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SuperCharlie writes:
"I am in search of employment and ran across a bit of a dilemma that I would like some Soylent guidance. After applying for a job at CareerBuilder, I received a follow-up email which requested that I fill out their on-line application. The first field, mandatory, was Social Security Number as part of their initial screening process. My question for the community is, how would you deal with requests like this as the initial employment steps?"
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
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(Score: 1) by fliptop on Sunday March 02 2014, @09:20PM
If you are applying for any kind of job that handles money, especially at a bank or credit union, a credit report is necessary.
If you have second thoughts about booking a trip to an Indian casino, is it a reservation reservation reservation?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday March 02 2014, @10:49PM
Why?
For what reason, and what do we learn from a credit report?
If it's duress you are worried about, that is incredibly unfair for the exact same reasons that you would look. Looking for it creates the problem.
That could be mitigated by simply asking about the debts and what went wrong in an impartial way that you don't take the creditors or the applicant's side. Even then, what do you hope to learn? The applicant was stupid? The applicant was unlucky? The applicant shouldn't have banged the waitress and got divorced?
There is a faulty premise at work here. The applicant is so emotionally involved in the satisfaction of the debt that they would perform an illegal action to receive unjust enrichment that allows them to satisfy the debt.
It's so laughable as a premise. You don't know how sociopathic a person may be because they were simply retarded or drunk when they bought that hot tub. We've ALL BOUGHT THE HOT TUB. Mine was a 5k impulse purchase on credit a decade ago, that to this day, leaves me in a state of awe as to what I was thinking.
The possibility that they may do something wrong because of a debt, even a bad one, is just as equal as the possibility that they wouldn't. Furthermore, it's usually the large and very emotional debts that are concerning. Like home mortgages. Everybody has those, so everybody has the stress equally, so you learn nothing. You just lost the Who's-A-Sociopath game.
Medical burdens are next. You don't need a credit report for that, and you don't learn that the applicant has a niece with some horrible disease and applicant could really use 50k just laying around in the vault.
For actually assessing real risk, a credit report is just useless.
What a credit report is useful at though, is very subjective judgments of a person. You get an idea of their culture, their history, their business decisions. However, all of those ideas can be based on stereotypes and other forms of bias. Once you have that, people will act normally, and judge the applicant hastily according to their life experiences and biases, and that would rarely be fair to applicant.
An employer has no business with a credit report, even if you do work in a bank. There is nothing in a credit report that would logically convince me that a person was more than a risk than any other person.
As for highly sensitive jobs, it is still worthless. From a credit report you don't know how in love he is with that stripper that ends up breaking down one day and promising the applicant that if we was rich they could run away and hump like rabbits on the beach. You only know that with a deep background check, psych testing, etc. All things far more invasive and effective than a credit report.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fliptop on Sunday March 02 2014, @11:45PM
I guess the HR people at my bank see it differently. You can't get a job there unless you have good credit. Now that I think about it, it's the same way at the casino near me too.
If you have second thoughts about booking a trip to an Indian casino, is it a reservation reservation reservation?