Tech Hiring Lessons Learned

As the article points out, the credit check is supposed to be one metric among many, and not taken as some overpowering data point. But for anyone to say that one's credit score does not proxy dependability is, I think, naive.

I think the notion that credit score is something invasive while work history, criminal record, GPA, determining how one got along with previous bosses, etc. is commonplace and goes unnoticed is somewhat odd. It should be obvious that employers have no interest in one's actual affairs, and instead are attempting to gauge dependability through proxies. GPA, how many times you've left jobs recently, insane rants on the internet -- these are all fair play and raise no eyebrows whatsoever, so why is a credit score any different?

This is a simple matter of being averse to things you're not used to and comfortable with those you are. Credit score bad! But pulling and evaluating your GPA, stalking your online footprint, looking into your criminal record, talking to your old bosses -- that's all fine. Sure, that will remain true until it becomes commonplace. At that point, just as with all these other things that most find completely unobjectionable, this won't bother anyone either. This is especially true when it's not even being considered as any sort of overriding decision point. Great candidates can have poor credit scores. Poor candidates can have high ones. Everyone knows this. But that can be said for all the other metrics gathered in an interview process as well.

And then there's the argument that credit score clearly can be asked for in certain jobs, e.g. financial services, but not others. This is highly curious. Why is it that one asks for credit scores when a position involves working with money? It's not a work competence question, to be sure -- it's a dependability metric: plain and simple. So I ask you: what is the difference between counting money somewhere and handling vulnerability data for the internal networks of Fortune 50 companies? Very little.

If the objection is that you don't like someone getting your credit score, then sure: I don't either. But I don't like the 10 other invasive activities that happen during any modern interview. It's all somewhat uncomfortable, which should be expected since the entire process reduces to evaluating your past and present to predict worthiness and fit for a given position. Complain about that if you wish, i.e. make the argument that interviews are too invasive to begin with, and perhaps I'll agree with you. That's a much better premise than taking one metric among others and claiming it alone is a problem.

Your point, as I am understanding it is something along the lines of, "as a responsible employer, it's incumbent upon me to gather as many data points about a candidate as possible; sure some of them may not correlate strongly with whether a candidate will be successful or not, but every bit helps me get a full picture." It's an understandable position to some extent, but here's the reason I think it rubs people (myself included) the wrong way: people discriminate between their public (read: work) lives and their private lives. Some of your data points are public, some are not. For example: the reason that no one has an issue with you calling my boss to discuss my history if I'm applying to you for a job is that you're discussing the public face I present at work each day: "Is this guy reliable? Does he make deadlines? Can he talk to clients or customers?" In other words all things that directly bear on how well I do my job. GPA is—to some extent simliar—it's the most useful metric in dealing with candidates who don't have work experience, and the underlying question is the same: this candidate's "job" for the last four years was getting her CS degree, so how good was she at it?

Social network stalking is a bit of a red herring. If a person has bad enough judgement that they leave a public record of (crazy|nasty|racist|sexist|etc.) sentiments, that's one thing. But would you the employer ask me the job candidate to friend you on Facebook because I've restricted my posts and photos to being viewed by friends only, and you want to rifle thorough them to find evidence anything objectionable? I doubt it. To me this is the same thing as asking for my credit score: why should I reveal my personal life to you? [1] At the risk of drawing too broad a point, this kind of thing is part of a continuing and subtle erosion of employees' right to their own private lives. Companies that ask me to work indefinite 60 hour weeks as a salaried employee are of a piece with those who want to know my credit score: they are companies that are asking for more of my life than I feel they have a right to, and I will pass them by. You may be OK with losing candidates who don't want to provide you their personal data, but if a credit score really is only a secondary (at best) data point, why risk losing an otherwise-superb employee over it?

[1] To those who say "a credit score isn't all _that_ personal, I think of two examples right off the top of my head. I decline to hire applicant A because his credit score was low. As is his right by law under FCRA, he asks to know if that was why we declined to hire, at which point he may then say "My credit score is poor because my wife left last year and I'm putting 3 kids through school," or "I'm HIV+ and my last job had terrible health insurance." There are lots of very personal reasons a person my have a bad credit score, and by basing a hiring decision on that, I'm forcing them to revel them to me if they want the job; that personally makes me very queasy.

Thank you for your honesty in amitting that Google and Apple do this as well. I simply think you're unaware of how standard this practice is in hiring today--not just for high-end tech hiring but for any position where they're attempting to predict reliability.

To the point of the article, though, most probably don't eject someone from the process based on credit alone.

I certainly didn't take you to be suggesting not to hire the candidate based on their credit score, I'm saying it would make me uncomfortable to force them in to disclosing explanations for it in the first place because those reasons quite likely have nothing to do with how good of a candidate they are. What I was saying is that you might lose some good developers because they don't want to work for a company that would make such a request.

Anyway, I see your point, but this is where we part ways because I think that being asked to explain a 2.5 GPA or a horrible review from a former manager are materially different than being asked to explain a low credit score. Sometimes folks' personal and professional lives intersect in ways that require them to disclose more than they might want to to explain that bad GPA or bad review; that's unfortunate. But unlike GPA or a reference check, there is no "professional" component to your credit score that necessitates such disclosure, just as there is no professional component to one's religious affiliation or marital status. That the first of those things is sometimes legal to ask about (check your state's laws) and the rest are not doesn't make it OK. Anyway, I think we at least see where our disagreement lies; I take your point, but I just don't see a credit score in the same light.

Google does not check credit score or history, at least not in the US and not for the role for which I was hired ~6 months ago. They did a criminal background check, but there was no credit inquiry. YMMV.