Screening Increases Globally

As India and the Far East economically expand so, too, does the demand for background screening.
But it ain't easy, say experts in the field. Consider: There are 27 different ways to spell the name Muhammad.

Each person born in India has two dates of birth—one biological and one when the birth is officially recorded.

In China, the history of government monitoring of personal lives makes residents wary of company background checks.

"There are just a variety of difficulties that you don't face in the United States," says Bart K. Valdez, president of employment-screening services division for First Advantage in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Nevertheless, demand is high, says Traci Canning, director of international operations for HireRight, a screening company based in Irvine, Calif. Many American companies adopt global policies that call for pre-employment screening, she says, and as multinationals set up offshoring companies—or contract with native companies—around the world, those policies are enforced.

The scale of growth in India and Asia offers special challenges. In China, for example, the country is projected to grow about 20 million new jobs this year. In India, it's about 12 million jobs, says Valez. Contrast that growth with the 1.5 million U.S. jobs projected this year, he says.

Background screening is notably easier in some countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, Valdez says, but doing a criminal background check in India and much of Asia almost always requires visits to individual police stations, he says.

For that reason, many companies prefer to concentrate more on vetting educational rather than employment backgrounds, says Valdez.

There again, India offers "unique challenges," he says. A single university in Mumbai, for instance, graduates about 100,000 students each year.

At the same time, increasingly sophisticated diploma mills sell all varieties of educational credentials—credentials that include copies of transcripts and telephone numbers for reference-checking purposes, Valdez says.
Forget credit checking as well, Canning says. The expanding, increasingly affluent middle class is a relatively new phenomenon in India, as is issuing credit.

Things may get easier in India as it is considering adopting a national identification system. Another trend that may help is the requirement in some countries to link background screening into the process for work visas, Valdez says.

Source: http://www.lrp.com./

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