"With the pre-Google system, at least Mark gets his foot in the door and has a chance to impress the prospective employer during the interview process. While his conviction may still impact his employment prospects, at least he has a fighting chance." While this sounds like intuitive it is, AFAIK, wrong.

I'm pretty sure there are ssrn papers/etc on this, where they found that 99% of employers (or something ridiculous) had non-overridable policies, so in practice, no, there was no fighting chance.

I'd personally prefer a system where neither could be used after a cooling off period depending on crime.