Lowest credit rating.

[Grizzly]

All of the department's I have applied to say they do credit checks as part of the hiring application, providing you get an offer of course. My question is what is the lowest you can have? Is there a specific number they use, like the cutoff is below 600 or something to that effect? Any ideas?

[AtlCop]

I don't believe it is necessarily the score they are looking for.

They look for things such as:

1. Bankruptcies
2. Repossessions
3. Foreclosures
4. Collections
5. Defaulted Loans

People fall upon hard times and have late payments which affect your credit score. Its the major financial blips that they are looking for. Of course, a background investigator could probably better answer this question.

[Sleuth]

I am doing mortgage loans part time since I retired. The lowest I have heard of is a 420. Good credit starts at 620, very good over 700. Highest I've seen is 850.

Bad scores come from the problems listed, and could show a lack of attention to detail (lots of late payments) or someone who is in such financial trouble that they could be more open to bribes.

[PhilipCal]

Credit

The way you handle your bills, including credit is viewed as a measure of responsibility.(or the lack of it) by a lot of departments. If you have had any recent credit problems, the best advice I could give you is to be honest about them.

[MICHAELH663]

Most departments can't "score" your credit anyways. Like it has been posted here, background investigators look for things like bankruptcy, late payments, charge off's. (etc.)

They also like to see how much debt you have. Twofold:
1) Decent credit shows repsonsibility, vital to the job
2) poor credit or high debt shows the opposite, + it may make you susceptible to wrongdoing, such as taking money on the job.

[Praetorian]

Take note that just opening a credit card will lower your score. I had one of those credit score reports done by my CC company, and it showed my score dropped 100 points(740 to 640) in one year. Main reason, was that I opened 2 credit cards within this time frame.

Yeah, but closing them does to. My parents paid off a card and closed it and their score dropped 50 points.
It's stupid, really...