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Ask Slashdot: Can a Felon Work In IT?
First time accepted submitter Lesrahpem writes I'm a felon with several prior misdemeanor convictions from an immature time in my life. I've since cleaned up my act, and I want to go back into the IT sector. I keep running into potential employers who tell me they'd like to hire me but can't because of my past record (expunging won't work, I'm in Ohio). Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Should I just give up and change careers?"
...and home of the lifetime sentence for nearly every crime. Best of luck to you.
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Seek federal jobs which offer a clearance. If you admit to everything thoroughly and give the investigators the truth, and if they're not worried about you after all of that (they think the risk of recidivism is low), you'll get the job and you can say on your resume you were cleared for federal work.
Whenever you decide to leave, the fact that you had a clearance might actually help counteract your priors.
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I've hired people with misdemeanors before.
Be honest about the crime, don't have it be a surprise that I find out during the background check part of the hiring process.
I also know other managers who've done the same. Its tough to find good people. A drug offense 5 yrs ago, with proof of a completed drug treatment program for instance isn't going to stop me from hiring a good IT worker.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
unfortunately i'm not speaking from experience, just spitballing ideas.
best of luck to you!
hello and welcome to my life.
it's well documented here on /. that i struggle with this same issue, and have for over a decade.
i wish i had good news for you, but i don't. it's going to be hard for you for find "regular" employment.
my advice? try to find a small company where you can get hired without a lot of fanfare. finding and owner/ceo who does the hiring, or a contracting company where they have no real interest in caring about your background because it will cost them money if they don't place you, is pretty much the only way i've been able to get back into a stable, well-paying job.
pretty much anyplace with a fulltime HR department will discover your transgressions and gleefully report to the hiring manager that they "gotcha" and are doing a really great job keeping reprobates like us away from their "sanitary" workplace.
i've started my own small consulting company and have found that it's fairly easy to work from home (im a software guy) doing the code monkey thing...it beats digging ditches that's for sure. i advertise back-end/full-stack web development/server management on craigslist and it works.
good luck...you are going to need some.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
You really have very few choices. There are employers out there who actually seek out people with priors, but for the most part you're going to be frustrated in your attempts to land a job.
Your best bet is to start your own business, for example web design or outsourced PC network maintenance. There are lots of people making a good living as free lancers.
Once you have gotten established, which admittedly may take a couple of years of networking and marketing efforts, you may not wish to be an employee again anyway. You can set your own hours, choose your own customers, and take full charge of your life. It's not easy, and requires more skills than just showing up and doing a specific task from 9 to 5, but much more fulfilling in the long run, and few will run background checks.
You're still going to have trouble getting loans; just work hard and build up equity, and the rest will follow. Best of luck.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
A felony can only delay a security clearance because the only relevance a felony has to a security clearance is whether it shows a fundamental character issue making one insufficiently trustworthy. That's fundamentally what they want to find out in a background investigation. Can we trust you? That's why a guy who's 40 with a felony charge for selling drugs but can show he's been a cleaned up citizen for 15 years can probably get a clearance but a guy with no criminal past who's had an affair on his wife or two in the recent past cannot hold one.
Being a felon means he committed a serious crime.
really???
i got convicted of felony because i got caught with some personal MDMA pillis in 2001 at an electronic music concert.
that's a "serious crime"??
As someone who hires programmers, a felony like this I would completely ignore if everything else was in line.
Honesty and theft are the big ones in IT not drug use or even assault. Other careers would be different but
as a programmer you are entrusted with alot of stuff (like credit cards) so a felony that is theft related is
probably going to be much harder to be overlooked. Drug use, I don't really care that much about. I've hired
plenty of alcoholics and probably a few pot smokers but as long as it doesn't interfere with their job, why
should I care?
Misdemeanor is a minor crime. Misdemeanor can lead to jail time and fines and gets you a criminal record. Jail time is not uncommon, but is usually not handed out unless it is a more serious offense or this is a second conviction. It tends to be on the order of like 30-180 days. Fines and probation are the usual sentences.
Felony is a very serious crime, and in addition to a record and much more likely jail time, which starts to become years in length, you also lose many of your civil rights. In many places, you cannot vote, serve on a jury, or own a firearm as a felon and this lasts for some period after your release, up to and including the rest of your life. Your only recourse to that state is often an executive pardon.
Of course, these are classifications, not actual crimes. Murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, grand theft, etc. are all felonies. Speeding is an infraction, not a misdemeanor, but speeding excessively over the limit might be reckless driving, which is a misdemeanor. Carrying illegal substances would usually be a misdemeanor as well (in the places it isn't legal anyway).
Dealing illegal substances is more serious and can often end up as a felony, although laws vary based on how much you've been dealing.
You will frequently end up with a felony if you continue to repeat misdemeanors. And this is a frequent reason for drug based offenders to turn into felons. In addition to the utility of becoming a dealer if you are a user, if you are simply a user, addiction puts you in a position where you continue to have strong motivation to keep breaking the law which escalates charges to felony-level under repeat offender provisions in the law.
It is important to note that a crime is defined by law as a felony, there is no hard and fast requirement for a crime to meet some sort of definition to be considered a felony. For instance, two minors sleeping together used to be able to both be convicted of statutory rape, even if the act was completely consented to by both parties, because under the law a minor cannot consent to sex. In many places that is a felony. The drug laws are also one situation where felonies seem to be handed out very easily, and so consequently, is a reason the US is seen as a place where the jails are busting at the seams with non-violent offenders.
why are americans such judgemental pricks?
when you've done your time, you've done your time. that should be the end of it and, aside from some very limited cases like not letting pedos work with kids, discrimination against former criminals should be illegal....even a fuckwit yank should be able to figure out that if ex-crims can't get jobs and have no choice but crime to support themselves then that's what they'll do.