When Bad Things Happen to Good Job Seekers

Maybe an anti-war protest got out of hand, and you were at ground zero, replete with overzealous police officers. Maybe a bout with drug or alcohol dependency left you with no choice but to start over financially. Or, before you left college, what started as an innocent prank turned into a shoplifting conviction. Maybe all three occurred, but since you weren't Charlie Sheen or Robert Downey Jr. (although your lifestyle emulated parts of their past), you didn't have the helpful publicist, winning good looks, and lucrative film offers that would get your career back on track.

If life went as planned, we would learn all about life without having to get into trouble. For the most part, that has probably been true in your life- except for that one incident, for those two or three years before you got treatment, for that one bad business venture where you wound up with too much debt. Unfortunately, potential employers often seem to live in something of a fantasy world, where no one ever gets arrested, no one spends time in prison and no one ever files bankruptcy. (They are firmly grounded in reality, of course, and are actually concerned with that four-letter word known as risk.) If you are looking for a new job, how do you convince an employer that the person who was arrested five or ten years ago is not the person they would hire today?

First, forewarned is forearmed. Find out the laws in your state governing what a potential employer can and cannot ask you concerning criminal records. For instance, in California, potential employers cannot ask you about arrests that did not lead to conviction, nor can they ask about misdemeanors. So unless you have a felony conviction, a California employer shouldn't be asking too much.

But, be sure you know about exceptions to the law. For example, in California, if you are applying for a job considered to be a "secure" job (i.e., a security guard, some banking jobs and some utility jobs), a potential employer can ask about otherwise excluded information. Check with your state Department of Labor and/or Department of Corrections about the laws in your state, or consult with an attorney.