Bad Credit Score VS Getting a Job: Is There any Relationship?

• July 17, 2017

Most people realize that bad credit is only detrimental to your financial life and your ability to obtain lending facilities in the future, but there are quite a number of negative ways that bad credit can impact your life.

With regards to employment, there is a general consensus that employers should not consider credit scores when hiring new employees. However, this is never the case, and there are several instances and several industries where credit checks are essential, prior to getting hired officially.

The financial industry, for instance, is one field where having a good credit score seems to be a requisite for employment. The retail industry is also another place where credit checks are performed on a regular basis. But why would employers consider running such checks and only consider individuals with good ratings?

There are studies suggesting that employees with bad credit scores, as well as high levels of debt, have a higher likelihood of engaging in acts of stealing and other fraudulent activities in the work place, and are therefore perceived to be higher risk to the employers. This angered and offended a lot of people, who thought that it was a deliberate case of discrimination.

Though it is painful that a good number of employers still consider credit checks to be part of their hiring criteria, the notion that prospective employees should be denied opportunities due to poor scores, seems to be a misplaced, and is one which should not be considered at this time.

There are a variety of reasons why someone may have low scores and it is not necessarily because they are poor managers of their finances or credit. If they have qualified in all the other fronts of the hiring process, and have shown that they have what it takes to get the job done, then indeed, it is discriminatory to block them out based on their current credit scores.