What is your company's policy on hiring new employees with criminal backgrounds?

We deal with the public and seniors in particular. Medicare/Medicaid is very specific about the people who will interact with these folks, answer their calls, or manage their private financial information. I have a state audit starting tomorrow where I had to certify that I employed no felons or individuals with pending criminal cases.

I always advise clients and my own firms to be very careful of hiring employees with convictions. Besides the obvious issue of trust, potential for additional criminal acts, etc., you face liability from your current employees if something should occur that injures an employee or a theft occurs and you knew the perpetrator was a convicted felon. The one exception can be if you can determine the nature of the conviction and are comfortable it was non-violent and there were perhaps extenuating circumstances...but be careful.

Generally no hires with felony convictions. In the case of a misdemeanor, if it was from a long time ago (10 yrs +) and not habitual / high frequency, then ok. The nature of the crime and relative risk it poses to the business need to be assessed. As Sara mentioned depending on the type of business requirements you have, you may not have a choice/subjectivity in how you interpret criminal background check results.

We have a moral if not a legal obligation to protect our employees by providing a safe working environment. While we have hired people with a conviction record, it is important to distinguish convictions that involve violence and those that are non-violent. Even if the conviction is a misdemeanor you should bear in mind that it might have been plea-bargained down from a felony. Be cautious.