Must I report my “no contest” plea to an employer? Does a “dead docket” qualify as judicially sealed, expunged, eradicated, impounded or dismissed?

No contest is for civil suits.  You must still report it on your employer job applications. However, if it is a dead docket, I believe it may have been part of a plea agreement or alternative conviction -- charges dropped or conviction dropped/erased.

§ 15-6-61.  Duties of clerks generally; use of computerized record-keeping system; printed copies of the grantor and grantee indices


   (a) It is the duty of a clerk of superior court:

   (1) To keep the clerk's office and all things belonging thereto at the county site and at the courthouse or at such other place or places as authorized by law;

   (2) To attend to the needs of the court in the performance of the duties of the clerk;

   (3) To issue and sign every summons, writ, execution, process, order, or other paper under authority of the court and attach seals thereto when necessary. The clerk shall be authorized to issue and sign under authority of the court any order to show cause in any pending litigation and any other order in the nature of a rule nisi, where no injunctive or extraordinary relief is granted;

   (4) To keep in the clerk's office the following dockets or books:

      (A) An automated civil case management system which shall contain separate case number entries for all civil actions filed in the office of the clerk, including complaints, proceedings, Uniform Interstate Family Support Act actions, domestic relations, contempt actions, motions and modifications on closed civil actions, and all other actions civil in nature except adoptions;

      (B) An automated criminal case management system which shall contain a summary record of all criminal indictments in which true bills are rendered and all criminal accusations filed in the office of the clerk of superior court. The criminal case management system shall contain entries of other matters of a criminal nature filed with the clerk, including quasi-civil proceedings and entries of cases which are ordered dead docketed at the discretion of the presiding judge and which shall be called only at the judge's pleasure. When a case is thus dead docketed, all witnesses who may have been subpoenaed therein shall be released from further attendance until resubpoenaed;

Usually dead docketed items must pass a certain amount of years and then they are gone.