After months of trying to fill a high-level opening in your company, you’ve finally found the perfect person for the job. You’re thrilled. There’s just one problem, though.  The candidate resides in a foreign country and you’re not sure how to verify his background. Before everyone can sign on the dotted line and make it official, you’ll need a professional international background check by a reputable investigator.

Your new employee has worked and lived outside of the United States for his whole life.  Verifying this person won’t be easy.  After all, you and no one at your company even speaks the language.

You realize that whether your dream candidate hails from Bolivia, Norway, Japan or South Africa, you don’t know the first thing about privacy laws in his home country. And as you might suspect, the laws affecting background checks do vary from country to country; more international hiring means more rules and a dizzying array of local nuances in hiring norms around the world.  Not to mention language and cultural barriers, and access to information.  How will you verify this person?

According to the Federation of European Employers, not even the European Union has adopted a streamlined set of regulations; each member state has its own ideas of what employers can and cannot look into. And companies who fail to comply with local laws regulating background checks can find themselves facing financial penalties, or in legal hot water.  In most cases, companies rely on international investigation firms with investigators or offices in the country or countries where you need answers.

According to Security Magazine, globalization has created a plethora of complications for employers. The magazine explains that work shortages in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe mean that “as many as 30% of candidates” from these areas “embellish their resumes and over-inflate credentials.”

Terrible economic conditions in India, for example, have created the worst job market the country has seen in 10 years, leading to widespread resume fraud. The Economic Times of India reports that in the IT field, one in twenty resumes includes fabricated information. The Times of India painted the picture of fraud clearly when it described the fraud of some 30 job applicants vying for the same job whose resumes all listed the same company as a previous employer. A little digging revealed that the company was nothing more than a one man scam operation answering calls, “pretending to be an HR manager of a fake IT firm.”

Professional private investigators know all too well that scams are increasingly complex and hard to detect.  The worse that can happen is that  a company hires a complete fraud, especially for a high level position.  Some companies have learned the hard way.  Many are now enlisting the help of professionals. Employment screening is even more important when it happens across borders, because the risk is inherently higher.  Hiring someone from Ohio is much different from hiring from India, China or Malaysia.

International investigation companies have trained professionals on the ground where you need them.  We speak the language, we have access to local records, we know the culture, we speak the language.  We are your eyes and ears on the ground, on the other side of the world.  We know the scams and fraud, and we know how to properly verify companies and individuals.  Be safe and consider a proper background check as part of the hiring process.  Hiring a criminal or a fraud is very costly.  Checking criminal records alone is not an investigation, and is not an effective way to mitigate risk in international hiring.

Proper international verifications should include employment and education verification, document verification, ID or passport verification, criminal and court records, resume or CV verification, address and identity check, reputation check, reference checks, fraud screening, and more.

As a responsible employer, you need people on the ground ready to investigate on your behalf, armed with knowledge and experience, and professional investigation training who will obtain the evidence you need, so you can make an informed decision.  Always verify first, and then decide.

Hiring someone outside of the U.S. can be a great move, when done properly!

C. Wright
© 2014 Wymoo International

© Copyright 2014 Wymoo International.  All Rights Reserved.  This content is the property of Wymoo International, LLC and is protected by United States and international copyright laws.