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Understanding Bondability in Employment
If you’ve ever applied for a job, chances are you’ve come across the question ‘Are you bondable?’ on your job application. What this question confirms, is whether you are able to be insured by the company if they hire you. If you have a criminal record, insurance providers will not insure the hiring company against any potential losses incurred. Therefore, you are not bondable.
The list of careers affected by the issue of bondability is large and covers a wide range of professions:
For example, if you would like to be involved with a company specializing in secure transportation of valuables and cash, you would need to be bondable. Armoured trucks often carry cargo with a high monetary value, and the company needs to be able to recoup their losses if anything goes wrong. They are not able to do this if they have someone on staff who is not able to be bonded.
If you were applying to work at a bank, you would be asked this same question. The reasoning behind it would be the fact that you would be handling and have access to cash. Also, banks rely heavily on their reputation as a trustworthy institution. Potential clients would probably stay away if they found out that a bank was hiring non-bondable employees.
What does it mean to be not bondable?
As you can probably tell from these examples, there is a pattern emerging with regards to what jobs would need you to be insured. If you are handling sensitive information, data, valuables, money, you would probably need to be bondable before the prospective employer will hire you. Then the question emerges: what happens if you have a criminal record and are not bondable, but you really want this job?
In order to answer ‘Yes’ to ‘Are you bondable’, while having a criminal record, you will first need to seal your criminal record. To do so, you will need to obtain a Canadian record suspension, which does exactly what its name implies. Once you have a record suspension, you will be able to truthfully respond that you can be insured. This is because when the insurance company performs a background check, it will come up empty, due to your criminal record having been sealed.
