The job market is as competitive as it’s ever been.
One of the most important things you can do when you’re applying for a job or when you’re applying for advancement in your own company is to make sure that you don’t have anything from your past showing up on your background check or records.
The next few articles in this series will discuss expunction and the expungement and non-disclosures process.
This process ensures that your past doesn’t come back to haunt you.
In other words, if there’s anything in your past that you thought you had taken care of, that it’s still not showing up on your record.
A Quick Expunction Story
I had a client who was in the financial sector industry and was up for a huge promotion. Part of the promotion required this person to apply for some additional certification in the financial sector industry, which is highly competitive in and of itself.
Unfortunately, this person had forgotten that 15 or 16 years ago when he was in college, he had foolishly stepped out into an alleyway and decided to urinate in public. Obviously, this was a terrible idea.
It was only exacerbated by the fact that he was arrested and charged with public lewdness, a crime analogous to a sex act. That’s a class A misdemeanor.
When it was all said and done, this individual had taken care of a class C ticket for, for minor in consumption of alcohol and disorderly conduct for urinating in public.
He thought his bad judgment and the paper trail that followed were all taken care of some 16 years ago. However, this was unfortunately not the case.
Unfortunately, the classification or the coding of that original charge still showed up on his record as public lewdness – a sex crime.
This obviously looked terrible on his record. Our firm went back and fixed these charges through an expungement process and were able to help this person fix his record.
However, the cat was already out of the bag.
This poor individual experienced collateral damage to his reputation in the company, which our firm had to fix for him as well.
This story just highlights the importance of reviewing your record and ensuring there’s nothing on your record that could come back and haunt you.
Up Next: The Expungement & Non-Disclosure Process
Over the next couple of blog posts, we’ll talk about the eligibility and the process for expungements and for non-disclosures in Texas.
As always, if you have any questions about this process or any skeletons in your closet you need to make sure are wiped away, be sure to reach out to our firm. We help clients clean up their past records in preparation for job interviews, background checks, and other important life events.