better employees (they're in cahoots with the bran industry, after all, serving each other's interests. They want to make sure you really suffer if you haven't been a fan of bran), therefore they're going to do a bran profile of all employees.
If you don't have enough bran in your history, sorry - no job for you. I guess you'll have to beg to try to start getting some bran.
Oh but don't think you'll sneak around this: They're going to do hair sampling and talk to former roommates to determine if you ate bran years ago. Simply towing the line now isn't satisfactory.
Maybe they'll do a "former lover" test to determine if you called within 6 days, and how your performance was in bed. Surely some loose, anecdotal correlation can be drawn there as well.
Sounds sort of arbitrary and ridiculous, doesn't it?
Because it is. It would be one thing if an unbiased research paper drew a strong/strong correlation between credit worthiness and performance on the job, but simply taking the word of a guy who's agenda is being served. No thanks.
Here in Canada there have been some efforts to ban any industry (for instance car insurance companies determining your rates based on your credit worthiness. Sure, they can say "Oh, but people with bad credit are more likely to be worse drivers!", but failing actual credible results, thankfully most people say "bullshit") from using metrics that haven't been positively and strongly correlated with the result they're trying to test.
"but are looking for other information...the identity of a person...full legal name...A lot of people change their names if they have something to hide, and it lists former employers who might not be named on the résumé."
Prospective employer # 1 : "Gee, look at this. That last woman we interviewed, Mary Roe, the one we want to go with? Says here her name used to be Mike Row. Forget "it". Next!"
Prospective employer # 2 : "Gee, look at this. It says here that Joe Blow maxed out his credit cards last year for chemo for his wife. We don't want him raising our health insurance premiums. Next!"
Prospective employer # 3 : "Gee, look at this. The credit report lists Janet James as having a dependent child, but no husband. We don't need sinners like that here. Next!"
Prospective employer # 4 : "Gee, look at this. This credit report lists that Wilma Flinstone is claiming Betty Rubble as her spouse. Do we really want a lez in the office? Next!"
Prospective employer # 5 : "Gee, look at this. This credit report lists that Fred Flinstone is claiming Barney Rubble as his "domestic partner". Credit card bills show they were married at Stoney Creeek Lodge last year. I don't want some guy looking at my ass. Next!"
Prospective employer # 6 : "Gee, look at this. The credit report says that the reason for Nancy Crow's falling behind for a few months was she quit her job and sued her previous employer for sexual harrassment. She's probably a butch anyway. Next!"
There's more to business than just the bottom line. Treat people like crap, and you'll end up with crap people, and that WILL be reflected in your numbers eventually. And btw - while all of these forms of discrimination are illegal in any place with sane laws, #1 - the unwanted "outing" of a transsexual, either by the governments' program of informing employers about mis-matches between the gender associated with a SSN and the gender of the worker, or a credit check that is too invasive, places transsexuals at serious risk for becoming victims of physical violence, over and above any concerns of job discrimination.
What if they ran up student loans and got laid off due to offshoring? That put a lot of people out of work for as long as 5 years, with their next employment being McDonald's!
Let me clue you in, pal... if everyone abstained from credit cards whose income was highly vulnerable, the economy would tank and your comfortable, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps universe would collapse anyway. Our economy lives and dies by consumer credit card spending: it is that huge a factor.
Medical bills, well that's even more fun. Every day I stare right at medical insurance policies as high as $800 a month for someone with pre-existing conditions. Now you tack on a student loan with that for someone who is getting a MBA (since all other degrees are unimportant in the corporate state), and you have someone who is ripe for another round of mass unemployment when MBA jobs start going offshore in 5 years (and they will, mark my words). Loans. High medical insurance. Oops.
BTW I have a FICO score of 803, with no bankruptcies and a bunch of empty balances. I used to pay rent on credit cards when I had no job, and I pulled myself out without missing a payment. So yeah, I'm probably better at this than you, and I still know what it's like for the working class.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I made my arguments against it quite clear. But here, let me clarify.
a) It does precious little to catch real criminals who might gank you.
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.
The first reason is a personal (to the company one). It's a net with really large holes. Credit checks stop the piranhas but let in the sharks. The second reason is a societal one. If this policy is left unchecked, it will create a more severe nationwide underemployment situation where many college degreed people will be left flipping burgets while their real skills languish and the real work force they were trained for, leaves them behind. This results in a severely inefficient economy, and inevitably, diminished consumer buying power. That last one is disastrous for the economy because diminished consumer buying power means less profits which means a recession, layoffs, and inevitably an economic collapse (okay, ostrich brigade, you can now ram your heads into the ground and tell yourselves such a thing is impossible). If McDonald's is, as you suggest, also justified in running credit checks, then the economy's collapse is not only possible in the current reality scenario, but it is also imminent.
c) Angry employees with no credit problems gank you, too. Why? Because they're angry. You're not even coming anywhere close to addressing that problem with credit checks. Your best bet here is to conjure up a more advanced psychological profile test because that would be a better predictor of what they'll do when they're ticked off, than a credit score.
That being said, I am in favor of a Federal law forbidding employment oriented credit checks totally. I wouldn't even let them exempt banking companies from that law; the neo cons would have to spend that last shred of public good will they have left, to make that compromise happen.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Thank the gods you added that sarcasm tag at the end. By the end of that post epic flames were ready to fly...
I can honestly say, many don't get out because they don't try, but I don't think that's the case with most. Most are plagued by a compounding of the effects of past mistakes. For example, a young girl who gets pregnant in high school, will often suffer compounded effects of the mistake of not abstaining or using birth control. First, when the child is born, she is forced to drop out of school. Next, she may need to start working in order to support the child, well it's hard to get a decent paying job with JUST a high school diploma, just imagine what it must feel like without one. Now, she doesn't have a diploma, she's working a shitty job, she can't afford daycare, etc... Some slimey bank lends to her, at 33percent interest and $23 a month "membership fees"(yes, they do this, it is legal) and she takes it at a despereate moment because it's the only card she qualifies for. She'll never be out of debt now, she'll be making late payments because she likely didn't read the fine print about monthly membership fees, the outrageous interest rate, the $50 late fees, etc...
So now instead of just having no diploma, she now has bad credit to worry about in the job interview process(even while her banks is raking in big bucks off her through outrageous ineterest rates and late fees). And one of those fucktards will want to reply right now and say some shit about that's what she gets for being stupid and getting the card, having no clue, because mommies tit was always there when they needed it, what it's like to be on your own, single and poor with rent to pay and a mouth to feed. People make bad descisions when they're young and scared. Hell, people make bad descisions when they're old and scared. Look at the Bush supporters, at least half of them didn't support him according to the polls until they were scared by 9/11. I think that proves my point empirically about people making dumb descisions when they're scared.
Our financial affairs, unless we've been found liable or guilty of wrong doing by due process in a court of law, should not be any of our employers business, except in specific cases were specific relevance can be established. Meaning, no vague bullshit about how credit records show how responsible you are.
If I found myself in a situation where I could feed and clothe my kids or pay my visa bill on time, I'm going to feed and clothe my kids. Any fucktards who thinks that's a sign of me being irresponsible should not be involved in the hiring process of any company.