## Job-seeking when you have a criminal background

Your [data reputation](people-image-modern.md) will often follow you into the job market.

- Typically, the cost of a background check means you'll get *all the way* to a job offer before getting rejected.

For a long while, the job market has skewed unfavorably toward anyone with [a criminal record](legal-crimes.md), regardless of context, due to [insurance](money-insurance.md) reasons.

- Essentially, any criminal event can actuarially be calculated against a candidate as a small monthly increase in insurance rates.

All conventional job advice will *not* apply to you.

- You represent a minority, so you're going to have to work harder and more [creatively](mind-creativity-how.md) to push against your [image](people-image.md).

When hunting, you can often narrow your results by focusing on keywords that reflect openness to your circumstance:

- "fair chance"
- "second chance" or "2nd chance"
- "background friendly" or "background check friendly"
- "ban the box" or "justice involved"
- "no background check" or "felony friendly" (though this may also mean borderline illegal activity)

There are only three ways to sidestep this issue:

1. Connect *much* more with networking than any [formal job hunting](jobs-4_hunt.md) with strangers.
2. Become *very* good at a [profession](professionals.md) to where an additional fee per month doesn't matter.
3. Focus more on [entrepreneurship](entrepreneur-1_what.md) than being an employee.

Your best defense will be by increasing the time since your last conviction.

- People will overlook something that happened a decade ago if there's evidence of [a change](people-changes.md), but not a few months ago.