The job market can be very competitive. Every little detail matters. When you’re looking for employment, you become very conscious of things that may be holding you back.
Having a permanent record – for drug charges, for instance – can stop you from getting a job. Many employers will run background checks on prospective employees. Your record is going to come up, and they will then consider this along with everything else.
What if you’ve already served your sentence?
When this becomes very frustrating is when people have already served their sentence, paid fines and otherwise paid off their debt to society. They’ve done everything right, but they still have a criminal record. This doesn’t go away simply because you’ve already served the sentence.
Unfortunately, employers will often use this information when trying to determine who to hire. Imagine that there are two prospective employees. Both of them have the same college education and roughly the same experience. But one employee has a criminal record and the other does not. Most employers will see this as enough to go with the candidate who does not have a record, seeing it as a lower level of risk to the business.
To get around this, it’s very important to understand all of your legal options. For example, the expungement process can clear your record. That record may still exist, but it won’t come up on a background check run by an employer. This can help you get a job and get back on your feet, as long as you know what legal steps to take to make it possible.