Credit History & Employment

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By Jason Gillikin, eHow Contributor

As employers wrestle with difficult questions about employee trustworthiness, some companies are instituting credit checks to determine whether an applicant has met his credit obligations. These credit screens are part of the total picture an employer examines when deciding whom to hire for certain jobs, including those that handle money.

Credit Scoring

1. A credit report details a person's overall repayment history. Some additional services provide a score, which is a numerical representation of a person's relative credit risk. Although employers can purchase a score, in general an employer is more likely to look at transactional data--charge-offs, collection accounts and judgments--as well as delinquency patterns, instead of measures such as credit utilization.

High-Trust Positions

2. Most jobs will not appreciably benefit from a credit history check. However, some jobs that require a high degree of trust--such as bank tellers, casino dealers, armored-truck drivers and jewelers--will typically be screened. Employers believe that a person who has a solid credit history will be less likely to steal and less susceptible to financial pressures by competitors or thieves.
   
   In addition, a credit history will reveal bounced checks that were sent to collection. That can be important because bounced checks are technically illegal, even though they are rarely prosecuted.

Security Clearance

3. Some employers who contract with the federal government routinely conduct credit inquiries, because to obtain and keep a security clearance, candidates undergo detailed financial history checks by federal investigators. If a person cannot obtain clearance, then her employment becomes moot, so a detailed credit screening is a sensible precaution on the employer's part.

Privacy Concerns

4. Some employees and consumer-action groups have criticized the increasing use of credit histories to make employment decisions, especially for positions unrelated to money-handling. They suggest that there is insufficient proof that a good credit score necessarily reflects on a person's trustworthiness or fitness to hold a particular job, and that credit scoring is an invasive practice that potentially exposes the candidate's financial history to disclosure risk.

Employment Law

5. Some states prohibit the use of credit histories to make employment determinations except for a narrowly defined list of industries or job types. In addition, it is a violation of the federal Fair Credit Act to use a credit score as the sole pre-screening qualifier for employment.

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