Background Check can Cost you your Job
You may be working for a company who routinely or annually updates a criminal background check on its employees. It may be a requirement of continued employment, just like a UA drug test.
Perhaps you're steaming along in your career, and the boss says it's time for a routine background check. So you cross all the T's and dot all the I's and send it in thinking nothing of the possibility of a FAILED report. After all, you haven't commited any crimes that you know of, and you expect to sail right through this check.
The following week, you get a piece of mail from the CRIM check people. Not alarmed as you are expecting an approval, you open the envelope, only to read that you didn't pass and that you must stop working as a caregiver for your in home clients effective immediately.
You are stunned, and you read this letter again very carefully. The shock begins to set in that you are now unemployed and you don't even know why. It's already too late in the day to find out what this warrant charge on your background check is, so you spend the night tossing and turning and getting no sleep. You know that you haven't done anything, yet somehow you no longer have a job.
You know that you haven't been arrested. You know that you haven't been put on trial. You know that you haven't been convicted of anything.
The first call you make is to the CRIM check people at the number provided on the letter. They give you no more information than you already had, but tell you you can file an appeal anytime within 45 days of the date on the letter. They also inform you that there is a backlog of appeals, and the process could take weeks and possibly months depending on the specifics of your report.
The truth is, you don't have to have a conviction on your record to fail a criminal background check. You can also have a cite warrant that you don't even know about until you have a criminal background check.
Cite warrants happen when someone gets trespassed off the property of another. This means that the person does not want you to be on their property or you will be charged with criminal trespass. It's not an arrest warrant, but rather more of a warning to stay away. As long as you don't go on a particular property, you won't be arrested. There is no admission of guilt involved. It can be as simple as being accused of being disruptive or causing mischief on someones property, and you have a cite warrant.
So without a conviction or an arrest, you can have something hanging over your name that will appear in a criminal background search.
Employers don't get to know the nature of your report, only that you had potentially disqualifying information appear on your report. They see the word warrant, and the rush to judgement is to suspend your employment. Nevermind that there have been allegations of violence or theft or anything that would call for a termination.
You can be at risk of losing your job simply from nothing more than an accusation. You don't have to be found guilty of a thing. When employers have a zero tolerance background reporting system and something comes up that you weren't even aware of, you can be held accountable for not reporting it when filing your annual check.
