I have a job pending a successful credit check and background check. I'm not at all concerned about the background check but for the credit check I did a short sale of a home around 2 1/2 years ago that is on my credit report, aside from that my credit report is clean and my fico scores are still good. When potential employers pull a credit history are they looking for things like the short sale or something more nefarious than that? The job is for a credit union in their IT shop.

They are looking to make sure that you are not in some sort of financial situation that may make you more likely to steal...so basically, unless your credit is bottom of the barrel, you will probably be fine. A short sale shouldn't have any effect on you.

Really, that is what you guys do down there: a credit check on a job app to make sure you won't steal. That is bloody incredible.

Not all jobs but in a case like this, he is going to be working with computers in a credit union...wouldn't be too good to stick someone that is up to their ears in debt in a position like that.

In most jobs that require handling money or access to high dollar inventory a credit check is done by most companies now a days,

Its very common these days to run credit checks on prospective employees even if money isn't handled. Because a persons character and reliability CAN be judged by how seriously he takes his or her obligations seriously and attends to them in a timely manner. Which IS a key part of your credit score and report.

I will talk bad about credit scores.

I own my house, no loan at all. In fact I own two houses in US and one in China now.
I own them free and clear.

I do not currently own a car, but do own my motorcycle and scooter , no loans.

I do not have a credit card, no personal loans,

Guess what, I have a bad, very bad credit score, because I do not owe money,

True Fr_Chuck... not a flawless means at all. But I also can assume you have no long list of collections or negative reports on your credit history either... which is part of what they look for and not exclusively the credit score that most people with bad credit will have.

A less than stellar credit check won't prohibit you from a lot of jobs. In the past mine was not very good but I still got the jobs. I however didn't have any judgments against me and I really have no idea what my credit score was back in those days.