Does John Deere hire people with felonies?

What John Deere has said

John Deere has not published a policy on hiring people with criminal records. The U.S. postings we read, including factory and skilled-trades postings, carry only a general equal opportunity line and do not mention arrest or conviction records, background checks or drug testing, but Deere's Production & Skilled Trades careers page says all applicants are given a pre-employment drug screen. Deere is not on the Second Chance Business Coalition member list, and we found no applicant privacy notice or hiring-process page that covers background checks.

We didn't find a public statement from John Deere 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 John Deere do background checks?

John Deere hasn't said publicly whether it runs background checks. None of the U.S. postings or careers pages we read describe a background check. Deere's enterprise privacy notice did not mention job applicants or background checks in the text we read. Two postings for A&I Products Canada, a Deere subsidiary, require a criminal background check, but those are Canadian jobs and do not tell us about U.S. practice.^1,2

• How long a background check takes

Does John Deere drug test?

John Deere drug tests for some roles. Deere's Production & Skilled Trades careers page, in its description of the application steps, says all applicants will be given a pre-employment drug screen. That page covers factory and skilled-trades hiring; we found no Deere statement on drug testing for salaried or office jobs, and the postings we read do not mention it.³

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.^8,9,10
• 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."^8,9
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^8,11
• 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.^12,13
• 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).^12,14

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.^8,11,15
• 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.¹⁶
• 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.^17,18

See whether you can clear your record in your state