I recently had an old misdemeanor conviction vacated, and my attorney also tried to get the court file sealed but the judge denied that request. I intend to try again, but in the meantime I am left feeling very uncertain about how well "hidden" my vacated conviction (Washington state) is from potential employers. If you apply for a job and you never hear from them, obviously they weren't interested but you are left wondering why. And if you have a criminal record and you never hear from them, you can speculate that they found your record in a background search and rejected you for that reason, but again you have no way of knowing for sure. And, if your record has been "expunged" to at least some degree and you never hear back, you also wonder if they found the record and turned you down, even if it was expunged. My questions are these: Are there some comanies whose policy it is to formally inform an applicant that they found a criminal record and have rejected them on that basis, and others that have no such policy? Is it merely up to the discretion of the individual company to do so? Would they do so as a "courtesy" to an applicant? Are some companies required by law to inform an applicant that they were rejected for a criminal record and if so, which companies or types of companies might these be? Government jobs, such as the postal service? Boeing? National retail chains like Walmart? Some large corporations put on their job application forms the statement that if your conviction is more than, say, seven or ten years old, or that if your convicton has been expunged, you do not have to disclose it. Does that mean that they won't do a background search which may in fact uncover it no matter how old it is, expunged or not, and still reject you for that reason? I read stories all the time about people who claim they were rejected for their criminal record, but if a company is not required by law to tell you that, why would they?

