4 ms·
Consider sunk costs. As an employer, you've found a brilliant person to fill a position. You've gone through days of interviews, and this is clearly the best ca
by mabbo 9y ago
Consider sunk costs. As an employer, you've found a brilliant person to fill a position. You've gone through days of interviews, and this is clearly the best candidate. You put out the offer, and then ask for a criminal background check.
At that point, the candidate says "When I was 19 I got into a fight in a parking lot and was convicted of assault, had three years probation".
Now you've gone to all this trouble and you like the guy, but have to decide whether that history matters or not.
Before, you'd have simply filtered his resume from the pile at the start and never even interviewed him.
- SerLava 9y agoMan, that is incredibly refreshing.
- Shivetya 9y agohowever there are jobs subject to state regulations that forbid those with criminal history from obtaining said job or even the certification. this is just feel good do nothing regulation. it benefits no one because the end result will be the same.
- lsaferite 9y agoFor a subset of jobs.
- ApolloFortyNine 9y agoAs I said, seems like it's going to waste a lot of company money. Maybe small businesses will take the risk, but big company lawyers are going to be telling their people to eat the cost. Now you're even setting the basis of the argument that would be used in court, that the company only hired the felon because it was cheaper than finding a new candidate. Imagine if a cashier, who had previously been convicted of assault for the fight you mentioned, gets into a fight with a customer for whatever reason. If you want past criminals to be able to be hired, you need to have the civil legal system fixed so that a company couldn't be sued for hiring one. That's most of the reason why a company doesn't hire past criminals.
- tomjen3 9y agoSo you make it clear up front that while they will not be asked about any criminial convictions, they will be asked after and will simply have wasted their time. Plus you usually don't have just one good candidate, you typically have a couple, different people might even prefer different candidates. If you really only have on qualified candidate, what will you do if they quit?