The local economy in Oklahoma seems to be bouncing back after the slow down caused by the various economic and government reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many cities, including Oklahoma City, have lifted their mask mandates and other restrictions, and many businesses are rushing to get back to pre-pandemic activity levels. Some are moving quicker than others.
Effects of the Pandemic on the Job Market in Oklahoma
Some industries, like the medical profession, never slowed down, causing a huge demand for nurses and other medical professions.
Then there are other sectors, like restaurants and hospitality, that were hit extremely hard, with some of those businesses never recovery and others limping along.
Overall, the pandemic caused many lay offs. Some of those companies are now back to hiring.
In other sectors, like the medical profession, the hiring never slowed down, it only accelerated.
The difference now is that there are more job applicants than before. And businesses still recovering are much tighter with how they spend their money. All of this means that businesses will be stricter in their hiring criteria and job applicants must have a squeaky clean record.
Why Okahoma Businesses will have stricter hiring criteria in the Post-COVID Job Market
Many companies were forced to lay off employees during COVID due to a shortage of revenue. Businesses were making a lot less money, in part because of restrictions on their operations. So as business starts to pick back up, companies will slowly start hiring, but they are not as loose with their payroll and will be much tighter. They will expect better applicants, and will not want to give out the better paying opportunities to anyone that has a criminal record, or otherwise, any type of thing holding them back from being a perfect candidate.
Why?
Because with so many job seekers, the businesses can be more selective on who they hire, and they can demand more from their applicants, such as a perfect record with no criminal history.Your misdemeanor marijuana conviction may not have been a big deal in a healthy economy. But when you are competing against many other people for the same job, it will impact your chances of getting the job.
Look at it from the employer’s perspective. You post a job. You get a hundred resumes. You start going through them. No way are you going to interview 100 people. So you look for reasons to start throwing them away. You throw away all the resumes of people completely unqualified. Then you look at things like misspelled words or they didn’t follow the instructions for the application process.
The employer starts narrowing it down. Then the employer takes the list, maybe less than half of the resume applications, that actually qualify. Then starts doing criminal background checks.
It is during this next round of cuts where you don’t want to be on the chopping block.
The biggest job opportunities in Oklahoma are in the medical sector, which has the strictest standards for criminal background checks.
One sector of the economy that never slowed down was the medical profession. The demand for all medical professions, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, has remained high. This is a good source of employment for those looking for a job or new career.
But the medical sector is among the strictest when it comes to hiring criteria. Because the work involves care of vulnerable persons, hospitals and even training facilities for internships, are very strict when it comes to hiring. These institutions do not want to hire individuals that have arrests and criminal charges on their record.
Therefore, if you finding yourself in need of a job or new career, the medical sector could be the answer to your problems. But in order to succeed in this industry, you will need to have a clean record, free of any criminal charges.
How an expungement will improve your employment opportunities in Oklahoma
An expungement is a court order that seals your record shut from public access. It effectively erases it from public view. The expungement process also gives you the right to legally deny that you were ever arrested or charged with a crime.
When you are applying for a job, or interviewing with a potential employer, you will be able to state that you have never been arrested or charged. And the employer will not see those charges with they conduct a background check.
How to get your record expunged in Oklahoma.
In order to expunge your record, you simply need to hire a lawyer to seek a court order expunging your record. If you hire the right law office, it will not take long and should not inconvenience you.
If you contact our office we will arrange for your intake consultation to take place a time convenient for you, and in a manner most convenient for you, whether that be over the phone, video conference, strictly through text or email, or in person at our office. You choose how you want to communicate with us.
Here is how it works. We need some personal information from you, we will then review your criminal history, confirm your eligibility (or explain when or if you will later become eligible), quote you a price, and accept your down payment. Once we have your down payment and your information, your work is done and you just need to sit back and relax. We take it from there.
We will file a Petition for Expungement on your behalf in the proper district court and we will ask the judge to set it for a hearing. Once we have a hearing date, we will relay the same to the District Attorney, OSBI, and any other police agency that was involved.
We then work behind the scenes with the attorneys for these government agencies to get their agreement and approval, and eventually their signature on the court order granting your expungement. Once we have worked with these agencies, we will present the order to the judge, usually before the hearing date, and get final approval from the court.
Once the Court has ordered your records to be expunged, we will send the order back to each law enforcement agency to ensure that your arrest records, jail records, court records, and OSBI record is officially sealed and expunged.
You do not have to do anything at all during this process. We will take care of everything. You will not have to come to court, you will not have to appear in front a judge. We do that part. You sit back and relax. You can call us at any time just to ask questions or get an update, but you likely won’t even need to because you will receive email updates from us.
Once the process is complete, we will send you a certified copy of your Order of Expungement. Your record will be completely erased from all agencies (police department, jail, Department of Corrections, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation) within 30 days.
To get started, send us an email or text 405-701-6016. You can also call my direct line at 405-724-8112.