Applicants with a felony

richterma

We ask the question on our employment application, as I am sure many do, if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony? If the answer is yes, they are asked to explain. How do other employers determine what is acceptable in this category and what is not? Anyone with a felony is not to be hired?? Only if the felony outcome was __ yrs ago?? What is a good question to ask ourselves if this is acceptable or not?? Thanks

HRsage

We ask ourselves What is the nature of the job compared with what the felony was? Are they going to work in a bank and they were a convicted robber? That's an easy example but you get the idea. Most of the time I see DUI's on the info. We don't care about that because it doesn't have to do with the job. Compare it to the job description.
Also since you are in CA I hope you know that there is a class action lawsuit currently in CA in regards to asking the conviction question on applications. It's against over 100 employers and the claim is that it is illegal to ask this question without specifying certain exceptions. I'm tring to do more research on it now.

hrbanker

That's easy for me. Bank's are prohibited from hiring convicted felons.

Cinderella

This is a toughy. You have to use your best judgement in the "weird" situations (once had a software engineer candidate that was convicted of molestation....the job wouldn't have him around kids but we still didn't hire him....).
Cinderella

Balloonman

I just hired someone who was a convicted felon and recently got out of jail. My HR mentor used to do the same some years ago, he said when you interviewed them you could tell the ones that wanted to change their lives. I believe he is correct.
I know when I was interview large numbers of folks for a plant opening we interview two young men with convitions and jail time for drug offenses. It was obvious to all, that one of them had learned his lesson. The other one, still had an attitude, and spoke negatively about his boss/company and pretty much all authority figures. We hired the one, who was working out quite well when I left and passed on the one with the attitude.
You will know when you discuss it if they have learned their lesson.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

Ethel

We have the same questions on our application and also state on the application that a "yes" answer will not automatically disqualify an applicant. This upon advice from our attorney because you could run into problems with discrimination charges. If the crime does not impact the job, we will consider them for employment. However if the crime for which they were convicted does impact the job, we do not because then you could be held liable for neglient hiring or retention. What a mess all of these new laws make for us HR Warriors!! Examples of where we have legally not hired because of a felony conviction -- bookkeeper with conviction for writing back checks; home installater - assault and battery, cashier with theft conviction, etc., etc.