In an effort to answer it, this chapter, in four parts, examines: (1) how a multinational can align pre-hire screening strategies, focusing on (2) the legal issues that arise abroad in background checking, as well as in (3) written applicant testing. And if our business case for screening is global, why not align our practices globally? That is an increasingly vital question.
Perhaps our business case for screening out these bad applicants is every bit as strong overseas, where terminations are so complex and expensive.
Outside background cracked#
(Only in the late 1990s did one US automaker publicly announce it would stop pregnancy-testing women who applied to its Matamoros, Mexico assembly plant, after NAFTA enforcers cracked down on the practice.11) Now, however, this fractured mode-lone company using different applicant screening tools depending on intake site-may no longer make business sense.Īmerican multinationals are now finding a business case for aligning their pre-hire screening tools, mostly by extending US-style methods internationally.12 They seem to be thinking: Our applicant screening methods in the US have proven helpful for keeping us from hiring a criminal, someone with a bad work or credit history, an uncredentialed resume liar or an applicant whose skills or aptitudes don’t meet our needs. Until recently it was not uncommon for a US multinational to drug-test its American applicants, while analyzing the handwriting of its French applicants, while pregnancy-testing its female Mexican applicants. This international divergence among hiring selection tools exists even within multinational employer companies.
Handwriting analysis, in France and Brazil10 (but potentially problematic under US discrimination laws).Pregnancy testing,9 in Latin America (but in many contexts, prohibited by US discrimination laws).Interviews with applicants’ past employers, in Continental Europe and Latin America (but less trustworthy in the US, due to in the threat of defamation and misrepresentation litigation).Family and clan networking, in the Mid-East and Africa (but discouraged by US discrimination regulations).Instead, employers overseas tend to use very different selection procedures, such as: Many American employers used pre-hire polygraph screening up to 1988, when much US employment-context lie detection testing became illegal.5 Some US employers then switched to pre-hire screening tools like written job aptitude tests, personality profile tests6 and even veracity tests,7 as well as credit checks.8 But these American-style pre-hire screening tools are rare to non-existent abroad. Outside the US, laws and cultural norms amount to almost insurmountable barriers keeping employers from demanding urine samples and from rejecting applicants merely because they may have taken drugs in the past few weeks.4 And drug tests are just one example. But overseas, employment-context drug tests are all but nonexistent. Pre-hire drug tests are so widespread in the US that, in some sectors, they are almost routine. Cultural norms outside the US also hamper American-style pre-hire screening done abroad. However, laws overseas regulate not only firings, but also pre-employment screening in ways unknown in the US. Outside employment-at-will, applicant screening may be even more vital than it is in the US, because restrictions on firings make hiring mistakes harder to correct.3 In an effort to bolster Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, and as a reaction to the heightened-security environment after September 11, American employers seem more proactive in applicant screening and background checking than ever before.1 But job applicant screening procedures common in the US-such as background checks, credit screens and written tests- have flourished in the isolated petri dish of employment-at-will.2 Other countries, including even those with common-law legal systems like the UK, Canada and Australia, reject employment-at-will and extensively regulate their workplaces.
US employers have gotten especially vigilant in how they screen job applicants. This article was published in slightly different format in the 2008 Employment Law Update, edited by Henry H.
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