When I was in consulting, it was part of our regular contact language that we had verified backgrounds and that we wouldn't place a felon on site with a client. A surprising number of clients even outside banking, finance, government, etc made a point of enforcing this language, even conducting their own background checks.
Freelancing was the approach I saw some people do successfully, but there were lots of projects we couldn't put them on.
We even saw clients that refused anyone who had even a misdemeanor, at which point I discovered how many of our consultants had misdemeanor DUIs or arrests for various non-violent reasons.
This is just puritanical, judgemental idiocy at its most pointlessly discriminatory. Even for felony offenses it often veers into the same territory but flatly refusing to hire people for fucking misdemeanors with absolutely no relevance to most of the work involved? What a closed, almost hatefully punitive mentality some employers have. I can't put myself into another's shoes or context of needs, but if I ran a firm that subcontracted employees to other companies, who then refused to accept them for some half-assed DUI from years back, I hope I'd have the decency to fire that client instead.
That's a loaded and extremely variable question. Furthermore, it has little relevance to the main thing I criticized above: that misdemeanors are usually irrelevant to most work and rejecting people because of them is grossly, punitively biased. I say irrelevant because in the context of your question, the value of some random public disorderliness citation or DUI is next to useless for judging how inherently or professionally honest a person is, and even more absurd for measuring how likely they are to commit outright criminal offenses against an employer.
It's very easy to get slapped with a misdemeanor in the U.S and even many other countries, often for absurd, bullshit reasons that had more to do with the mood of the authorities in a given context than a person being at all an abnormal danger to society.
Anyone doing work that could be state, federal, finance, healthcare, related to children, etc. Will always have background checks, with many industries requiring them. That said, there aren't rules that say you can't hire someone with a felony, it's more up to the company, the crime, the disposition of the case, and what they'll be doing.
There are always waivers so to speak. I've hired people that have had bad pasts, as long as they've shown they're on the right path. If we're not going to give people opportunities after they've completed what we as a society have deemed as recourse for their actions, what's the point in it all.
You may not be able to get a clearance or work in some finance positions, but there are ways.
Honestly they should not be allowed to; you got convicted, you did the time. In the US's stupid penal system, you have paid your debt to society; in others, you (should) have rehabilitated. That's it, you do the time, clean slate, move on.
The stigma with former felons is why there's a lot of repeat offense, why people stay stuck on the social ladder, and of course why the US' attempt at democracy is laughable.
Background check process will uncover it. If you're not upfront with it early in the process it will come up in background check and usually disqualify you.
Edit: background checks are standard practice for employees and contractors usually.
Why would contractors care, unless it's a high profile customer-facing thing like Uber?
I've done a lot of consulting and small contracts on the side and have never been aware of any background checking. I don't even think most have my SSN, just the info for my bank account. And I have a pretty common name. There's convicts even in my state with the same name I can find on search. Often there's not even a formal contract, just a handshake.
Also you can make money this way all over the world.
Have you ever filled out an actual job application in the US? I'm pretty sure every job application I've filled out until San Francisco passed the Fair Chance Ordinance has asked if I have any convictions, and some have asked about arrests (which is crazy). And every job I can remember has done a background check.
Every single job, since my first dish-washing, has asked this question. The forms HR gives me now when I need to hire ask it too even if I disagree with asking it.
I've never seen a basic job application without it. Fast food asked. Half the places do a drug test as well, some of them (call centers and commericial foodservice) did drug tests, including random hair follicle tests.
You either haven't worked bottom-of-the-barrel jobs or lived in areas where this sort of thing wasn't allowed.
Have you thought about changing your legal name? It's a bit of a chore, but it might allow to permanently shed a lot of baggage if you change to a common name.
You still have to list your previous names in many cases and pretty much every background check form asks: Married women who have changed their name must do this all the time.
If you sell to larger customers, soc2 or other type audits require background checks.
For our business, larger customer MSAs often have requirements about criminal convictions.
We additionally require -- per soc2 as well as MSAs -- to background check our contractors.
As the twitter author said, it's a thing that I could potentially work around, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I would probably have to be able to permanently guarantee that eg an employee with a felony conviction never had access to certain data.
Freelancing was the approach I saw some people do successfully, but there were lots of projects we couldn't put them on.
We even saw clients that refused anyone who had even a misdemeanor, at which point I discovered how many of our consultants had misdemeanor DUIs or arrests for various non-violent reasons.