When a bad choice leaves a lasting legacy when trying to find a job

I was touched by a post on the HRThoughts blog by someone who had been caught shoplifting and was now living with the consequences.

Take a look at the post of the details. Living as I do in the UK some of the language is not clear to me in terms of the legal ramifications but the rest is perfectly clear. The writer is living in dread of this incident wrecking future plans to get a decent job.

Now I want to be clear here. I think stealing someone else’s property – and that is what shoplifting is whether it is from a corner shop or a department store – is wrong wrong wrong!  But what I read in this case is that the shoplifter understands that and is now trying to learn from that mistake.

What touched me so much was that they said

 ”I am riddled with guilt and scared beyond belief. I would appreciate any advice, I have not slept for days … this is going to haunt me forever.”

So what can you do when there is something lurking in the background that you fear might derail you in future? On the face of it the 2 choices seem to be tell all up front or wait to be found out.  But I feel that there might be a strong message about learning from mistakes here which could be very useful in the future.

A while back I  got chatting about a guy who served me regularly in a cafe . I asked how he came to be working there. He mentioned , quite openly, that he got the job after he came out of jail having served a sentence for a serious assault. He told me what had happened and how stupid he had been. He said he made a very bad choice and he now had to live with that. In justice terms he had served his time and he was now making the most of his life. I have to admit I was shocked but when I had time to think about it he had bucked the trend of reoffending after release and was now living a meaningful life because his employer had given him a chance.

In another situation I was  coach on a programme to get people into work. A couple of the participants in the programme came from substance abuse programme and they were now well enough to be able to look for work. Part of the programme included support in writing CVs and of course  it is always tricky to explain long periods out of work in a way that will encourage recruiters to want to find out more and not assign the CV to the bin. It was decided to  mark that as a period of long term sickness – which was strictly speaking true. Both said that they would explain further and be really open with any potential employer if they got to interview. They were sure that if they didn’t someone would be sure to “shop” them so this allowed them to take control of the situation and deal with any consequence. I thought this was a very brave approach.

For each of the cases mentioned above they are/were faced with not being able to find work because of something they did in the past. I am wondering how HR  professionals generally and those tasked with recruitment specifically have dealt with situations like this.