Does Google hire people with felonies?

What Google has said

Google was named as a signer of the White House Fair Chance Business Pledge in April 2016, but we found no newer Google page restating that or describing a second-chance hiring program, and Google is not on the Second Chance Business Coalition member list. The equal opportunity paragraph on every Google posting we read lists criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements, among the things it says it will not discriminate on. Google's applicant privacy policy says it may run background checks, including criminal and financial checks where applicable, if you are offered a job. We found no published drug-test policy.

• Signed the 2016 Fair Chance Business Pledge

  The White House fact sheet of April 11, 2016 lists Google among the 19 founding companies signing the Fair Chance Business Pledge that day. The pledge asked signers to reduce hiring barriers for people with criminal records. The same fact sheet said Google had banned the box (removed the criminal-history question) in its hiring process since 2011; that is the White House's 2016 description, and we found no later Google page restating the pledge or that practice.¹

• Statement in a job posting

  All 9 Google postings we read carried an equal opportunity paragraph saying Google provides equal employment opportunity regardless of, among other things, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements. The postings were for data center and business roles whose first-listed locations were in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas, plus one posting that also listed San Francisco.²

• Local fair-chance notice

  One posting we read (Data Center Site Negotiator, listed for Sunnyvale and San Francisco, California, Austin, Texas and Thornton, Colorado) adds a notice for applicants in San Francisco that qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered under the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act. It is written for those laws and appears with a San Francisco listing, not as a company-wide statement.³

Does Google do background checks?

Google runs background checks after a job offer. Google's Applicant and Candidate Privacy Policy (a global policy with a U.S. state-law section, last updated Feb. 28, 2025) says Google may conduct background checks, where applicable, if you are offered a job, and that it may collect information from criminal and financial background checks and use service providers to help. It does not say which roles are checked, what the look-back is, or name a screening company.⁴

• Criminal history

• How long a background check takes

Does Google drug test?

Google hasn't published a drug testing policy. Some job postings say whether a test is required, so check the listing for the role you want.

Your rights, and how far back a check can go

• Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), an employer must get your written permission before it gets a background report about you from a background screening company.^7,8,9
• Before an employer decides not to hire, keep, or promote you because of something in a background report, it must give you a copy of the report and a document called "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."^7,8
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^7,10
• The FCRA's seven-year limit does not apply to criminal convictions, so under federal law a conviction can show up on a background report no matter how old it is.^11,12
• Under the FCRA, background and credit reports generally cannot include arrest records, civil lawsuits, or civil judgments that are more than seven years old (or older than the statute of limitations, if that is longer).^11,13

Your full background check rights

Before you apply

• You can ask a background screening company for the information it has on you, and the CFPB keeps a list of consumer reporting companies, including employment screening companies, with their contact details.^7,10,14
• According to the Clean Slate Initiative, 14 states and Washington, D.C. have passed Clean Slate laws that meet its criteria for automatically clearing eligible records: Pennsylvania, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Missouri, plus D.C.¹⁵
• The Federal Bonding Program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, lets states give employers free fidelity bonds that protect them against losses from a newly hired worker's dishonest acts, for job seekers with past justice involvement or in recovery from substance use.^16,17

See whether you can clear your record in your state