I have bad credit (school loans, some big hospital bills), but I’ve never not paid rent or any other “every day” credit issues. And I don’t steal. But my bad credit has cost me at least one non-government, non-financial job. This kind of infuriates me; how’m I ever gonna repair my credit if I can’t get a decent job?
Looks like it’s indentured servitude for you, chap. Have a good day!
How many petty criminals do you need to match the damage a Ken Lay can do. Throwing people into the streets and killing pensions. Those are thieves of the highest order.I would not be surprised to find the total financial damage of these guys passes petty crime many times over.
Also if credit checks are so important to hiring quality employees, why dont I hear about yearly credit checks for existing employees.
If bad credit can prevent you from being hired, it should be grounds for your termination if you say go through a bad divorce or rack up a bunch of medical bills
People who required security clearances at one of my previous employers had their credit checked every six months as part of a routine security review.
Yes, but were not talking about security clearances. We talking about the increasing number of regular jobs that have credit checks as part of their screening process
But I am curious, were they canned for having bad credit?
I wasn’t privy to such information. However, I would presume that if somebody with a clearance suddenly went from excellent to horrible credit within six months, they would at the very least get a talking to.
My employer, in my position, runs a check with the credit reporting guys but doesn’t pull the whole report. They just get a report with past residential locations and aliases, to facilitate the criminal background check.
The HR guy made it sound like it’s not a rare practice.
Of course, we employ guys who can wind up handling a quarter mil in cash (a, and those guys
I so didn’t hit enter!
anyway, “and those guys get a proper credit check.”
[QUOTE=ASAKMOTSDNow I know that multiple credit checks cause my personal FICO score to be impacted, so I wonder how much more I am paying for things (like loans, insurance, etc) just because someone decided that credit score was so useful for everything these days.[/QUOTE]
The hit is small, there generally has to be several of them, it goes away fast, and the small difference generally has no effect on anything but a home loan/mortgage. That being said, I would be extra careful if I was just about to apply for any sort of mortage, and even pay for one of those “credit score improvment” programs.
The whole “getting a hit on your FICO score for an inquiry” is hwaaay overated as a cause for worry, but it’s also a reason why I think FICO is FUCKO. Although it’s true that having a scad of inquiries can mean you’re applying for a bunch of new credit, no longer is that even that most likely.
So because a credit check won’t stop the likes of Jeffrey Skilling pillaging the pension fund, they’re worthless? Isn’t that like saying there’s no point in breath-testing drivers because it won’t help catch Osama Bin Laden?
Putting people whose personal financial situation is precarious in positions where they have access to money or valuables is proven to be somewhat risky. If someone wouldn’t pass a credit check to get a card with a $5,000 limit, it makes sense to consider carefully whether you want to put them in a position where they have ready access to the details of thousands of such cards. But it’s by no means the be-all and end-all of security - it’s just one factor which needs to be looked at as part of an overall employee profile, and that in turn is just one part of a complete security process.
The checks are a waste of time. The interviewing process and reference checks should sufice. If someone has fallen on bad financial times due to illness or some other unforseen circumstance it does not follow that they would be a bad employee.
Uh, yeah. I meant “illegal” to modify “discrimination”, not “laws.” This is why we need to abolish English in favor of C++.
Nobody said it did. The only point that matters is that poor credit is statistically correlated with fraud and theft. If you have two otherwise identical applicants for a job, which would you choose? The one with poor credit, or the one with good credit?
The statement people with poor credit are more likely to commit fraud or theft is true. You seem to be arguing against the converse: a person with bad credit will commit fraud. But nobody here has posited such.
If we could show that “race is statistically correlated with fraud and theft” would then choosing dudes on the basis of race be OK? :dubious: "Statistically correlated " is crap- either that given employee will or *will not * steal.
Race is correlated with poverty, and poverty is correlated with crime. But it’s illegal to discriminate based on race. It is legal to discriminate based on finances, though.
So you can predict the future, then? That’s good to know. I need a new HR person, anyway. That is, if every insurance company in the entire world hasn’t already retained your amazing precognitive powers.
What I am saying is that an in depht interview and *knowing your employee * works hwaaaaay better than any “statistical correlation”. Each person is an individual, not a statistic. Now, I guess if you are hireing them by the thousands, that’s different.
Actually I would like to see the cite that people with poor credit are more likely to commit fraud and theft.
Also I have two questions for you: If you believe this to be true, would you be in support of the termination of a good employee who files bankruptcy?
If you had two otherwise identical applicants, would you hire over someone with a good fico score of 725 the applicant with a better score of 750?
I think firing someone for declaring bankruptcy is illegal, but I’m not sure. But if the person was an established employee in good standing I would not fire them. I might move them to a different job if their current one involved security or large amounts of money, but that would depend on the person. And I don’t run a business or work for one with those kinds of issues, anyway.
In an interview, you don’t have a pre-existing relationship with the applicant, so you have to rely more on objective factors.
I don’t think such a small difference is really significant. And when I’ve looked at credit reports, it’s always for the big red flags: lots of collection accounts, high numbers of delinquencies, etc. I wouldn’t consider the difference between two people with medium or good credit.
(And FICO scores cost extra. When I’ve done CRs it’s just for the identity verification and a list of accounts.)
I was under the impression that those are all pretty much a scam – at most they just do what you could do yourself for free.
Do you have information that some of them are NOT a rip-off?