[lovich]

In all honesty, I don't know of a single employer who cares if you were rehabilitated or not. They see a checkbox and filter it out.

Your best bet is to move to a state with "ban the box" type legislation that prevents them from asking about criminal history until they've sent an offer. Those laws usually set up a regime around criminal history checks as well, that require companies to spend a decent chunk of change on compliance if they request criminal history. As most of these companies we're just being lazy and didn't actually care about criminal history they all tend to use cheap background check companies which give them the legal protection of having done a "check", but which usually find nothing that doesn't come up in 30 seconds of googling. The only companies that tend to do official background checks anymore are healthcare, banks, and government contractors.

I have one friend who had a checkered past and hasn't had anything come up in their background check in the past 5 background checks he's done, so there is a way forward.

[DrHuman]

Thank you for the advice. This is exactly one of the reasons I just moved to Washington to look for work. The state supposedly just implemented strong ban the box laws in June.