I am in Virginia. About two years ago, I was convicted of possession of drug paraphernalia. A friend of mine got the same charge in 2002 and recently applied for a job with Pepsi (and got it) by not mentioning or listing his paraphernalia conviction. They either never found out about it or found out and never mentioned it. When he got the job, it had been about 3 years and a couple months since the conviction. Now I'm looking for a job, specifically with Comcast, and didn't mention my conviction on my application. My questions are: does a background check usually go back three years, or is it completely random from company-to-company? How severe is this change regarding employment? Obviously a company would prefer someone with NO criminal record but, is this a common enough charge to keep me in the running although it's fairly recent? In your experience, would it benefit me to call the company back and admit the arrest or would that be more likely to foul my chances up? Is this a charge I'm going to have to disclose in interviews for the rest of my life?