Ever wonder why an employer would want to pull your credit report before hiring you? What are they looking for? Which kinds of items might appear as negative and which as positive? If you have ever asked yourself these questions while sweating-out whether or not to sign that employment credit report permission form, you are not alone. Although your credit report may not seem like a relevant tool in determining your employability, there are definite reasons that a future employer might want to run a credit check on a prospective employee.

Employment Reports Contain Limited Data

An employment report is a modified credit report that helps potential and current employers make hiring and promoting decisions. The employment report contains much of the same information about your loans and credit cards that your credit report has listed. However, your marital status, year of birth, and account numbers are omitted from the employment report.

Employers Look for Responsibility

Many employers believe running an employment credit check is an absolute must if the applicant under consideration will be handling money, be disbursing money or equipment, or be placed in a position of financial trust, sighting a possible correlation between high debt and, for instance, the possibility of embezzlement.

Credit history may reveal several qualities of an applicant's financial status, such as debt load and potential debt load. The employment credit report can identify the possibility of financial problems that may adversely affect an applicant's performance on the job.

An employment credit report provides an easy-to-read insight into an applicant's financial responsibility as well as listing any aliases, bankruptcies, liens, judgments, credit cards, loans, mortgages, collections and summaries of the individual's payment patterns. Reports may also contain previous employers and addresses.

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