Career prospects with those who have poor credit

[StatGuy2000]

Hi there. I have a question I wanted to ask the people here on Physics Forums. I have a friend with an engineering background who has been interviewed for a number of positions related to his field. The one thing he is concerned with is that he has poor credit history (due to some bad decisions he made earlier in his life). Now he is concerned that this may impact his ability to get a job.

Should he be concerned? I know that in my past experience it was pretty standard to have background checks prior to being hired, but this was solely to check whether I had a criminal record -- nothing related to creditworthiness. I was wondering if any of you have any thoughts on this.

BTW, my friend lives in Canada (Toronto, Ontario to be more precise) and he is being interviewed for jobs there.

 

[Choppy]

It really depends on the job. I don't think it's standard to perform a credit check for most engineering jobs, so your friend should be fine.

Where it does come up are for jobs that require security clearance. These would be things like police work or national defence positions. A friend of mine was once investigated by CSIS for a government job and the agents investigating him said that what they were looking for was whether the candidate had anything in his or her background that could be used to blackmail the person should he or she ever be in a position of power. As I understand it the police have the same reasoning.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Hi Choppy,

That makes sense to me. My friend is not applying to private sector work and as far as I can tell in my own private experience, I have never heard of a credit check for employment purposes.

I'll pass this info onto my friend (for what it's worth, he's been working very hard to be responsible with his finances and in consultations with a financial advisor to help improve his credit standing in time).

Thanks for your reply.