Hiring people can be tough business, especially when the candidates have criminal records. Some of these are just down right scary...
Oh We Forgot To Mention…
Guy applied for a driver position with one of our Senior Care affiliates (take elderly people on errands and to appointments, deliver meals, take clients to the center where they can hang out, etc.) Not one, not two, but TEN counts of elder abuse, with a side of attempted murder and theft. Rescinded that offer real damn quick. Source
That’s A Hard Pass
Guy had a felony assault charge. Not disturbing in itself but found out later it was from beating his previous boss’ face in after being confronted about coming in late to work repeatedly. The boss survived but apparently had to have his face reconstructed. So yeah….hard pass on that one. Source
But Those Aren’t Mine!
Did a background check on a guy who was applying to work at one of our K-8 schools. His report came back with a whole bunch of petty crimes listed, as well as an attempted murder conviction that he spent a bunch of years in prison for.
Guy was absolutely outraged and insisted that none of the convictions were actually his “other than the attempted murder one.” No matter how many times I told him that the attempted murder conviction alone disqualified him from employment, he kept insisting that he should be employable because “only one of the convictions was actually his.”
Felt bad for the guy because I’m sure it’s hard to find a job with such a thing on your record, but there’s absolutely no way we would’ve hired him to work with elementary schoolers.
I also did the background checks for school volunteers (who were much more likely to have major criminal offenses on their records than candidates for employment), so there were all sorts of awful things I found … murder, child abuse, rape, child molestation, etc. For some reason, though, that one still sticks in my mind as one as the most disturbing, I think because he absolutely could not comprehend why attempted murder was any worse than driving on a suspended license. Source
Stealing Money, Stealing Jobs
Man applying for a job as a construction estimator. He owned a construction company and was convicted of defrauding various city and county governments. Pretty much the last person you’d want doing estimates. The next guy who applied was a registered sex offender. I was on a roll with that position. Source
The Constant Complainer
We did a background check on a guy who it turns out I had sued every former employer for an on-the-job injury. Usually right after 90 days, when most trial periods end. I did not hire him, but somebody else did, and I warned them that the background check showed at the 90 day mark, he would try and get injured on the job and sue them. They took that to heart, and on the 92nd day, he showed up to work with a lawyer, claiming that his office chair had hurt his back, that the lights above his cubicle were giving him migraines, and his monitor was making his eyes hurt. The company responded prepared with their own lawyers, gave him an ergonomic keyboard, a monitor filter, and a special little area where the lights were better. And an ergonomic chair. And then they made it known that they would be contacting his former employers, many of whom he had sued saying he was unable to work anymore.
He stopped complaining. And was let go in the next round of layoffs. Source
A Little Lying Here And There
Lovely personable chap, tired of working nights. Looking for day job so he could spend more time with his family. Check: multiple domestic violence charges.
Soft-spoken, polite, early 20’s. Admitted gap in work history due to three years in prison for violating parole for a little trouble he was in as a juvenile. Check: little trouble = murder.
Charismatic, enthusiatic, employed as a personal chef, but work had not been steady. Looking for something long term. Check: had trial date scheduled for the following week on two attempted murder charges. Would guess something long term likely. Source
At Least He’s Honest
I was part of a group interview for a director position.
The guy was cool, definitely qualified and was breezing through the interview, pretty funny too; I thought for sure he was in.
We get to the end and HR is telling him about the process after if they were to offer him the position and once they mention the background check he quickly responds that he wouldn’t pass it.
We all sit there in silence for a second and he calmly says that he was charged with 3 counts of felony armed robbery so likely wouldn’t pass. Source
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
That he had been convicted of a sex offence.
He still got the job as he came into the office with a 15 year old police report and court transcript, which explained he had got drunk during his first week at Uni and took his pants off to take a piss in a fountain and was found half naked by a lady the next morning asleep in the fountain.
This was at a time that the police were being really hard on public nudity, and he did a stupid thing in the wrong place. Source
A Brutal Battle
I worked with a guy, former Marine, who was a really nice guy. We ended up carpooling for a year. Through our conversations, I got the impression that he went through a really ugly divorce about 5 years previously. He was pretty bitter about it (she cheated on him while he was deployed), saying that his wife did everything she could to get everything he had. Her harassment was so bad, that the top brass on base got involved, they got him some good representation, and that’s when he found out that their son was not his, so he ordered to be reimbursed for all the child support he already paid her, and so she sued him, claimed he beat her up, even though she had not been living on base with him for two years. Just ugly stuff. He was in final court proceedings to get stuff wiped off his record, she was dragging it on and on… just to f— with him.
One day, a new employee who had just moved into the area did a search on child sex offenders, and that former marine popped up. He reported it to HR, who fired him immediately. Turns out his wife got him registered as a sex offender to gain custody, which was one of the things he was trying to remove from his record. He even had the paperwork to prove that it was going to be expunged, but HR fired him because he did not disclose this upon hire 4 years previously.
Weeks later, he was found dead in his apartment. Don’t know the cause. Source
That Mother F
Maryland.
He had a charge for catching undersized crabs. (minimum was 5 inches across the shell at the time)
That. Mother. F—er. Source
Suns Out Guns Out?
We had a guy include a shirtless flexing portrait on his resume. He was applying for an engineering position. We still have no idea what that was for. Source
Where’s Willy?
I don’t want to give too much details because this story is quite specific and potentially humiliating for the person we didn’t hire.
We interviewed a young guy for a position, and I did the basic check with his former employers once they were shortlisted for the final interviews. All came in fine except one… where they asked to have a phone conversation about the candidate. I got a call from them wherein they explained that he’d actually been fired for repeatedly posting photos to the company instagram and twitter which contained hidden ‘items’ that weren’t meant to be in there. I pushed and pushed to find out exactly what they meant, and it turns out this person we were interviewing to manager our social media had been posting photos with his genitals hidden in the photos for months before his bosses had noticed. Source
Liar Liar Pants On Fire
I did a background check for one guy, and I found out that he had lied about every single job that he had. Going one job back, he claimed that he was a manager at a shoe store that went out of business. I was unable to verify that, because the shoe store went out of business. Then he said that he was in the military for four years as a communication specialist. I found that he was in the army for three months, but got an honorable discharge because he couldn’t make it through Boot Camp. He claimed before that he was the manager of the evening shift at a chicken plant, turns out that he was a janitor for only a few months before he was fired for job performance. He claimed he was a manager of a hotel before that, and it turned out that his mother was actually the night manager, and she was fired because she kept bringing her kid to work.
I tried to do the math, and I realized that if everything in the background check was true, that the applicant probably also lied about his age, and had to be a lot younger than he claimed to be. He said he was in his late 20s, but I bet he was no older than 20 or 21. Source
Seeming Normal
I was interviewing a guy for a manager position and was planning on hiring him, mentioned that he’d have to do a background check. Straight out said he would not pass because of an armed robbery and assault charge. Seemed like a normal guy to me. Source
S*** Just Got Real
My wife Interviewed a candidate for a manufacturing job. She proceeded with background check and the FBI showed up within 20 minutes of her search.
Wanted her to pretend to hire him and have the dude come in so they could arrest him. She said, “No no no! I do background checks so we DON’T have a shootout in the parking lot!”
FBI arrest guy that afternoon at the address he put on his application. FBI could not tell my wife what the guy did, only that he was extremely dangerous and wanted under a ‘closed/eyes only’ file.
She also said some other candidate came in whose background check popped six counts of child molestation with a minor under 7 years of age.