Overview
International screening obtains records held outside the United States. It covers the same categories as a domestic background check, and almost nothing about how those records are reached carries over.
Every assumption behind a U.S. search breaks at the border. There is no equivalent of the county courthouse system. Records are frequently held centrally by a national police authority. Access often requires the individual to apply personally. Privacy law in much of the world is stricter than in the United States, and in some places an employer cannot obtain a criminal record at all.
The practical consequence is that international screening is a set of country specific processes sharing a name.
When It Is Needed
A background check reaches outside the United States when a person’s history does. The usual triggers:
- An address history showing time spent abroad
- Education completed at a foreign institution
- Employment with a company outside the United States
- A credential issued by a foreign authority
- A person who recently moved to the United States, whose domestic record covers only their time here
A short domestic record for someone who arrived recently is not a gap in their history. It reflects how long they have been in the country.
How Access Works
Countries fall into broad patterns.
| Applicant obtained | The most common. Only the individual can request their own record, usually from a national police authority, and they supply the certificate to the employer. The screening company confirms the document is genuine. |
| Consent based third party access | An authorized party can obtain records with the individual’s signed consent, sometimes on a prescribed form and sometimes requiring notarization or an apostille. |
| Court or local record searches | Some countries hold records at court or regional level, closer to the U.S. pattern. |
| Restricted or unavailable | Some countries do not release criminal records for employment purposes at all, or release them only for specified occupations. |
Because the applicant is often the only person who can request the record, international screening usually requires their active participation. A domestic check runs without the candidate doing anything after signing the authorization.
International Criminal Records
What a foreign criminal record contains varies as much as how it is obtained.
Many countries issue a police certificate confirming whether the person has convictions, sometimes with no detail beyond that. Some report only convictions above a threshold, some exclude older convictions automatically, and some report nothing at all where a rehabilitation period has passed.
Scope is also narrower than people expect. A national certificate covers convictions recorded in that country, so a person who lived in 3 countries needs 3 searches. No international equivalent of a national criminal database exists. Interpol is often assumed to fill that role, and it does not. It issues notices at the request of member countries to locate specific individuals, and those notices are covered on our Global Watchlists page.
Several countries hold records below the national level, in provinces, states, or regions, in a pattern closer to the U.S. county system. A search in those countries may require separate requests for each place a person lived, and a national certificate may not capture everything.
International Employment Verification
Confirming employment abroad depends on reaching an organization in another country and persuading it to respond. Several things that make domestic verification workable are absent.
The automated services that answer most U.S. verifications electronically have no equivalent in most countries. A verification is made by contacting the employer directly, in its language and during its business hours, which frequently means a single exchange takes a full day.
Smaller organizations often have no function responsible for answering such requests, and in many countries the practice of verifying a former employee for a foreign company is unfamiliar. Some organizations decline on privacy grounds, which is correct where local law restricts disclosing employment details without documented consent.
Where the employer cannot be reached, verification is built from documents instead:
- Employment contracts and appointment letters
- Payslips and salary statements
- Tax and social insurance records, which in some countries record employment centrally
- Service or experience letters, issued on separation in a number of countries as a matter of routine
- Business registry records, confirming that the employer existed and operated during the stated period
Document based verification carries a known risk, since documents supplied by the applicant can be fabricated, and fraudulent employment documentation is a recognized problem in several markets. Confirming that the organization exists through an independent registry is a common check where the employer itself will not respond.
International Education Verification
Foreign education verification runs into different obstacles from employment.
Many institutions will only release information to the individual, so the applicant requests a transcript or attestation and supplies it. Some countries operate a national body that verifies qualifications centrally, which is faster and more reliable where it exists. Others require a request through the country’s education ministry rather than the institution.
Fees are common, response times run long, and academic calendars create closures that stop a request for weeks.
Two further issues are specific to foreign education:
Document authentication. Diploma fraud is a recognized problem in several markets, and a certificate supplied by an applicant establishes less than a confirmation from the institution. Where a document is used, an apostille or consular authentication is often required to establish it is genuine.
Credential evaluation. Degree structures and program lengths differ, so a foreign qualification does not translate directly into a U.S. equivalent. A credential evaluation is a separate assessment, conducted by a specialist service, of what a foreign qualification corresponds to in the U.S. system. It answers what the qualification is worth, and verification answers whether it was awarded. Employers requiring a specific degree level generally need both.
Our Education Verification page covers how verification works domestically.
Foreign Credentials
A professional license issued abroad is verified with the authority that issued it, and the same access variation applies as with criminal records. Some regulators publish searchable registers. Others respond only to the individual.
A foreign license does not authorize practice in the United States. U.S. licensing is granted by a state board, which sets its own requirements for applicants qualified abroad, commonly including credential evaluation, examinations, and supervised practice. Verifying a foreign license confirms the person holds it, and it establishes nothing about their eligibility to practice here.
Our Credential Verification page covers how licenses are verified domestically.
Privacy Law Outside the United States
Consent that satisfies U.S. law may not satisfy the law where the record sits. Many countries regulate personal data more strictly than the United States, with rules on the legal basis for processing, how long data may be kept, and whether it may be transferred abroad. Those rules follow the record’s home country, not to the employer’s.
The broadest of these is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which applies across the EU and, in substantially similar form, in the United Kingdom. It governs any processing of personal data about people in those countries, including background screening conducted from abroad.
Several of its features affect screening directly. Processing requires a lawful basis, and consent is treated cautiously in an employment context because of the imbalance between employer and applicant. Criminal conviction data is subject to additional restrictions and cannot be processed on the same footing as ordinary personal data. Individuals have rights to see what is held about them and to have inaccurate data corrected. Transfers of personal data outside the EU require a recognized safeguard.
Other requirements found in various countries include consent language specific to that jurisdiction, limits on how long records may be retained, and prohibitions on collecting certain categories of information at all.
Screening companies operating internationally use country specific consent forms and processes for this reason. An employer running international checks is subject to the requirements of each country involved.
Where Records Cannot Be Obtained
In some countries a check cannot be completed at all, for reasons unconnected to the individual. This applies to employment and education records as much as to criminal ones, and sometimes to all 3 at once.
- Armed conflict and instability. Records may have been destroyed, and courts, ministries, universities, and businesses may no longer exist or operate.
- No relationship with U.S. requesters. Some countries will not process requests originating from the United States, or have no mechanism for doing so.
- Sanctions. Transacting with certain governments is restricted, which can prevent paying a fee a request requires.
- No central record system. Some countries maintain no national criminal record repository, and record keeping for education and employment may be equally decentralized.
- Policy against release. Some countries do not issue criminal record certificates for employment purposes.
- Institutions that no longer exist. A university closed during a conflict or a company dissolved in an economic collapse leaves no one to confirm anything.
This affects some populations far more than others. Refugees, asylees, and people who left a country under duress are the least likely to be able to obtain records from it, and the least able to influence whether the request succeeds.
Where a record cannot be obtained, the result is that no check was possible. It is not a finding about the person, and it does not indicate that a record exists.
Turnaround and Cost
International checks take longer and cost more than domestic ones, and the difference is substantial.
Turnaround runs from days in countries with efficient central systems to several weeks or longer where a record must be requested by post, translated, or authenticated. Where the applicant must apply personally, the timeline includes however long they take to do it.
Additional steps that add time include translation of documents, notarization, and apostille certification, which authenticates a document for use in another country.
What It Does Not Cover
- Countries not searched. Each country is a separate request, and in some cases the search is conducted at the province or state level.
- Records a country does not release for employment purposes.
- Convictions excluded by that country’s own rules, including those cleared after a rehabilitation period.
- A worldwide criminal search, which does not exist.
- U.S. records, covered by the domestic components on this site.
Where It Fits Under the FCRA
An international check obtained by a screening company for U.S. employment purposes is part of a consumer report. Written disclosure and authorization are required before it is requested, accuracy obligations attach to what is reported, and the individual has the right to dispute anything incorrect. Our FCRA Overview covers those requirements in full.
Those requirements apply alongside the law of the country where the record is held. Compliance with one does not establish compliance with the other, and an international check is subject to both.
Where an international record contributes to a decision not to hire, the required notice steps apply. This matters here because a record may be in another language, may use classifications with no U.S. equivalent, and may be harder for the individual to check than a domestic one. See The Adverse Action Process.