*This is not a partisan issue.*

Of course it is. Your second point explain why: credit scores work to protect the old boys network.  What do you think the old boy network IS?  Its the core constituency of the conservative movement.  The Republican party (and the tea party moniker it currently likes to use instead since they destroyed the world economy) is made up pretty much entirely of the old boys network and people who are dumb enough to think that if they suck up hard enough, they get to join.

Some people just won’t be happy until we’re all indentured servants. 

The anger you’ve probably noticed in this rant of a post doesn’t arise
from me yet getting burned personally by the expanding influence of
credit scoring and the unelected, unaccountable, supra-market,
supra-governmental agencies to whom we have surrendered so much power.
I’m not waiting for that to happen. I’m trying to save time by getting
angry now.

Preach it, Fred.

I, too, have a high credit score.  I know more or less exactly what I have to do to maintain a high credit score and the means to do so.  I engage in the best practices as best I can discern and follow through.

And I hate that I have to dedicate a part of my life to doing this.  I hate that it could all come tumbling down through no fault of my own.  I mostly hate that I can do this and other people can’t because I know that means the game is tilted in my favor.  And any system with institutionalized unfairness is unfair for everyone.

There is no reason for any potential employer to use an applicant’s credit score as part of the hiring process.

Erm… actually, there is a scenario where a potential employer could justifiabily use an applicant’s credit score as part of the hiring process. My degree is in accounting, and I currently work as a bookkeeper for a small non-profit organization; previously, I worked as an accountant for a massive multinational manufacturing coproration. In both cases, I could have engaged in fraud and/or embezzling, as could my contemporaries and predecessors, and part of the hiring and annual audits included a fraud screening.

The company’s main tool in assessing and limiting fraud risk is the old “fraud triangle” of opportunity, pressure, and rationalization. Lots of employees have the opportunity to commit fraud, especially if they have modest social skills and can get someone to collude with them. (knowingly or unknowlingly) It’s very difficult to identify which applicants have a talent for rationalizing away their wrongdoing. However, looking at an applicant’s credit report can shed some light on what economic pressures they might be under that might lead to fraud/theft/etc. Yes, there are lots of financial pressures that don’t show up on a credit history, but a credit report can be used to estimate monthly cash-flow. It’s not a great idea to hire someone when you know you’re not paying them enough to get by and you can see how much extra a month they might need.

I’m not saying that this applies to all jobs, just those where there is significant opportunity for fraud. The guy selling TVs on the floor at BiggestBuy? No. The guy in charge of the secure-items “cage”? Maybe more so. The assistant manager who counts out the tills and makes the night drop? Yeah, that’s more in the neighborhood. The manager who submits employee timesheets and gets a bonus for not paying overtime? Oh, I think we definitely want to know if he’s desperate for money.

Again, this is about the credit report in its entirety, which lists things like outstanding debt and potential debt, and less about the score and payment history. What employers should be looking at (he says, again speaking as an accountant) are warning signs than a potential employee will need more money than the position pays.

TL; DR version: there is a reason for some potential employers, for certain positions, and it’s a similar reason to requiring drug tests or running background checks. But it’s not about the credit score, it’s about the entire credit report, and it is definitely not a one-size-fits-all reason.

Oh, and now that I’ve argued for using credit history for employers (evil), let me add another number to Fred’s list of why credit scores are bad:

5. Credit scores don’t reflect good fiscal behavior, they represent profitable borrowing behavior! This one needs a tiny bit of unpacking, but Fred’s written about this before. The formula for credit scoring creates a situation “where responsible, rational decisions can harm your credit score”. In fact, the current system “creates powerful incentives to acquire, maintain and constantly use open lines of credit”. The incentive isn’t to minimize debt, or improve personal cashflow, or practice good finances in general.

Two cars ago, I bought a new car and took out a loan. My credit score went up for taking out the loan, but when I paid it off three years early, my credit score went down because I had less of a “mix” of credit. I bought my most recent car used, and paid in cash. This did not modify my credit score at all.

The “ideal” behavior for a credit score is to have a multiple lenders, (house, car, student loan, credit card, possibly HELOC or debt-consolidation loan) and to have enough available lines of credit so that all your discretionary income could go to servicing debt, but isn’t doing so currently.

Paying off cards in full, cancelling unused cards, reducing credit limits on idle cards, and paying off traditional debts early all hurt your credit score. Having a strong cashflow and decent savings aren’t even part of the score formulation.

TL;DR version – credit scores are bad because they don’t rate how responsible you are as a borrow, but how profitable you are.

Chris: 

I get your caveats, but I would also note that looking at whether a potential employee’s outgo is more than you’d pay them assumes the employee is completely self-supporting and has no other assets or income.  Does the person with the big mortgage have a partner making 3 times the mortgage, or are they really desperate for cash?  Is a single mom receiving income from a family trust or divorce settlement?  You don’t know.  Some of this might show on the credit report too – but it might not.  

Another wrinkle is that looking into such things can open you up to accusations of discrimination.  I’ve had HR people emphasize that just ASKING whether a potential employee is married/partnered is frowned upon because it gives the impression that being married/partnered, or not, affects whether the person is hired.  How about reports that someone owns investment property or co-signed a loan for a family member?  (“Oh, they’ll be distracted”) 

TL;DR version – credit scores are bad because they don’t rate how responsible you are as a borrow, but how profitable you are.

That’s a very important point.  To a bank or other lender, paying a loan back early represents a loss to them, since it means they can no longer collect the interest payments.  In finance, the term is called prepayment risk.

 As a general rule, it’s not good for numeracy when magical numbers are allowed to replace actual numbers — numbers signifying actual, tangible things, such as dollars or inches or hours.

Indeed, this is a Biblical issue. Leviticus 19:36, “Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

“Yes, rich people are less likely to steal,” he said on the day after Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 120 years in jail.

Does the person with the big mortgage have a partner making 3 times the mortgage, or are they really desperate for cash?  Is a single mom receiving income from a family trust or divorce settlement?  You don’t know.  Some of this might show on the credit report too – but it might not.

Valid points, which is why I keep coming back to the “report” and not just the “score”. Do they have a big mortgage, but all their other bills (mortgage, gas, power, credit card) are current, or does it look like they might be tight on money? (the mortgage is paid on time, but gas and power alternate being 60 days past due for the last year)

It doesn’t matter if single mom gets trust money or alimoney if she has three credit cards, all are close to their lending limit, and all show as “currently paid” for the last six months. That is not necessarily a person I want near my company checkbook; that’s a person who is one bad day away from the kind of serious desperation that leads to theft. One unplanned car breakdown, an uninsured illness, broken water heater, or some other accident that costs more than the cash in the bank.

Again, I don’t care if I’m hiring for a floor clerk at a mall clothing store. Doesn’t matter to me if I’m hiring a salesman. But a cash-handler, someone with access to high value, easily stolen inventory…

How about reports that someone owns investment property or co-signed a loan for a family member?  (“Oh, they’ll be distracted”)
Again, I’m talking about the report, not the score. Secured debt (like real estate) can default and be wiped out by the foreclosure. No one is walking away from houses with equity these days. Co-signing for a family member, OTOH, is a different kettle of fish, because you are on the hook for the loan if it goes bad. A co-signed loan is like that broken water heater or car breakdown, in that most people should have a contingency for default, but many don’t.

And once more: if you’re hiring an administrative assistant, or an assembly-line worker, or an electronics engineer or a clean-room technician, it doesn’t matter. Plumber, carpenter, electrician, don’t care so much.

When I was applying for a new credit card a while back (I’d had credit cards previously but didn’t have too much credit, never run a balance longer than one payment period which I did intentionally because apparently that’s actually supposed to be better for your score, was working, etc), I got rejected by a few different banks.  Only one of them bothered to tell me WHY they were rejecting my application, and it was a doozy: They couldn’t find my credit history.  At all.

The three credit rating agencies had simply misplaced, erased, or otherwise lost all my years of credit history, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.  You can pay as many fees as you like and they won’t correct that.  I’m rebuilding from scratch now with a tiny limit on a secured card, because they didn’t give a damn and there’s nothing I can do.

Evil.

I didn’t say “rich people are less likely to steal”. What I said was “people who are able to pay their bills and have cash left over have less pressure to steal”.

Bernie Madoff’s original, basic business model was to steal! He started out stealing, in large part because he didn’t have enough money to pay the bills to support the lifestyle he wanted. If he really did start out running a traditional investment fund, then the tipping point to fraud happened not because he was rich, but because he wasn’t rich enough to cover the bills.

I should mention the bank that actually said they wouldn’t give me a card because they couldn’t find my history?  My primary bank, with whom I’d had not only an account but A PREVIOUS CREDIT CARD, for something like a decade.  How hard would it have been for them, of all banks, to do their own due diligence?

Well, sure, it works for the benefit of the wealth and privilege, and therefore the Republican party is unlikely to make reigning it in as a priority. But it’s not as if the Democratic party disdains wealth and privilege and enthusiastically tries to make things fair for people.

I’m not sure exactly what Fred means by ‘not a partisan issue’ – he seems to be saying that Tea Partiers should not be in favour of it, but there’s an awful lot of things the Tea Party should not be in favour of, yet are – if you take this to the logical extreme they should simply not be Tea Partiers at all.

At any rate, the free market ideology adopted by the Tea Party is not some kind of pragmatic ‘free markets are usually the most efficient way of managing an economy, so we should try to have free markets where possible, with regulation an option when they don’t turn out to get us good stuff.’ nor ‘free markets is a more moral way to manage an economy, as people get more freedom, so we’ll have them and regulate whenever they don’t produce more freedom’.  It’s something like “corporations can do whatever they damn well please, and any form of government interference is Eevvill”. The only form of serfdom they seem to be able to imagine is government-imposed serfdom.

It certainly would be consistent with their opinions on a lot of matters to be pro credit-ratings.

@Fred:disqus : I admit I haven’t read the post yet, but I have no doubt that there is much in what you say. And I promise I’ll read the post in loving detail, soon.

But please, could you fix the typo in the headline? My proofreader’s eye is twitching.

It may not be a partisan issue, but it’ll be one anyway. See, once the Democrats suggest doing something about this (and we’ll be the ones doing it – as has been pointed out, the Republicans are benefiting from the system and their parrots are oblivious to it), the TEA Partiers of the country will automatically align against it.

Not because they’re for corporate serfdom. It’s because they’re AGAINST anything the democrats do. There’s a reason why “You’re Hurting Yourself Fool” is a tag on my blog. This happens a LOT with the right, and that’s why I alternate between anger and rage and pity at these people.

As soon as someone tries to do something about it, it’ll become partisan. That’s the nature of the beast in American politics, and it’ll be that way until we hit rock bottom and wake up to realize our country is going nowhere fast and the rest of the world is leaving us behind or until a fascist government steps in, whichever happens first.

I’m trying to understand the demographics here.  What fraction of the US population is directly affected by the problems that Fred has been outlining?  “Six in ten employers” isn’t enough information – it doesn’t translate into the number of potential employees.  Wikipedia doesn’t immediately answer the question, and searching Google requires sieving through thousands of “how to improve your credit score” sites.

I personally have never had to use my credit score, and don’t even know what it is, so all of this discussion is foreign to my experience.

There’s also the problem of even getting started with credit, especially in this current economy.  Unless you have a rich or trusting parent that will cosign a loan or put your name on their credit card when you’re 18, there’s no way to even get credit going.  Length of credit history counts, so even the most responsible 18 year-old can’t really get a foot in the door.

When my mom was starting out in the 60s or 70s, she started with department store credit cards, used them responsibly, and then was able to get major credit cards.  This is no longer an option because stores want you to already have a major credit card before they will give you a store card.

When I was starting out in the early 00s, the economy was booming and everyone was willing to throw credit at college students.  In fact, they worked hard to lure us in and deceive us, hoping to make tons of money on interest, but being to fracking stupid to realize that in the long-term, many people would end up bankrupt and unable to pay their debts.  But still, if you were aware of the risks and understood how credit works (and it helps if you’re rich and come from a good school district), then you could use the cards to build up your credit and get something better.

Now young adults have basically no way to build a credit history.  Nobody will give them credit until they have already used credit.  It will be interesting to see how this turns out in a decade or two when all the people who are 18-21 now end up never being able to build credit.  How will banks give decide who to give loans to with so many people who will have minimal credit history?

I know a lot of people think that young adults don’t really need or deserve credit anyway and it’s their own fault for being so irresponsible as a group, but it’s still discrimination.  Length of credit history is a huge factor in credit scores, and it’s simply impossible for any young person to do anything about that, even the responsible ones.

Your credit score is based on the data in your credit reports, for which you do have some consumer protections.  Maybe not as good as they should be, but there are some, and it’s a good idea to exercise them.

By law, you can get a free credit report from each of the three major credit agencies once a year.  (Call 1-877-322-8228 or go to annualcreditreport.com; don’t go to any of the soundalike sites.)  You can see what’s in them, and dispute any inaccurate information for no charge.  You can *also* get a free credit report when someone turns you down for credit or downgrades an offer based on information they’ve obtained from a report; request that from the lender you applied to.  If you want to freely monitor your credit more frequently than once a year, spread out your requests to the different agencies– for example, ask for Experan’s report in January, Equifax’s in May, and Trans-Union’s in September.  Many lenders report to all 3 agencies anyway, so if they report bad information to one of them, it’ll often show up in the other’s reports too.

Someone reading Fred’s post may think the credit scorers know your wealth and income.  They don’t, at least not directly; that information’s not included in your report.  However, some of the information in your report does tend to correlate with income or wealth, such as the sizes of credit lines or initial mortgage amount.  (It’s not a perfect correlation– I’ve known folks with smaller incomes but larger credit lines than others– but under usual credit conditions, most people don’t to get large credit lines or mortgages if they have small income or wealth.  Mind you, the mid-00s did not have usual credit conditions.)

I don’t recall ever having to disclose my wealth to a lender, so they wouldn’t even have it to report to a credit reporting agency.  Lenders will typically want to know income when they grant a loan or a new line of credit, but they don’t pass it along to the reporting agencies, as far as I’m aware.

 and dispute any inaccurate information for no charge  

I speak from experience when I say, good luck with that. The credit reporting agencies hold the power and the fastest why to find that out is to have an issue with them. 

Beyond that I can’t even talk about this topic because I’m now in a position where I’m one of the people who gets screwed by it. The only thing I can say about it without totally losing my shit is that at least indentured servitude had an end date. 

Just wondering here, but would an embezzler have a great credit score?

 Just wondering here, but would an embezzler have a great credit score?  

Could be good, could be terrible. If the embezzler was using the stolen funds to pay his/her bills in the manner preferred by the finance industry then his/her credit score would be great. 

 Just wondering here, but would an embezzler have a great credit score?  

Could be good, could be terrible. If the embezzler was using the stolen funds to pay his/her bills in the manner preferred by the finance industry then his/her credit score would be great. 

I brought a used car recently; and when I did, I learned there’s another way to start building up credit: paying back student loans. This requires you go to college, but given that every job within 5m radius of where I live requires a degree and experience (another Catch-22) to hire you, investing in a college education is probably a good thing in more ways than one. If you pay back those loans on time, you can get a really good credit score (like I did), and then I had a co-signer with a good credit score (my dad) which got me a 3.99% interest rate on my car loan.

Of course, I’m not sure if credit affects that now or not. When I started taking out student loans, it was back in ’04, I and did so right up until ’10, so I’m assuming my (then non-existant) credit score had an impact.

There are a lot of issues with student loans though.  Of course you have to go to college, which generally requires being middle class to begin with (and it sure helps if you live in a rich neighborhood with good schools).  Anyone who goes there on a full scholarship won’t have student loans, and therefore no credit building.  People who can pay for it in full, either through saving up or having generous parents, won’t have student loans either.  Plenty of people also don’t have parents that are willing and able to cosign student loans.

But what really bothers me is the issue of having parents cosign loans.  If your parents have bad credit scores, your interest will be higher, it will be harder for you to make the payments, and your own credit score will then be affected.  So in effect, credit scores are somewhat inherited (especially since other forms of credit are so difficult to get for young people).  This is one more step away from a meritocracy and one more step toward inherited serfdom.  This is really scary to me.

There are a lot of issues with student loans though.  Of course you have to go to college, which generally requires being middle class to begin with (and it sure helps if you live in a rich neighborhood with good schools).  Anyone who goes there on a full scholarship won’t have student loans, and therefore no credit building.  People who can pay for it in full, either through saving up or having generous parents, won’t have student loans either.  Plenty of people also don’t have parents that are willing and able to cosign student loans.

But what really bothers me is the issue of having parents cosign loans.  If your parents have bad credit scores, your interest will be higher, it will be harder for you to make the payments, and your own credit score will then be affected.  So in effect, credit scores are somewhat inherited (especially since other forms of credit are so difficult to get for young people).  This is one more step away from a meritocracy and one more step toward inherited serfdom.  This is really scary to me.

Those are all good points, but I should mention I’m not middle class – I’m low middle class on a good year, and upper poverty class (I come from a shop town) the rest of the time. When I file my own taxes this year, I won’t even register as a blip on the radar. I did manage to make it through because my dad was extremely careful and responsible, but also because he never had any major credit problems (insurance from GM is very, very, VERY nice). I’m trying to walk in his steps, but I’ve got a more complex world to navigate than he did. I think we’re close to the same age (I’m 26), so you probably know what I mean.

Believe me, I’ve noticed the inherited unfairness in the system. It seems un-American on a very basic level to me, but that could just be because I also see it as being un-Democratic and anti-Human. The people who really get screwed in all this are urban dwellers (read: minorities like Black people, who have a hard enough time getting a loan as is, or single mothers, or anyone else with major economic problems) and, increasingly, the major voting block for the Republican party (the rural poor. Again, I keep an “you’re hurting yourself fool” tag for just such an occasion). 

The one thing about the credit score is that it proves to me that the myth of upward mobility in America is just that – a myth. If you’re not one of the selected few predestined for it, increasingly your only hopes are becoming robbing a bank or hitting the lotto.

I have no idea what my credit rating is, or if I even have one. We don’t have the sort of preditory behaviour referred to here–certainly not to the extent of ads on tv offering to sell you information about yourself. (This is because I live under an oppressive regime where financial institutions are somewhat regulated, and I am therefore not free)

But anyway, a potential employer gets to know about my skills and experience, and anything about my private life or finances is none of their damn business. So yeah, preach brother, preach.

inherited serfdom

Ahh, feudalism. Such fun.

No kidding. I can’t even get them to remove my ex-husband’s address from my report: a location that I have never lived at but because it’s on my damn credit report people keep sending me mail at his address.  Never mind trying to get them to remove –or even account for– debts that never existed. All you get when you dispute something is a letter that says “we verified it and it’s real”. No supporting evidence whatsoever.

Even a reigning monarch guides a mount with reins.

yes you can save money on your auto insurance by making few simple changes search on the web for “Auto Insurance Clearance” gave me the lowest rate, most people can simply save money by checking rates with other company.

Idiotés.  Whoever checks your credit score and denies you a job on that basis is NOT SOMEONE YOU WANT TO WORK FOR.

He is DOING YOU A FAVOR.

SERIOUSLY.

So consider credit score checks AWESOME to weed out shitty people to work for

Whoever checks your credit score and denies you a job on that basis is NOT SOMEONE YOU WANT TO WORK FOR.

Man’s got a point there.

 Just wondering here, but would an embezzler have a great credit score?

Could
be good, could be terrible. If the embezzler was using the stolen funds
to pay his/her bills in the manner preferred by the finance industry
then his/her credit score would be great.

No. If the embezzler was using stolen funds to pay the bills, then probably they were close to the limit of their revolving lines of credit, and had borrowed to the hilt. (otherwise, why embezzle?) Which means their history would show lots & lots of payments on time, but it would also show being close to maxed out, which lowers the score.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but bullshit.

If you’re a hiring manager and you CAN check a credit report for anyone, the ONLY rational behavior is to check the credit report and be a complete hard ass about it.

If you get a negative credit report and don’t hire you’ve potentially averted the theft right?  If you get a positive credit report and hire, and there’s a theft… well, you did what you could.  If you get a negative credit report and DO HIRE, and something bad happens, then why didn’t you pay attention to the negative report?

Thus – once you can check the credit reports for employee X it’s more like a straight slippery-cliff to checking everyones just to CYA.  It’s the only rational way to behave if you have access to this tool and somebody who’s your boss (or you) is deluded enough to think it indicates anything.

Clearly this is a personal issue for me.  I USED to have immaculate credit.  Then I had a son with health problems, and I paid for his care using my substantial available credit, because it was a fucking emergency and that is what credit is FOR.  Then some shit-eating plutocrats blew up the market, I saw 2 years of 10%-15% pay cuts, and the wife lost her job.  Now, my credit’s trashed.  When someone implies that I’m not to be “trusted around money” – I’d like to point out that I’ve been paying interest I can’t afford to the same bankers that just finished screwing me with money I don’t have.  I can CLEARLY be trusted to act against my own immediate interests, as the sensible thing to do would be to tell them all to fuck off.  It’s not like they can repo a gastrointestinal surgery.

So, to get back to the point at hand – bullshit on your deluded rationalizations the policy you are advocating (even for people with access to “stealable” goods) leads ONLY one place.  There’s exactly ZERO way for it TO lead anywhere else.  It’s evil. A little bit of evil might give you some temporary advantage but it’s still fucking evil.  It’s pushing all the risk onto the other party while assuming none yourself.  There’s a word for that.  It’s unconscionable

Right, unless he knew how a credit score worked, and embezzled enough to pay down the balance to 50-60% right?  And they’re an embezzler so I bet they do.

So really, anyone who has EVER had a bad score is probably a high risk.

This reminds me of when I was working as a clerk at a Game Crazy store five years ago.  I gave my manager a personal loan of a grand to pay off some court fees he had.  He gave me a tenth of it back a few months after that.  I have not seen a cent more of it since then.  For a long time, I never bothered to try collecting because I did not need it.  But right now, that extra nine-hundred could keep my bills paid for another three months… 

Really looking forward to the right wingers jumping into this one in three weeks’ time…

I have two credit cards that I seldom use (maybe once a quarter, on things I know I can pay off by end of month). I didn’t get them in case of emergency. I didn’t get them out of a desire to charge things to my credit card.

The only reason why I got my first credit card is because I had no credit score, and my parents knew I’d never be able to buy a home or car without one. They actually had to talk me into getting it, and then into using it to buy gas once a year while I was still in college. I have never NEEDED this card yet. I have never had to pay interest on a single credit transaction. But in order for me to “count” as a human being, I need the credit score it allows me to have.

The second card is for a certain clothing store my mother and I go to often, and which provides deep discounts on their already-low prices, so I can get new clothes when I need them, instead of having to wait for next payday. This was a recent decision made because I am in the process of moving out on my own.

My dad is one of those increasingly-rare rags-to-riches stories. Off-the-boat immigrant, parents barely had two pennies to rub together and had to work themselves to death for them.

He became well-off because he enlisted to fight in Vietnam (I’m 25; my parents met a bit late in life). He got a college education on the GI Bill. 20 years later, when he was eligible for a military pension, he retired from the military (I remained a military dependent until age 23, and my mother still is) and got a job in the private sector while still bringing in that pension. While he was still in the military, he bought a small apartment building and lived in one unit while renting out the others–yet another source of income!

He currently makes six figures and works a government job. Good luck accomplishing that nowadays. Any of it. And good luck convincing him that things have changed.

I often hear people say that I shouldn’t complain about credit practices, because if I don’t like them, I’ve always got the option to just not get credit cards myself.

Nonsense.  Absolute, unfettered nonsense.

Here’s what my situation was.  I had just graduated from college and needed to get my own car insurance, because my parents were going to drop me from theirs.  I called around, and since I had no credit history, having just gotten out of college, every insurance company was demanding up front payment of the full six month premium.  About $1500 up front for auto insurance.  Of course, I didn’t have $1500, so what did I have to do?  I had to get a credit card.  The only card I could get (again, no credit history) only had a $2000 limit on it, so I was immediately up to 75% open credit utilization.

I later had problems with paying off that card that were mostly due to my decision to go to grad school for a year, but the point here is that I did not have an option.  I needed to have a car to work.  I needed insurance to have a car.  I needed $1500 to have insurance.  I needed a credit card to have $1500.

Anybody who denies that the credit industry has got a chokehold on society, or that you can opt out if you don’t feel like participating, is just delusional.

‘Valid points, which is why I keep coming back to the “report” and not just the “score”.’

From Fred’s Post above: “Eric Rosenberg, Director of State Governmental Relations for TransUnion, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, conceded: “…we don’t have any research to show any statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud.”

So even the credit “report” is not useful for what you want to use it for. Even for accounting. Even for the sales rep with the keys to the expensive stuff in the store. There is no “. . . statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud.”

If you’ve turned someone down for a job for no other reason than a sketchy credit report, you have done them an injustice.

‘Valid points, which is why I keep coming back to the “report” and not just the “score”.’

From Fred’s Post above: “Eric Rosenberg, Director of State Governmental Relations for TransUnion, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, conceded: “…we don’t have any research to show any statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud.”

So even the credit “report” is not useful for what you want to use it for. Even for accounting. Even for the sales rep with the keys to the expensive stuff in the store. There is no “. . . statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance or their likelihood to commit fraud.”

If you’ve turned someone down for a job for no other reason than a sketchy credit report, you have done them an injustice.

Alright, last reply was a little heated.  So I’ll back off a bit and say this:  If it were entirely up to you as an individual (presumably ethical) person whether or not the credit score should be used and was important, then you might be able to find a use for it.

But it isn’t.  The credit score thing is one of those economic suicide pacts that businesses sign from time to time (like moving to 401(k) pensions instead of defined benefits, or de-unionizing all of the plants so they can do things the union wouldn’t let them get away with.)  In the short term, there’s no cost, and maybe a little bit of gain.  (Maybe a lot of gain.) In the long term, it’s stupid.  What happens when you can’t hire ANYBODY because you insist that you’re not going to hire anyone with a score less than FICO score of 790?  It’s bad for business in the long run, but if you don’t start doing it, it’s bad for business in the short run.  It’s a prisoner’s dilemma on a global scale.

The morality of “business” as a whole is just like the morality of politics – it’s determined by what the most evil sonofabitch in the room will do, coupled with cumulative amount of evil people will do in order to keep their jobs.  You might even start out only checking the credit of people whom you actually consider to be a legitimate theft risk, with all the attendant safeguards you can come up with – but then your boss would want to start checking everybody (“Just to be on the safe side”) and after all you had to fire the janitor for stealing toilet paper out of the company bathroom…  

This is the same reason a convicted felon can’t get a job flipping burgers.  ”Answering yes to the question does not necessarily disqualify you from employment.”  My ass.  Why ASK then?

You, personally, are probably not a complete bastard.  Neither is your boss.  Neither is his boss.  But if you dilute the responsibility for being a complete bastard enough, and everybody does, ya’know…. just a little bit of evil, then the effect is exactly the same.

 Man’s got a point there.  

What the man apparently has is a job. When you’re unemployed and have been for a long time you need a job. Even a crappy job. Even a crappy job working for someone who sucks. Because the systems these days is heavily weighted against the unemployed, especially those who have been out of work for a while. You need a job so that you can look for a better job from a position of a little strength rather than total weakness. 

Manuel Amador’s glibness is a luxury some of us simply can’t afford. 

 No. If the embezzler was using stolen funds to pay the bills, then probably they were close to the limit of their revolving lines of credit, and had borrowed to the hilt. (otherwise, why embezzle?) Which means their history would show lots & lots of payments on time, but it would also show being close to maxed out, which lowers the score.  

Not all embezzlers start out broke and desperate. The idea that they do is the fatal flaw in the logic that says that credit reports help employers weed out thieves. Why embezzle if you’re not at the limit of your credit? To get better stuff. It’s not exactly a stretch to thnk that a person could be living within their middle class means and willing to steal to get upper class stuff. 

Thank you for number 5 – this happened to my son – he is a “pay as you go person”, when he went to buy his car so he could maintain his job he was told he could not get a loan because he didn’t have any credit history – he had never borrowed, even though he has a job that is highly consistent and he has received three promotions.  The bank said take out this credit card, but something, make a couple of payments and establish that you are “trustworthy”.  Talk about a scam.  

I used to work at a company that sells credit reports and scores, so I know a little about the business. Most of Fred’s criticisms are spot on:
1. The credit bureaus know their reports are inaccurate, and they don’t care and in fact exaggerate the mystery behind the scores because it makes them money.
2. Employers (encouraged by the bureaus) increasingly use credit scores as a substitute for due diligence by HR, when they really shouldn’t, because the score is almost never useful for them. Unless the position has a significant danger of embezzlement, the credit report won’t tell you anything useful the background check didn’t already say.
3. The credit score formula is nowhere near as good as it could be, and doesn’t really handle income inequality well, resulting in a lot of pain at the margins.

But some of them are overblown:
4. Wealth and income are less than 30% of your credit score; it’s not nearly as stratified as Fred suggests. There’s a much better case to be made that the scoring system unfairly punishes the unemployed and underemployed.
5. Risk pricing is not Equifax’s fault. The banks would be denying you a car loan based on these same factors, forcing you into the arms of “no credit check!” usurious chop shops, even if the bureaus didn’t exist.
6. The government has been fairly active on the side of consumers here – mandated free reports, cracking down on fake “score improvement” services, etc. At this point, any company providing you a credit score is either a total scam, or using it as a loss leader to get you to sign up for their real product.

When I need money to pay rent and buy food, all that quaint little idealism goes out the window.  Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re in a recession so it’s not like most of us have multiple offers to choose from.  It’s either work for a crappy company, or starve to death.

Hi, person looking for a job here. I’m at about 8 or 9 months looking for a job. I have no credit history, since I was denied a credit card, have no student loans, etc. The idea that higher level positions are the ones the companies are really worrying about is bullshit. No job, not a single one, I’ve applied for making more than 14 dollars an hour has asked for the authorization to check my credit score. EVERY SINGLE JOB I have applied for making less than that has demanded that I authorize them access; they explicitly state that failure to do so will result in them immediately rejecting my application.

For that matter, I’m incredibly overqualified for a minimum wage job, and I don’t have the work experience for even entry level jobs higher up. Entry level IT jobs are demanding 5 years work experience plus certifications. Given that that’s my one really salable skill that I’ve seriously developed, with three years freelance work (no supervisor, so I’m not counted as actually having work history), and another three years of coursework (coursework is, of course, not counted in experience though), and I can’t get past the bottom rung in HR? Yah no, the system is bullshit. I can’t break into a new field, I can’t enter into my own, I can’t flip burgers, and I basically have no significant assets, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Like, but “dislike.”

Catch-22.  It’s the best kind of catch.

I generally consider HR to be evil incarnate.  Remember when it was called “Person”-ell?

  The idea that higher level positions are the ones the companies are really worrying about is bullshit. No job, not a single one, I’ve applied for making more than 14 dollars an hour has asked for the authorization to check my credit score. EVERY SINGLE JOB I have applied for making less than that has demanded that I authorize them access; they explicitly state that failure to do so will result in them immediately rejecting my application.  

I think there are a lot of people here who are so far removed from the reality of non-professional jobs that they don’t get this. I spent years in white collar, cube-dweller jobs and through a combination of very bad luck and rather poor decision-making in response to that bad luck I’m now in a position where I have to apply for any and every kind of job. Crap minimum wage jobs and temp agencies demand far more from applicants than my previous work every did. Not just meaningless credit checks, but background checks that the applicant has to pay for, whether they get the job or not. And then there’s the level of information you’re expected to provide about your work history. 

Do you remember the name of every supervisor you ever had? Do you have current phone numbers for all of them? For any of them? Do you remember the exact dates of every job you’ve had? Not just the years or even the months, but the exact date? When was the last time someone asked you for any of that information? If you’ve never been asked or can’t remember the last time you were asked, count your blessings. Also, step off trying to justify the fact that many people have to deal with this shit every day in order to get jobs where they’re never in charge of anything, let alone in a position to embezzle millions. 

I have a radical idea.

It involves starting a company. (Or maybe a 501(c)(3)) A company which does absolutely nothing.  We will hire a whole bunch of people at whatever job they like. We’ll fill out tax forms for all of these people as “hourly employees” –  since we don’t actually DO anything we won’t actually have any work for you to do, but you can put it on your resume, and list us as a reference.  When those jackholes who won’t hire the unemployed see that you’re employed call us to verify we’ll go “Yep! Vie work(s|ed) here. Great employee.”  You’d probably want to wait until you exhausted your unemployment benefits to join up… I’m not sure how that would work.

If we get enough people together for this, maybe we’ll get us a group health plan and start doing something a little more useful, like handling business services for people who would like to be freelancers, but don’t want it to look like they’re unemployed.

Is it dishonest?  Sure, but the Ayn “take-what-you-can-and-fuck-everyone-else” Rand sauce for the corporation monster-goose is sauce for the employee too.

I’m sure there’s some reason this is illegal – but I haven’t found it yet.

I have a radical idea.

It involves starting a company. (Or maybe a 501(c)(3)) A company which does absolutely nothing.  We will hire a whole bunch of people at whatever job they like. We’ll fill out tax forms for all of these people as “hourly employees” –  since we don’t actually DO anything we won’t actually have any work for you to do, but you can put it on your resume, and list us as a reference.  When those jackholes who won’t hire the unemployed see that you’re employed call us to verify we’ll go “Yep! Vie work(s|ed) here. Great employee.”  You’d probably want to wait until you exhausted your unemployment benefits to join up… I’m not sure how that would work.

If we get enough people together for this, maybe we’ll get us a group health plan and start doing something a little more useful, like handling business services for people who would like to be freelancers, but don’t want it to look like they’re unemployed.

Is it dishonest?  Sure, but the Ayn “take-what-you-can-and-fuck-everyone-else” Rand sauce for the corporation monster-goose is sauce for the employee too.

I’m sure there’s some reason this is illegal – but I haven’t found it yet.

I agree, but I never got the impression that anyone here thought most positions actually should require a credit check like that. But that sort of shit is exactly why I hate filling out job applications. Mind you, I’m generally horrid at that sort of paperwork to begin with and try to avoid it whenever possible.

Of course, I apologize in advance if your comment wasn’t necessarily directed at anyone here. In any case agree we need to find some way to get that out of the job application process, except in maybe a few extreme cases. Nobody going out to flip burgers or do customer service needs a credit check.

My point is that not only do burger flippers and stock clerks not need a credit check, they also don’t need to provide the name of every supervisor they’ve ever had or the exact dates of jobs they had a decade ago. It’s all of a piece and it’s ridiculous and demeaning. 

IMO, applying for jobs that require a resume is totally different. You create your resume, providing basic information like the company name, job title and dates of employment in a general way. Then you describe what you did and what skills you have. If they call you in for an interview they may (or may not) ask you for the contact information to verify your previous employment and/or 2 or 3 references. 

In my previous work I had access to enough sensitive information that I was designated a corporate insider for stock trading purposes and I was never subjected to the kind of demeaning demands for information that I’ve had to deal with applying for temp work and nothing jobs that barely pay minimum wage. 

When you apply for a white collar job you’re treated like a human being. When you apply for service and blue collar jobs you’re treated like an untrustworthy child. It is beyond horrible and anyone who hasn’t experienced it needs to understand that reality before talking about it. Not only about employer use of credit checks and background checks, but the whole system. 

The last couple of white-collar jobs I applied for, earlier this year, definitely wanted the names of supervisors, exact dates of employment, etc. that you describe. It is no fun, it wasted several hours of my time going back through my files for no discernable purpose, and I strongly suspect the hiring decision was made on the basis of my resume before they even looked at any of that stuff.

So the real question is, What information is sufficient to attest your personal responsibility to a prospective employer?

 So the real question is, What information is sufficient to attest your personal responsibility to a prospective employer? 

I have no problem with someone asking me for contact information for my last couple of jobs to verify that I actually worked there. I have no issue with being asked to provide references. I have a huge problem with the ridiculous level of BS that goes into getting crappy jobs. If that’s spreading to higher level jobs that makes it worse, not better. 

I think the major issue is what we mean by personal responsibility. I think that an employer has a right to know if I have the skills I’m claiming to have and if I’ll show up and actually do the work. In both my opinion and experience that information can best be obtained through interviewing that’s done not by some HR drone, but by someone who actually knows the position that the company is looking to fill. A few simple questions asked by someone with a clue can get you way more useful information than you can hope to get when clueless ass-coverer holds up a series of flaming hoops. 

The rest of my life isn’t really my boss’ business. I think one of the (many) places that the whole corporate mess has gone so wrong is that people have convinced themselves that more information = better decision making. No one with any real world experience and an actual clue believes that. I’ve had good, responsible coworkers and I’ve worked with total fuck ups. I’ve had coworkers whose lives were a train wreck and coworkers who could have been nominated for sainthood. There’s virtually no relationship between the professional and personal categories. 

Good workers with pristine lives? Sure, I’ve known plenty. 

Good workers with f’ed up lives? I could give you a  list of those too, including several who were exactly the kind of people the flaming hoops are designed to filter out because they obviously can’t be trusted. Example: one of the best coworkers I ever had was a guy who had an active heroine addiction for most of the time I worked with him. 

Bad workers with pristine live? Yuo. IMO these were actually the worst because no one wants to fire a nice person or even give the a strong enough reprimand to make a difference so you end up carrying them. Sucks. 

Bad workers who were all around f’ed up? Them too. Prime example: the guy who was fired when he got caught trading child p0rn on the internet. When we went through his files to figure out how to cover his tasks until a replacement could be hired we found that he had basically been pulling it out his ass for years and that every task he was responsible for was a total mess. 

 So the real question is, What information is sufficient to attest your personal responsibility to a prospective employer? 

I have no problem with someone asking me for contact information for my last couple of jobs to verify that I actually worked there. I have no issue with being asked to provide references. I have a huge problem with the ridiculous level of BS that goes into getting crappy jobs. If that’s spreading to higher level jobs that makes it worse, not better. 

I think the major issue is what we mean by personal responsibility. I think that an employer has a right to know if I have the skills I’m claiming to have and if I’ll show up and actually do the work. In both my opinion and experience that information can best be obtained through interviewing that’s done not by some HR drone, but by someone who actually knows the position that the company is looking to fill. A few simple questions asked by someone with a clue can get you way more useful information than you can hope to get when clueless ass-coverer holds up a series of flaming hoops. 

The rest of my life isn’t really my boss’ business. I think one of the (many) places that the whole corporate mess has gone so wrong is that people have convinced themselves that more information = better decision making. No one with any real world experience and an actual clue believes that. I’ve had good, responsible coworkers and I’ve worked with total fuck ups. I’ve had coworkers whose lives were a train wreck and coworkers who could have been nominated for sainthood. There’s virtually no relationship between the professional and personal categories. 

Good workers with pristine lives? Sure, I’ve known plenty. 

Good workers with f’ed up lives? I could give you a  list of those too, including several who were exactly the kind of people the flaming hoops are designed to filter out because they obviously can’t be trusted. Example: one of the best coworkers I ever had was a guy who had an active heroine addiction for most of the time I worked with him. 

Bad workers with pristine live? Yuo. IMO these were actually the worst because no one wants to fire a nice person or even give the a strong enough reprimand to make a difference so you end up carrying them. Sucks. 

Bad workers who were all around f’ed up? Them too. Prime example: the guy who was fired when he got caught trading child p0rn on the internet. When we went through his files to figure out how to cover his tasks until a replacement could be hired we found that he had basically been pulling it out his ass for years and that every task he was responsible for was a total mess. 

No, but I know that it was once called that.

Just consider the name. Human. Resources. You are a commodity. If you
work at a factory, you are considered no different than the raw
materials used in making your product. The department’s NAME is even
dehumanizing.

I recall that one of the greatest defenses you can give yourself if at
the mercy of someone who seeks to harm you is to remind them of your
humanity. It turns out that the vast majority of humans have a very hard
time harming someone else they consider human, so attempts to harm
people usually have to dehumanize them. Dehumanizing a person has little
purpose BEYOND exploiting and/or harming them, and here we have the
second greatest corporate entity completely devoted to the task (the
greatest corporate entity would be, of course, marketing).

I’ll grant that in the ideal situation, unions are monopolies, and like
any monopoly add inefficiencies that reduce aggregate benefit, and
should thus be abolished. Here’s the problem: That presumes that we have
a PERFECTLY COMPETITIVE free market. A lot of libertarians seem to
think we have one of those, but they’re delusional. Not only is there a
huge disparity in power (nearly every industry is made up of a small and
shrinking oligopoly), the entire notion of a patent is antithetical to
this system, and there is government interference in the system not to
retain the competitiveness of the market, but to help further entrench
those that have virtually always been enfranchised. Given this
situation, you better damn well give me a monopoly working for MY side.

@9db4ebb24860e53d2ddb4e85f42a4ab2:disqus

You might point out the situation here in California, where the
institutions where you can redeem the GI Bill are being stripped, and
that they are trying to completely dismantle pensions. Also, you might
point out that adjusted for inflation, military pay has barely increased
while soldiers have been expected to pay much more of their own
expenses out of pocket, including things like food (!), post-combat medical treatment (!!) and even basic field supplies like kevlar (!!!),
and it’s much harder to get it (today, even being wrongfully accused of a
crime can be a bar to enlistment, and is a titanium wall inside 50 feet
of concrete to commission). Also, according to the Congressional Budget
Office, if we end up with a government shutdown, the soldiers will
basically be among the first to lose their paychecks.

@LoriAnnK:disqus
Do you remember the name of every supervisor you ever had? Do you have current phone numbers for all of them?
Yes but only because I only have one to list. I think what it seems like is that we are expected to have to provide a full resume to do anything. So much of the application process these days is spent on everything that you would expect on a resume: professional references, work history, catalogues of job skills. And those goddamn tests. Like 80% of retail jobs now force you to take “personality assessment tests” that effectively double to triple the application time and which are always either so gameable as to be meaningless, or so byzantine as to be incoherent. “Do you have any regrets?” What the fuck kind of question is that for determining whether I can be a good employee?

Wow, the application for a DoD security clearance isn’t even that detailed.  At least at the secret level, you only have to account for the past 10 years, and I’m pretty sure you only have to give months and not exact days for employment history.  So you could be qualified to have access to classified government materials and still be ineligible to a temp firm.  That’s ridiculous!

 So you could be qualified to have access to classified government materials and still be ineligible to a temp firm.  That’s ridiculous!  

The most ridiculous part is that you’re not even exactly deemed ineligible to work for the temp agency. If you can’t remember all the dates (some only go back 10 years other want everything) and you leave them blank you have an incomplete application and they won’t deal with you. If you just make something up so the app is complete you’ve technically lied on your application. It’s complete, so you can get assignments, but if anything goes wrong they’ll use your lie to bust you. 

It’s purely a hoop that they make you jump through to act as a combination of filter for the insufficiently determined and a CYA in case anything goes wrong. 

See also last year’s post Why every AG in the country should be suing the credit-rating agencies.

I’ve always wondered who did the FreeCreditReport.com commercials, and how they sleep at night doing work that good for what amounts to organized crime.

It’s like winning an Effy for Satan.  ”Hell for society.”

Oh the irony! Trans Union add next to this blog post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/docaustin/5885221459/

The only form of serfdom they seem to be able to imagine is government-imposed serfdom.

Tea Partiers are largely authoritarian followers. They desperately, desperately want to be serfs (of corporations)

As for credit score, mine is zero. Because I have done the “responsible” thing since I was 18 and lived entirely within my means, without borrowing. Which means, of course, paying 4 times as much for an apartment deposit, being unable to access payment plans at the dentist (all work has to be paid for up front), etc.

A friend of mine who lost his job last year was refused job after job, including *temp* jobs, because of his low credit score (which he has because he lost his job) – the temp agency even required him to provide his score to clients. He’s a Linux administrator – there’s absolutely no reason for the employers to need his credit information. He and his family had to sell everything they own this week and are driving to Arkansas today to move in with family.

Ben Stein lost his job at NYT over being a pitchman for one of those sites.  I think the fact that he got a check was enough to ease his conscience.  This is assuming that Ben Stein has a conscience, of course.

since we don’t actually DO anything we won’t actually have any work for you to do, but you can put it on your resume, and list us as a reference.  When those jackholes who won’t hire the unemployed see that you’re employed call us to verify we’ll go “Yep! Vie work(s|ed) here. Great employee.”  

Brilliant.  I actually had an idea for something like that, for the purpose of letting new college grads get some ‘experience’ on their resumes.

I strongly suspect it’s breaking SOME law, but I have no idea which.

This is assuming that Ben Stein has a conscience, of course.

After he made “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, I wouldn’t tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.  :-P

 A friend of mine who lost his job last year was refused job after job, including *temp* jobs, because of his low credit score (which he has because he lost his job) – the temp agency even required him to provide his score to clients. He’s a Linux administrator – there’s absolutely no reason for the employers to need his credit information. 

Any company that is structured and run in such a way that a temp Linux administrator can steal without immediately getting caught has far worse problems than hiring a temp Linux administrator with bad credit. But taking personal responsibility, like paying taxes, is for the little people. 

Is this Ben “He can’t be guilty; economists don’t commit crimes” Stein we’re talking about?

Is this Ben “He can’t be guilty; economists don’t commit crimes” Stein we’re talking about?  

 
That would be the one. 

Stein really is just loathsome. He’s an incompetent economist. His stupid movie clearly demonstrates that he’s incapable of rational thought. He’s classist, racist and sexist. 

His entire life peaked at the moment he uttered the words, “Bueller. Bueller.” and he still feels like he has the right to judge others. Just a horrid, horrid person. 

Like 80% of retail jobs now force you to take “personality assessment
tests” that effectively double to triple the application time and which
are always either so gameable as to be meaningless, or so byzantine as
to be incoherent.

You’re being far too kind to them.  I’d say there’s a good chance that the tests actively select for bad employees.  I know when I applied for Hollywood Video (do they even still exist?), I was deemed akin to Attila the Hun and utterly unhireable.  While, at the same time, I’d just been given a raise and an excellent review at my main job.  (I was trying to get a part time job for extra money – and I know I was deemed Attila the Hun because I had a friend who worked there.)  Meanwhile, the same Hollywood Video was merrily hiring a whole string of people who stole from them, skipped out on work, and were otherwise terrible employees.  But they were willing to lie to pass the test and I wasn’t.

You’re being far too kind to them. I’d say there’s a good chance that the tests actively select for bad employees. I know when I applied for Hollywood Video (do they even still exist?), I was deemed akin to Attila the Hun and utterly unhireable. While, at the same time, I’d just been given a raise and an excellent review at my main job. (I was trying to get a part time job for extra money – and I know I was deemed Attila the Hun because I had a friend who worked there.) Meanwhile, the same Hollywood Video was merrily hiring a whole string of people who stole from them, skipped out on work, and were otherwise terrible employees. But they were willing to lie to pass the test and I wasn’t.

After college I got a job at a Game Crazy store, subsidiary to Hollywood Video, with my home store a walled-off section of a larger Hollywood outlet.  I know exactly the screening tests that you refer to, and I had to take them as well.  It was filled with ambiguously worded questions, like “True or False: I don’t need to fake being polite.”  Politeness is not a matter of deception, so the question is meaningless.  But I think that the test is more generally used to screen for people who can accept the kind of punishment that corporate overlords can drop down on them and will take it without complaint. 

This divides their roster into two kinds of employees, doormats like me who have genuine acceptable answers to the screening, or unscrupulous employees who are willing to lie on their screening to get in.  Managers are not allowed to use any of their own judgement in this area.  This also understandably is why the company has a culture of active distrust of its employees.  We had proceedures like having to check each other’s bags before we left for the night, more security cameras focused on the employees than on potential shoplifters, etc.  And even that was still not enough because some of those less scrupulous employees would still find a way to embezzle money or merchandise.  They all get caught eventually, of course, but not before secreting away and spending they took.

It was one of the many reasons why I was glad when I left.  The sad thing is, the way the job market is going now, I would willingly go back to working there, only the company itself pretty much no longer exists, a victim not only to the economy and emerging technologies like steaming media, but also to its own internal mismanagement. 

With people like Ben Stein, I am inclined to ask myself the “stupid or evil?” quandary.  Though in Stein’s particular case, I am starting to believe it is a little of both.

I’m not saying that this applies to all jobs, just those
where there is significant opportunity for fraud. The guy selling TVs on
the floor at BiggestBuy? No. The guy in charge of the secure-items
“cage”? Maybe more so. The assistant manager who counts out the tills
and makes the night drop? Yeah, that’s more in the neighborhood. The
manager who submits employee timesheets and gets a bonus for not paying
overtime? Oh, I think we definitely want to know if he’s desperate for
money.

It doesn’t matter if single mom gets trust money or alimoney if she
has three credit cards, all are close to their lending limit, and all
show as “currently paid” for the last six months. That is not
necessarily a person I want near my company checkbook; that’s a person
who is one bad day away from the kind of serious desperation that leads
to theft. One unplanned car breakdown, an uninsured illness, broken
water heater, or some other accident that costs more than the cash in
the bank.

Again, I don’t care if I’m hiring for a floor clerk at a mall
clothing store. Doesn’t matter to me if I’m hiring a salesman. But a
cash-handler, someone with access to high value, easily stolen
inventory…

The picture you’re painting here is…not as bad as using credit scores for every job (although in practical terms, I think other people are right about how the CYA element leads to this practice becoming widespread, once it’s allowed at all).  It is still a picture that means anyone who’s had a run of economic bad luck is going to suffer severely limited job prospects, seriously reducing their chance to get out of that hole.  If the single mother can work as a floor clerk, but is barred from management positions (or even being trusted near a cash register), because employers read “probable thief” into her credit history, she’s not likely to ever get the cash in the bank to be able to pay for her own car repairs or broken water heaters.  Unless she can get professional training as an electrical engineer or something (difficult to afford for someone already on the economic margins), she’s stuck, and even her children will have a much harder time getting the sort of educational and social advantages that lead to economic security.

 Like 80% of retail jobs now force you to take “personality assessment
tests” that effectively double to triple the application time and which
are always either so gameable as to be meaningless, or so byzantine as
to be incoherent. “Do you have any regrets?” What the fuck kind of
question is that for determining whether I can be a good employee?

I hate those things, and would hate them considerably more if my career depended on them.  Even without that factor, I tend to end up either struggling not to subconsciously game them (after looking at a test and instantly spotting the answer obviously desired, it is quite hard to set that aside and be completely objective about my own answer), or fighting the questions.  (Even on the introvert/extrovert thing, which has more science than most of these tests I want to answer everything with “Sometimes!” or “It depends – what sort of social interaction are we having?”  So I keep testing as marginally extroverted, but having everyone around me go “No, that’s wrong, you like to read a lot so MUST BE AN INTROVERT!”)

 Like 80% of retail jobs now force you to take “personality assessment
tests” that effectively double to triple the application time and which
are always either so gameable as to be meaningless, or so byzantine as
to be incoherent. “Do you have any regrets?” What the fuck kind of
question is that for determining whether I can be a good employee?

I hate those things, and would hate them considerably more if my career depended on them.  Even without that factor, I tend to end up either struggling not to subconsciously game them (after looking at a test and instantly spotting the answer obviously desired, it is quite hard to set that aside and be completely objective about my own answer), or fighting the questions.  (Even on the introvert/extrovert thing, which has more science than most of these tests I want to answer everything with “Sometimes!” or “It depends – what sort of social interaction are we having?”  So I keep testing as marginally extroverted, but having everyone around me go “No, that’s wrong, you like to read a lot so MUST BE AN INTROVERT!”)

Ugh, I hate that Myers-Briggs nonsense with a passion.  It really is completely meaningless.  But the last place I worked actually offered a 2-day seminar on it, so managers could try to fit their employees into little categories and decide how to treat them based on it.

If you need a hand, FearlessSon, I am both large and usually unshaven. Stuff me into a dime-store  suit and I can stand behind you and look menacing.  Great way to get people to pay up.

Whoever checks your credit score and denies you a job on that basis is NOT SOMEONE YOU WANT TO WORK FOR.You are aware that this is 2011, and not 1995, right?  I’m not saying I’d take a job fluffing gay porn stars- I’m saying I’d have to see the salary offer. I’m one of those young people with a useless degree, soon to be one useless degree, and one slightly-less-useless  degree.  I don’t have much experience, and I gotta eat too. Any job would be welcome, even one with an asshole boss.  

Also, this is why I don’t have a credit card.  I have a debit card- I can’t overspend it, and there’s no interest.  A bad credit score is infinitely preferable to masses of debt. MORE masses of debt, I should say. 

I wish I could find a link to the study about “Honesty Tests”.  The test had three groups of ‘volunteers’: Students at the local university, Catholic Nuns working at a retirement home, and inmates at the local state prison.  If you scored the “Honesty Test” as the creator intended, you found out that the most honest people were the inmates, and the least honest were the Catholic Nuns.  Why?  Because when asked “Have you ever stolen from a employer”, the Nuns told the truth, no matter how minor (“I walked off with a pen!  Forgive me!”) while the inmates lied.  Admitting to a crime was proof you were dishonest…
 
Bizarrely unrelated story…
King Frederick the Great of Prussia was touring a prison.  The prisoners, recognizing him, begged him for pardons, proclaiming thier innocence… except for one, who sat miserably in his cell.
“Why do you not beg for release?” the King asked.
The prisoner answered, “Your Majesty, I deserve to be here for I am guilty of horrible crimes.”
The King called for the Warden.  “Release this guilty wretch immediately before he contaminates these innocents!”

I’m actually pretty sure that in Stein’s case the answer is “evil”. 

I had this HR fetishizing boss who wanted me to take the Meyers-Briggs once.  I asked him what he wanted to know about my personality, and I would be happy to tell him.  He couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t give him the four letter code that neatly encapsulated my entire sense of self.  I told him it was inefficient.

Sample Personality Test:
Personality Test: At a party, are you browsing the books in the bedroom or dancing naked on the coffee table?
Subject: The book thing.
Personality Test: You are an introvert.
Subject: What’s an introvert.
Personality Test: A person who browses the books in the bedroom at parties.

We ended up not taking the test.

Because when asked “Have you ever stolen from a employer”, the Nuns told
the truth, no matter how minor (“I walked off with a pen!  Forgive
me!”) while the inmates lied.  Admitting to a crime was proof you were
dishonest…

This reminds me of how schools are classified as “persistently dangerous”, at least where I am. It’s not based on some objective measure; it’s based on how many disciplinary actions are taken concerning violent and potentially violent incidents. That is, if you suspend or expel students for fights or weapons, that counts against you; if you sweep it under the rug, then your school stays classified as “safe”.

I’m actually pretty sure that in Stein’s case the answer is “evil”.

Yeah, he had a game show once, doesn’t that make him smart? ::naive expression::

Yeah, he had a game show once, doesn’t that make him smart?

“Win Ben Stein’s Money”.  If he wasn’t coached on the answers beforehand, then he is pretty smart.  Or at least educated. 

Depends on how hard the FCC was looking at the show.

That is alright.  I actually already have something in mind.  I can modulate my voice pretty well, so I was going to call him from a phone which he does not have the number for, and say in a husky Godfather immitation, “I am calling in regards to a mutual ‘business associate’ of ours, to whom you owe a great deal of money. This associate has been a very patient man, but even he has limits…”

I would have to say contrary to all rebuttals, that this is 1) an invasion of privacy 2) appears just to be another method of discrimating against qualified but undesired applicants. 
@Enigma32:disqus 
Somewhere along the way, America has become so civilized that it is ultimately uncivilized. 

Those who participate in such scrupulous policy are only creating the larger atmosphere that brings about theft.  If you will not hire me, for whatever reason you may proclaim, you are pushing me into an arena that has me pointing a gun at you, telling you to give me the money.

As a matter of fact, there are a great deal of policy that are implemented that are creating the atmosphere of crime, yet people just dont see it, because they dont want to see it or because you oft cant see a thing until you yourself have experienced it first hand…..

Whats the solution?  Self-employment of course.  Damn you and your job, I can make it without you. I dont want to scan my finger to get in your building, nor place my eye up against a damned optical contraption, nor am i given to the desire of having a man being able to cut my livelyhood because i didnt kiss his hind parts the way he would desire.

I would rather make 30k through my own devices than to make 180k at be at the mercy of beauracratic and trifling practices such as the one in question…..

Freedom? lol. America hasnt been free since 1776.  I cant even walk through the airport without some out of shape social misfit getting a handful of my gonands. Go Figure.  But i suppose that as long as people are afraid of thier own shadows these things will continue to get worse.  I have one last phrase for you America…stop being afraid of everthing, its awfully quere.

I would have to say contrary to all rebuttals, that this is 1) an invasion of privacy 2) appears just to be another method of discrimating against qualified but undesired applicants. 
@Enigma32:disqus 
Somewhere along the way, America has become so civilized that it is ultimately uncivilized. 

Those who participate in such scrupulous policy are only creating the larger atmosphere that brings about theft.  If you will not hire me, for whatever reason you may proclaim, you are pushing me into an arena that has me pointing a gun at you, telling you to give me the money.

As a matter of fact, there are a great deal of policy that are implemented that are creating the atmosphere of crime, yet people just dont see it, because they dont want to see it or because you oft cant see a thing until you yourself have experienced it first hand…..

Whats the solution?  Self-employment of course.  Damn you and your job, I can make it without you. I dont want to scan my finger to get in your building, nor place my eye up against a damned optical contraption, nor am i given to the desire of having a man being able to cut my livelyhood because i didnt kiss his hind parts the way he would desire.

I would rather make 30k through my own devices than to make 180k at be at the mercy of beauracratic and trifling practices such as the one in question…..

Freedom? lol. America hasnt been free since 1776.  I cant even walk through the airport without some out of shape social misfit getting a handful of my gonands. Go Figure.  But i suppose that as long as people are afraid of thier own shadows these things will continue to get worse.  I have one last phrase for you America…stop being afraid of everthing, its awfully quere.

Perhaps your proofreaders eye should have informed you that you are missing punctuation between I and admit, smart ass. 

Also, you should never begin a sentance with the word “and”, it’s improper.  Before you judge someone, perhaps it would be best suited that you yourself were free of error.

Can one American please display an ounce of humility?  Pride is an awful stinch for others to have to bare, especially if you dan’t measure up to the same principals that you are judging others by.

I have one last phrase for you America…stop being afraid of everthing, its awfully quere.

Are you using a word dictionary.com doesn’t know, or are you misspelling ‘queer’? If the latter, I’m queer. Fuck off.

i have a credit score of 0. I have no postive, nor no negative items on my credit report, last i checked. I am 30, and i have had a score of 0 my whole life. My criminal record is clean, my rental history is clean.

Under what pretense would an employer A) need to check my credit score and B) Glean anything useful from it?

People laugh at me and say “how are you going to buy a house” – maybe some of us don’t consider owning a house to be the end all be all of life. I don’t want, need, or use a cell phone, smart or otherwise. You read that right. A credit score of zero and no CELL SERVICE.

Obviously i am not to be trusted, right?

i have a credit score of 0. I have no postive, nor no negative items on my credit report, last i checked. I am 30, and i have had a score of 0 my whole life. My criminal record is clean, my rental history is clean.

Under what pretense would an employer A) need to check my credit score and B) Glean anything useful from it?

People laugh at me and say “how are you going to buy a house” – maybe some of us don’t consider owning a house to be the end all be all of life. I don’t want, need, or use a cell phone, smart or otherwise. You read that right. A credit score of zero and no CELL SERVICE.

Obviously i am not to be trusted, right?

You do realize you’re promoting the idea of thoughtcrime, right?

You’re a horrible person and you should re-evaluate your life and your goals as a human. Maybe now’s the time to stop worrying so much about your company’s money. and you know, pay your freaking employees the proper living wages so they aren’t in dire straights living paycheck to paycheck every week.

Your partisanship is blatantly obvious, here.

You do realize you’re promoting the idea of thoughtcrime, right?

You’re a horrible person and you should re-evaluate your life and your goals as a human. Maybe now’s the time to stop worrying so much about your company’s money. and you know, pay your freaking employees the proper living wages so they aren’t in dire straights living paycheck to paycheck every week.

Your partisanship is blatantly obvious, here.