Seguin has been pretty excited for the past several months, watching the construction of the new Caterpillar plant, and waiting for the jobs that it promises for an ailing local economy. But before you get too excited about, and start looking forward to, that good-paying Caterpillar position, you might want to look back a few years at that criminal record that you forgot about, the one you thought no longer existed.
Earlier today, I ran into someone who works for Caterpillar, and who is well-acquainted with their hiring practices (for obvious reasons, I will not divulge a name or where we met). According to this person, there are a lot of things that can keep you from getting a job at Caterpillar, but here is one thing that will pretty much guarantee being turned down: an arrest for a drug charge, including misdemeanor Possession of Marijuana.
Even if the case is old, even if you completed deferred adjudication, even if the State dismissed the case and apologized to you in open court, that arrest for that joint in your car console so very long ago may be the final thing that stands between you and a job at Cat. Caterpillar runs complete background checks on its applicants (including for misdemeanors), and a drug arrest is a giant black mark. As I have said several times before on this blog, your misdemeanor drug case really isn't over until you have gone back and had the record of your arrest expunged, or the record of any deferred adjudication sealed from private parties. And your search for a good job, like the ones being offered at Caterpillar, hasn't really begun until you get your arrest record in order. If you work as hard at getting your criminal history cleaned up as you did getting your case dismissed in the first place, maybe you can start working hard at a place like Caterpillar.