Ask HN: Advice for passing a FAANG background check with a criminal history
I was just recently offered a job at a FAANG company. I'm pretty excited about the company, but the only potential issue is that I have a criminal history and I'm not sure if I'll pass the background check.
For context, two years ago I was part of an animal rights group that would investigate factory farms and rescue sick, injured animals from them. The investigations were public, and I was indicted on felony burglary and theft charges in Utah for one rescue. I ended up pleading guilty "in abeyance" to misdemeanor attempted theft and misdemeanor riot. Because the pleas were "in abeyance", the pleas are sealed as long as I don't commit any other crimes.
I read up a bit about California employment law, and it seems like California companies aren't allowed to use arrest records (I technically wasn't arrested, but I did have an arrest warrant out for me and I turned myself in) and sealed court records against you. So I'm not sure if I should even bring it up. That said, I've asked a couple lawyer friends and they think I should bring it up early (though they're not specialists in employment law).
Any advice or lawyer recommendations would be appreciated.
171 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] thread> For example, suppose an applicant has a conviction related to prescription drug abuse from five years ago, but has completed rehab and been sober since. Depending on the circumstances, the conviction might be a reason to deny employment for a position at a pharmacy but not for a position at a call center.
My advice would be to just sign and consent to whatever background check they ask you for. Unless they provide a form that asks you to provide specific information about criminal convictions, that would seem to be the end of it based on my reading. If they are asking for that information, then it looks like you're still in the clear, but a few minutes with an employment lawyer wouldn't hurt and would probably make you feel better about the whole affair.
TL;DR: I wouldn't worry about it unless they specifically ask. Even then, I probably wouldn't worry about it.
Emphasis on factory farm.
Quit anthropomorphizing cows and chickens. Their evolutionary success comes from being good food.
I didn't. My only point was there probably isn't a farmer in any traditional sense.
Innocent until proven guilty.
My point is that too much attention is given to what corporations think or prefer. In the US, citizens enjoy almost complete personal freedom in principle but most of their lives are highly restricted in practice. This is, in part, because of a subservient attitude towards corporations.
Keep worrying so much about how to bend yourselves backwards to accommodate the employers, and one day you will find it impossible to stand up straight again. But hey, to each their own I guess.
(Also, keep in mind the option that OP might be looking for a FAANG job specifically because it pays well, allowing them to earn enough money to never care about placating corporations again in their life. That seems like a more effective strategy for certain forms of activism than finding a poorly-paying job working for a small business or even yourself, and then having to keep working at it until old age.)
I bet we'll find that you simply agree with this person's stance on this particular issue, and if they had had the opposite opinion (equally strongly morally-based) or on other issues, you wouldn't be supporting their bravery and wanting to work with him/her.
Good luck trying to explain that to any Valley company hiring.
California has "ban the box" and as a practical matter:
1. most "boxes" on employment application ask about Felonies not misdemeanors.
2. I'm not an expert but the few times i've looked into it "criminal background check" is nowhere near as comprehensive as people think. it involves going to each county where you think the person resided and looking up records there. so according to you even if they thought to look in the county where your record is, they wouldn't find anything.
https://www.shouselaw.com/california-ban-the-box-laws
California law still prohibits employers from asking about, or considering, criminal convictions that have been expunged. AB 1008 takes the law a step further. It bars employers from considering any criminal conviction, expunged or not, prior to making a conditional job offer. The law applies to both felony charges and misdemeanor charges in California.
And how long have you been an engineer? And how did you prep? Would be a dream for me to get a job there one day.
Say you're for some reason indebted to a Chinese bank and applying for a defense job, they're not going to be very happy of that. Yes that's a bit over the top, but generally what those checks are about.
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[0]: https://www.demos.org/testimony-and-public-comment/memorandu...
[1]: https://www.demos.org/research/bad-credit-shouldnt-block-emp...
Can a company refuse to hire me unless I divulge my private financial details? If I forge a spreadsheet of my accounts, how would they know it wasn’t real?
The background check may query credit reporting agencies or other financial records to confirm data and expand the search (i.e. you had a credit card issued in a state so they will expand criminal searches to that state). These types of queries fall under laws that govern credit checks, so they have to disclose and obtain permission.
They hired some company (forget who) to check me, and got a call from them. They asked me about my company, which had been dissolved like six years earlier. I said as much, and she asked me if I was sure. I said I was the co-owner, and as such was pretty darn sure. Said OK, and hung up.
About an hour later, I get another call from the same person, asking me about my consulting. She did not seem to notice she had just talked to me. I said, yes, I was previously a consultant. She asked who my manager was, and I said I was a one-man shop. She insisted she speak to may manager, apparently not understanding what I was saying. I finally said I self-managed. She accepted that (!) and we hung up. I'm still working here several years later, so it must have been OK.
I guess one moral of this story is, if you want to get away with something on a commercial background check, there are worse ideas than listing your own phone number.
Companies generally aren’t monsters! They don’t want to break the law, they are risk averse and don’t want to be sued, and want to attract good people. Most worth their salt would be receptive to some constructive criticism about how invasive it is to have unsolicited interrogations from a third party.
It usually even has language saying they can contact your neighbors to ask about your character, so I pick that out and say “Waitaminute, you want to talk to my neighbors? That seems a little invasive. What is going on here?” That’s when I get their response in writing about what they are really going to check.
Note our cheap goodhire background checks scan an approximately 5 page list of courts. We are required to do this by various certifications such as soc2, etc.
I would carefully think through bringing it up with the hiring manager. First, because if I were the hiring manager, I'd be much happier if a candidate told me. That way I can think through if this matters for the position or not, and be in a better position to handle internal messaging. The second benefit is it allows OP to control the messaging (I was young / I am an animal rights activist and potential future employer doesn't do animal experimentation / I've changed, etc). If OP doesn't proactively bring it up, OP's future is being decided in a discussion between HR and the hiring manager with zero input from OP.
OTOH, if you lied to me and I found out you were busted for a tiny amount of weed, I'm going to burn your application. Not because of the arrest - again, I don't even care about that - but because you've lied to me. At that point I'm not going to trust anything else you tell me. Are you also going to cover your mistakes at work and hope no one notices?
Every company is different, so I'm only speaking for myself and not the industry as a whole. But I would infinitely prefer that a candidate tell me this stuff up front than to try and hide it from me. And frankly, if you got arrested for some very cool reason ("I was part of a protest against a white supremacist march!"), it could quite possibly tip the hiring decision in your favor!
For example, for jobs that require a security clearance, it's probably best to just divulge everything that won't get you arrested. At a job fair, I met a recruiter who hired for top secret clearance jobs. I asked him how they could possibly find people who had never had smoked weed, and he said they were primary concerned with recency and frequency.
Honesty when filling out your form SF-86. Are you gonna lie about being contacted by a foreign agent in the future just like you lied about smoking a couple puffs in high school? Lie on the SF-86 and get caught and its instant permanent deny.
Blackmail opportunity where if you have a current or likely future addiction a foreign agent could provide you with money or drugs or silence in exchange for info. So a couple puffs in high school, who cares, on the other hand stripping copper to pay for meth last week is instant deny. Same blackmail issue for credit report issues. In the really old days it was the same thing for non-hetrosexual people, if they figure you could get blackmailed then no clearance.
There's a lot of hand wavy but assuming you're functional in the sense of not being high at the interview while also not being the most financially insolvent person in your future department, the only real way to fail a mere S or even a TS is to lie on your SF-86 when you apply. The vetters have a rough subjective job so they really like finding an objective factual falsehood like a misdemeanor possession or similar, because then they can take it easy and stamp deny.
"One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself." I.E. one hand to do the ship's work, one to hold on to the railing so you don't fall off. Two hands for the ship, and you're not looking out for yourself. Two hands for yourself, and why would the ship want to keep you?
So we're not actually any farther ahead. Personally, the advice I'd probably give a person in this situation: ask a lawyer from the area. Compared to a FAANG salary, it's a cheap investment. I might also recommend paying cash, and not giving a real name.
You're right about plenty of managers being jerks, but on the other hand, do you really want to work for someone who would freak out if they knew you did dumb stuff when you were a kid?
Also, you're probably not going to get a decent lawyer to agree to aliases, and the last thing you want to do is lie to your own lawyer. That's how you get them to quickly stop counseling you. Your lawyer and your doctor are the two people you want to be 100% transparently honest with so that they can accurately advise you.
They give the contracted firm their set of criteria, then the other firm comes back with a pass/fail.
Some other certifications might, but SOC 2 certainly doesn't prescribe the list of courts you need to check. A very superficial check can satisfy the control, SOC 2 mostly just cares that you have a control in place.
They had an open warrant, which means it hit state databases and shows up in a warrant search.
I have no idea what background check system their employer would use (or what level of investigation the job warrants), but a human investigator would absolutely find these records.
- Media reports
- Court records(they had called the search global, I am not sure if that's just a namesake or if they are hitting up systems of even multiple countries)
Additionally, there was identification number of human verifiers on the reports.
I had a record but no convictions. It didn't prevent me from getting the job but they did try to use it as a negotiating tactic to lower salary (didn't happen, I also forced them to increase it by 10% at the 3 month mark)
Tactic: "well, we'd be taking a risk by hiring you, what if you do something bad again? or if this turns in to a PR problem?"
I understood this and had absolutely no hard feelings towards him and his honesty was one reason why I continue to respect him and vice versa.
So he tried many times to find reason to pay me less than I wanted, this was one.
- a teacher (or work with children);
- a court worker or police officer; or
- a farm laborer.
I wonder what the story is with that last one? Did a bunch of farmers pay for that to be included in the list, or (less likely) is it there for some reason to protect the laborers?
Edit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/us/mississippi-ice-raids-...
I've never thought of doing this, but it's genius.
(Note to programmer types, though; you might have signed something that says you won't do this. Recommend legal advice or at least a backup plan for if you get caught ;)
ANy non-compete would be the same if they were concurrent or sequential.
Where I work, a side job is legit (with the obvious caveats, of course!)
If they ask, tell them it's simple risk mitigation on your part (just like theirs). If they absolutely want you to start early, come up with an egregious cash cost to terminating you within the X length of employment for any and all reasons including conditional background checks (they likely won't do this, but it aligns with your financial risk story)
Then, some inconsistency came up. Apparently, on her application she checked the box for never having smoked weed. But on a second document she checked the "Yes" box. This is California 2015, they asked her to do a polygraph test. She failed.
Couple days later, she called the first job to see if she can come back. They were bitter that she left, but because of an extremely high turnover rate, they let her back in. It was never the same for her.
So yeah, have a guarantee at the new job before you quit the first one.
Its intentionally designed to be intimidating for three very non psudeoscientific reasons. Will you break under pressure? Some fraction truly believe and will confess in terror and can be filtered out. A weak effect is its an intelligence test, obviously it is not magickal and if you're smart enough you'll see thru it. It hasn't been gotten rid of because there really is no downside.
It is cheaper than the expensive labor intensive alternatives like interviewing more people or trying to find more records.
Much like astrology or prayer or swearing on a bible in a court of law, it is cheap and effective enough with minimal cost.
Break? Break what? This makes no sense. It’s not like they have verifiable information to see if you break too easily.
You’re making it sound like they were hiring a spy. Polygraph test are common in the public sector.
They simply do this for bureaucracy reasons. Government agencies need to comply with a bunch of old standards so they can demonstrate they performed all possible verifications in case they go under investigation.
Agencies don’t want to be in the position where a security clearance they granted is scrutinized only to find that they didn’t do a polygraph test while all the other agencies still perform polygraph tests.
Everyone knows polygraph tests are bullshit. They do them because they have too, not because they find them useful.
Presumably your example was for a federal job.
There is also a similar federal law but it exempts government jobs.
Either way, I agree with you - pretty BS.
I once had a similar situation happen at a very large (150k+ employees) company. Security showed up and escorted one of our contractors out the door. It turned out he had worked for the company previously and stolen documents that he used to try to extort money from the company. When he was being brought in for this contract position he had changed the spelling of his name on the form and used a social security number for someone with that spelling. During the quick background check everything looked good but the discrepancies were discovered during the more in depth check a couple months later.
The background check company called all of my previous employers. One former employer gave them incorrect dates for my employment, contradicting what I put on the form. I never heard anything about it from Google.
There might be easier ways to run a background check on yourself but this is one way to see the exact service many Bay Area employers use (not sure about FANG).
But there are carve-outs to state law -- for example if you are working on a product that stores data where a customer is working on behalf of, or using data derived from the Federal government, you may be subject to their standards and have additional background checks.
Also, in some states "ban the box" laws protect you during hiring, but not once you are hired. If you need a separate check for Project X or Customer Y, that could be an issue.
tldr; if it is sealed, do not worry about it. If not, be upfront as soon as possible.
Call the court clerk in the county the record is sealed in and confirm the record is sealed; If so, when a court researcher searches for the record, it will not appear and not be reported by the CRA (Consumer Reporting Agency is the technical term for a background screening company).
If you have never lived or worked in this county, it may never be searched.
If somehow the county reports the record and it is sealed, and the employer does not hire you because of the record, the employer has to do what is called the adverse action process, which gives you an opportunity to dispute the information before taking final action. During this time, you can have the CRA remove the record.
Enjoy hacking away at a FAANG!
Adoption records in the USA were sealed last century. Seems to be a temporary fad that's going away. Maybe it was a Spanish Flu thing.
Anyway if you try to pull my long deceased great-great-uncle's records for genealogy, they simply give you a negative result to the query, although "everyone knows" he was adopted.
Source: worked at a FAANG and don't have an immaculate record
Aside from knowing about the OP's criminal / indicted past, as an employer if I had the luxury of perfect information, I would be more concerned about this OP's sense of judgement and personality, work-wise. Of course, that's tough to tell in an interview (if you get that far), but for the purpose of this forum, we're kind of debating also what managers should do about this person hypothetically, to learn from this situation.
Is this the kind of person who feels so strongly that he/she must be right, that he/she is willing to seriously break laws in service of some ideal? Does that mean someone is good to work with, or a liability? How far is the person willing to go in support of their own opinion even if incorrect? Has the person matured or moved on from this or what lessons has he/she taken away from it?
I don't know that answers to these questions, or what is right on this spectrum. I'm posing them to OP.
OP, what would you want a hiring manager to know about these questions? Have you addressed these questions to you, yourself, in life? Have you moved on from this phase? Or are you still radical in what you're willing to do? Does your attitude come into the workplace? Is a normal FAANG kind of job right for you? What are you like to work with?
Given the kind of issues you hear about at Google (for example) with people on both sides of the ideological spectrum, etc. the OP's own written story here puts him/her on a far extreme. So, I would say someone like this is just a heightened alert for a hiring manager, unless they demonstrate a real self-awareness of what that incident meant and how they've dealt with it since. Let's take for example, is the OP willing to put code into an app that they believe is right for some ideological reason -- but wasn't asked for or approved by the manager?
Again, this is in the imaginary scenario of you knowing about the person's past. Of course, the rest of the comments here are about how to hide that past from the hiring manager.
I would say (not knowing anything about the person in this case) that in general it's not the criminal part that worries me (for a crime like this, not talking about more serious crimes). What kind of person he/she is to work with, and his/her judgement, is what concerns me.
OP, these are the kinds of thoughts that -- if you choose to reveal your past (or if it gets revealed) -- a manager I think would want to know. So you probably should think through some of the answers.
There’s nothing in OP’s post that says they weren’t extremely careful to leave their views at the workplace door.
A lot of the world is run on plausible deniability. Biden seemed like a great politician for decades. Now he doesn't.
If I was OP's friend, I'd advise to not mention it. If it bites anyway, keep moving. There are far worse things in life than not getting a job at a FAANG.
FWIW, a friend I went to high school with did 19 months in federal prison for drug trafficking, and is technically a convicted felon. He has passed multiple background checks that show he has an absolutely clean record- two white collar employers and one for the expensive apartment building he lives in, all in Manhattan. (He's now a Senior VP of a company). I have no idea how this works, but he swears it's true. For one employer he confessed everything he did, they did a background check anyways and told him 'you don't come up in the system' (and hired him anyways).
Honestly, coming up in Google results is tougher to beat
1) Run your own background check and see what comes back. Most will let you run your own check.
2) Don't mention this if you want the job, the the FAANGs did go through a period where they wanted activists / not just the standard coders but I think that might be somewhat over.
3) I would never hire someone with your record if I knew about it.
A note - use straight language if you are committing crimes for moral reasons. For example "defends unborn children from child murders" is committing a murder of an abortion doctor under our current laws, "rescuing animals" may be theft or burglary. "saving the world from GMO" may be destroying a local farm. "saving the world from gentrification" may be multiple arsons (in emeryville for example). 9/11, the US wars in many other countries are often tied to these ideals justify violence and killing language models.
Guess who is putting their career at a company on the line for a stranger?
Should it not be possible to create trust between two people, just because one of them has a criminal record? I do not follow that logic.
Edit: My issue is with his absolute "never".
Say I work at a place where (1) no criminal backgrounds is a rule, and (2) I have a candidate we would hire except for rule (1). If I personally push for an exception to rule (1) and the person turns out to be a bad hire -- and particularly if the badness of the hire is related to crimes -- I strongly suspect that will become a me problem.
i.e. "Self defense" puts a nice spin on killing someone, doesn't it?
I don't think the crime should matter at all. We, as a society, decided long ago the justice system is the means by which we mete out punishment. So long as they served whatever punishment, if any, was arrived at by verdict of a fair trial/court of competent jurisdiction, refusing to hire someone who has committed certain crimes is a de facto additional punishment for which that person was never given any opportunity to defend themselves from (and that's morally wrong).
Moreover, how are these people supposed to become productive members of society again if nobody offers them a job? Should they only work "those" jobs, not "my" job? Or be forced to find out if they are competent entrepreneurs? The parent's viewpoint is too extreme for any instance.
(This topic has been written about, and I feel like has even topped HN a few times, though I am struggling to find a good citation at the moment.)
Possibly op was innocent but too poor and risk adverse to try and fight the harder charge, so op plead for a lesser charge. Possibly op gunned down the farmer and plead to a lesser charge. We don't have fair trials so we'll never know for certain what happened.
If we had fair trials, the general public would feel less need to be judge jury and executioner. But we don't, so its just added responsibility for a hiring manager.
"We, as a society, decided long ago" Who's this 'we', not me, that's for sure. Its not my failed system.
A good place to start looking for recommendations is your lawyer friends, followed by the local board. Lawyers know who is a good lawyer.
If you’re capable of getting one FAANG offer, you’re capable of getting another.
If this one falls through you know to say something next time. If you say anything this time and it doesn’t work out, then next time you’ll have to decide between saying something different or saying nothing at all. Staying quiet now is the smart move.
That said, I think in the current environment you should be quiet and ride it out. Let the company get to know you and make a decision if possible. If they love you and then find out, you will have a better chance than by poisoning the well up front. IANAL, just a dev who has dealt with HR a few times. Best of luck:)
That doesn't scream underclass to me
Now Google writes that, no idea how it is actually handled.
If you passed the interview loops at a FAANG, the background check is mostly to cover their ass to ensure you will not harm existing employees. Any past record of physical violence is a problem.
This seems like a non-violent misdemeanor incident. As a former hiring manager at a FAANG, I would want HR to approach me with any reports to ensure a fair process and decision.
Maybe consult an employment lawyer if the offer process goes cold.
FWIW, I'd be proud to work with you.
Of course, "misdemeanor drag racing" isn't anything like theft/riot.