Foreign assignments: candidates' claims of overseas degrees or work experience must be checked thoroughly

HR Magazine, Oct, 2005 by Pamela Babcock

An applicant was in the running for a major job--head of auditing for a large financial company in the United States. The candidate said he had graduated from an Australian university and had worked for nine years in the Australian office of a Japanese bank.

But a firm that does international background checking discovered his degree was bogus and he had never worked for the Japanese bank. It turned out that he had hired a telephone service to answer calls with the bank's name and transfer the callers to a fake voice mail message. The applicant would later return the calls and provide excellent references for himself.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Although that applicant's methods of inflating his foreign credentials were extreme, job candidates overstating or lying about their overseas experience is becoming a problem for employers, according to some experts.

"Many applicants believe that employers are less likely to perform a verification of their employment, academic or professional credentials if they report that they have spent time overseas," says Terrance Corley, president of Global Screening Solutions. "As a result, the chances of exaggeration or flat-out fabrication increase significantly." His firm, based in Kennesaw, Ga., does international background reporting--and unmasked the applicant with phony Australian accomplishments.

At the same time, employers are likely to see more candidate resumes with overseas education and work experience, as foreign-born workers increasingly seek jobs in the United States and as more and more U.S. citizens spend periods working or studying in other countries, Corley says. So it is becoming more important, he maintains, for U.S. companies to know how to have those types of backgrounds screened accurately and legally.

Although checking overseas backgrounds can be more expensive and time-consuming than verifying the same types of information from sources within the United States, experts say, it's part of the due diligence that employers must exercise in the hiring process.

Employers simply cannot afford to be casual about checking the overseas segments of an applicant's resume, says attorney Lester S. Rosen, president and CEO of Employment Screening Resources in Novato, Calif. "If you ... just take your chances, you're a sitting duck for hiring mistakes and litigation. There's really little defense if you go to a jury. And you're playing Russian roulette with your firm's future." (For more information, see "The High Cost of Careless Hiring," a sidebar to the article "Spotting Lies" in the October 2003 issue of HR Magazine.)

Built-In Hurdles

International background screenings pose a number of challenges for HR, ranging from logistical to cultural to legal, notes Rosen, author of The Safe Hiring Manual: The Complete Guide to Keeping Criminals, Imposters and Terrorists out of the Workplace (Facts on Demand Press, 2004; available at www.shrm.org/shrmstore).

Time differences between the United States and other countries, for example, can increase turnaround time when communicating with information researchers, employers or schools overseas. Expect five to 10 days to verify employment and education information and 10 days or more for international criminal checks, Rosen says.

Language barriers often become an issue when communicating with schools and employers in other countries and when reviewing court documents during criminal record searches.

Countries' cultures play a large role in whether information is or is not easily available and also in the quality of what's obtained.

Each country has its own laws, customs and procedures for background screenings. In many countries, it's extremely hard to get criminal records.

The United Kingdom doesn't allow third parties such as background checking firms to have direct access to criminal records held by local police. Instead, the job applicant and the recruiting organization must sign and submit a formal request to a specific agency responsible for handling criminal records. After the request is received by the agency in original form, it can take up to 40 business days to get information back, Corley says. Many other countries have similar practices in releasing criminal record information.

And in some parts of the world, criminal records are not available without hiring a local private investigator.

Differences in courts and criminal systems can also present difficulties. Doing a criminal check in a particular country requires an understanding of the country's legal codes, crime definitions and court system. It's important to know how records are created and maintained in the country, where searches should be done, and the types of records available and what they mean.

In checking an applicant's overseas background, it's important to understand "the local context," says Traci Canning, director of international operations for HireRight, a pre-employment screening company in Irvine, Calif. "In general, that means understanding how HR operations, law enforcement agencies, schools/universities and businesses operate outside the United States." (See "Overseas Fact-Finding," left.)