Ex felon here. In my experience, it was far easier to deal with people by being open about my criminal history. In a its-a-no-big-deal-if-you-know sort of way

Ex felon here. In my experience, it was far easier to deal with people by being open about my criminal history. In a its-a-no-big-deal-if-you-know sort of way. If I'm trying to keep it secret, I have all this stress of wondering who knows, lying about it, etc. And that's bad for me because I'm already in a stressful situation. Putting it out there saved me a lot of time with companies/HR departments by filtering out the haters in the first step. I didn't have to bite my nails wondering what their reaction to the background check would be. I put my record on the bottom of my resume. My father told me I would never get a job with that, but he was wrong. I landed one two weeks after my release. I asked the guy who interviewed (and hired) me if he had read about my criminal history on my resume, and he said, "Yeah, that's not a problem. My cousin's been in and out of jail all his life."