Does IKEA U.S. hire people with felonies?

What IKEA U.S. has said

We found no IKEA U.S. statement on hiring people with criminal records, and IKEA is not a Second Chance Business Coalition member. Its U.S. job postings are mixed: about half of the 143 postings we read say the successful candidate may or will be required to complete a background check as a condition of employment, and most of those add a drug test, while the rest say nothing about screening. IKEA's applicant privacy notice says criminal records checks may be part of conducting background checks, depending on the role.

We didn't find a public statement from IKEA U.S. about hiring people with records: not on its careers site, in its reports, or in its announcements. That doesn't mean it won't hire you. It means there's nothing on the record to point to.

Does IKEA U.S. do background checks?

IKEA U.S. runs background checks for some roles. IKEA's applicant privacy notice says it conducts reference and background checks, including criminal records checks, and collects background-check information 'to the extent relevant for a specific role.' Of the 143 U.S. postings we read, 71 say the successful candidate may or will be required to complete a background check as a condition of employment; the other 72, including some in the same cities as postings that do say it, don't mention one. The postings call it a condition of employment and don't say when in the process it happens, and the recruitment process page lists no background check step. We found no named screening company or lookback period.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}

• Criminal history

• How long a background check takes

Does IKEA U.S. drug test?

IKEA U.S. drug tests for some roles. 64 of the 143 U.S. postings we read say the successful candidate may or will be required to complete a drug test as a condition of employment, always alongside a background check; the rest don't mention one. Postings that say 'may' (for example a Gurnee, Illinois food associate job) and postings that say 'will' (for example a Minneapolis warehouse associate job) both appear. IKEA doesn't say what the test covers or which roles are tested.^2,3,4,8

Rules for specific jobs

• Roles posted as 'Sensitive Positions'

  25 of the 143 postings we read, including warehouse associate jobs in Minneapolis and Pennsylvania and a Hicksville, New York retail safety and loss prevention job, say 'Sensitive Position' and that the successful candidate will be required to complete a background check and a drug test as a condition of employment. IKEA doesn't define the term.⁴

• Store, food, customer service and warehouse jobs

  Screening wording isn't tied to a job family: background check language appears on food, sales, warehouse and customer relations postings, and each of those job types also has postings with none (for example a Minneapolis food service and dishwasher posting and an East Palo Alto, California sales specialist posting).⁹

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.^15,16,17
• 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."^15,16
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^15,18
• 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.^19,20
• 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).^19,21

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.^15,18,22
• 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.²³
• 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.^24,25

See whether you can clear your record in your state