This isn't about 'second chances'. Employers are picky because they can afford to be.
They will (mostly) always favor Ivy over state school grads, clean record vs. felon, good credit risk vs. applicant that declared bankruptcy ...and so on.
As low economic growth continues, this is only going to get worse. How many middle-aged people do you see working at Target/Wal-Mart now vs. 15 years ago? If you're not highly skilled with a clean record, things are going to be awfully tough for you.
> This isn't 'right' or 'wrong', it's just reality.
Government-supported reality. You can say that this is okay, but please do not make it look like this is just the way it is: The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police) and even (if it wanted) provide people with a fake background story for the time they were in prison. Discrimination can only be based on things someone else knows, if the government didn't provide the information, how could the employers be "picky"?
> The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police)
So instead of searching government records to find out if you have been convicted of a felony when you apply to work for me, I use Google to find a newspaper report of your conviction. Not as reliable, but will still probably turn up most applicants with serious felony convictions.
If we are in one of the 40 state that does not prohibit employers from running credit checks on applicants (or if we are in one of those states but the job is one for which there is commonly an exception that allows credit checks, such as jobs in banking) [1], then I can find addresses of banks and loan providers you have used, and possibly more addresses, giving me geographical areas you have probably been in. I can do searches of the local newspapers there, which would be more likely to cover any less serious felony convictions.
Same goes for the locations of any past employers on your resume.
The internet greatly increased the difficulty of leaving your past behind. Even if the primary record (like the government record of your conviction and sentence) is blocked, you leave plenty of breadcrumbs on your way to the present, and the internet preserves them.
I give you that with very high motivation you can find out anything about anyone, more or less. I still think that the count of employers who would use such measures is miniscule compared to the count of employers who check felony records (because it's easy).
Additionally, according to this paper(1) around 8.6% of people have a felony conviction in the US. I have a hard time believing that all - or even most - of this felonies get reported by a newspaper/Google, so even for very noisy employers this seems to be a small risk (yes, if you are the "Slaughterer of <some town>" people will probably find you on Google even without a public felony record).
All else given: Start with removing access to felony convictions, then remove access to credit information and go from there. I didn't say it was easy, but at the moment the government (in the US) seems to do its best to make the life of people who have been convicted of a felony very hard.
Each company might not go through that on their own, but it will only be a matter of time until companies are started up whose business model is doing just that.
For $49.95 we will find any past convictions that any of your new hires might have!
> The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police) and even (if it wanted) provide people with a fake background story for the time they were in prison. Discrimination can only be based on things someone else knows, if the government didn't provide the information, how could the employers be "picky"?
No.
We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.
Employers can be legally responsible for crimes their employees commit.
If you employ someone who has been found guilty of a sexual assault crime and hire them to work at a carnival where they assault someone, you will be sued.
You don't have to like it, but the reality is that the US is a country where the majority of the public wants to be able to know when someone committed a serious crime.
> We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.
Laws and regulations are usually designed to protect the minority. Our country would have made very little social progress if we only enacted reforms that the majority wanted.
Employers can't afford to be picky anymore. The unemployment number is now 5.5% and we've had a year of 250k+ jobs added per month. If you want to use anecdotes about Walmart, even they have been forced to increase their wages to retain talent recently.
The axe against ex-cons is an ingrained bias that hurts competitiveness. It is an unfortunate 'reality' that it is a bias that is tolerated in America today.
I wouldn't get too excited about that unemployment number. Only ~63% of Americans are even trying to work and a lot of those that are, are under employed.
1) Underemployment is counted in the U-6 measure which has also trended down significantly this year.
2) The workforce participation rate number is meaningless unless you put it into context. How many people would be in the labor force that aren't currently? Is the drop because there was a lot of people retired early after losing their jobs or is it because a lot of young people gave up looking for work?
The economic improvement is undeniable. I would find better reading material then right-wing and conspiracy theorist "news" outlets.
U-6 is meaningless in context. Its the number of people working part time who would theoretically like full time, plus folks who claim to want a job but haven't actually applied for a job (which includes jobs for which there are simply no more openings in the field, like the stereotypical "factory moved to china" company town).
It has absolutely nothing to do with the modern definition of underemployment as education majors working as waitresses or CS majors working helpdesks or similar examples of "I was trained for a totally different field paying four times as much, or I was trained to be my bosses bosses boss, but here I am instead with a paycheck lower than some current high school students"
"The economic improvement is undeniable."
Where? Everyone seems agreed its the case for propaganda reasons, although its invariably described as "far away from here" for all personal values of "here". With the usual meaningless weird exceptions for ivy league grads of CS programs in Manhattan and SV that we all know about etc etc.
The underemployment figure will always remain high for a while. Normail college degrees aren't worth what they used to be. My dev group was mostly econ and science majors.
> The axe against ex-cons is an ingrained bias that hurts competitiveness. It is an unfortunate 'reality' that it is a bias that is tolerated in America today.
I agree. I think it is the misperception that these people are risky hires. I believe employers are very nervous about liability and simply disregard anyone that may pose a potential risk (bad credit, arrest record).
The real reason is that companies don't want to implement the systems required to hire a more diverse workforce. Their success depends on having an extremely narrow band of aptitudes.
Greyston works because they make no assumptions about the type of person they receive. Because of that, they need systems surrounding each individual to ensure they're successful at all costs. And they have them.
The latter can be far more effective, but requires a broad humanistic approach that very few people, businesses, or cultures in the world have. The chance of transformation is extremely low, and the costs extremely high, so the resistance is nearly insurmountable, companies take the traditional (chaotic) approach, and we suffer for it.
They will (mostly) always favor Ivy over state school grads, clean record vs. felon, good credit risk vs. applicant that declared bankruptcy ...and so on.
As low economic growth continues, this is only going to get worse. How many middle-aged people do you see working at Target/Wal-Mart now vs. 15 years ago? If you're not highly skilled with a clean record, things are going to be awfully tough for you.
This isn't 'right' or 'wrong', it's just reality.