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Case: A foreigner who's lived and worked abroad becomes a US. resident (LPR: Lawful Permanent Resident). When applying for a job in the States, he lists his foreign experience (at a multinational company).

Can American companies who view him as a potential candidate, verify the work history that he has outside of the US? Do they have the means for that? And if so, do they usually do it?

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  • No, I'm asking to understand more about the background-check process. Also, I'm hearing that foreign experience isn't really taken into account. – user32359 Jan 30 '15 at 14:09
  • Foreign experience isn't (generally) dismissed out-of-hand. U.S. companies will almost always do some kind of background check if the position is in anything sensitive (finance, research, HR, IT systems, etc.) – Wesley Long Jan 30 '15 at 21:32
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    I would say that a lot of US companies will greatly discount any overseas experience and not rely on it when making hiring decisions. – PM 77-1 Jan 31 '15 at 3:33
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Can the work history be verified? Sure. Companies often outsource that sort of thing to background check firms which generally don't have a problem calling up companies in foreign countries to validate employment. Obviously, background checks involving foreign companies may be a bit more involved than those involving local companies but it's not terribly uncommon so it normally works reasonably well. Obviously, though, it's easier in some countries than others-- it's easier to validate employment that happened in England than it is to validate employment that was in Syria. Since your work history was with a large multinational company, though, it should be relatively easy to verify.

Some companies do verify background others don't. Most larger companies do at least some sort of background check. Whether that involves just a criminal background check, whether that involves calling your references, or whether that involves contacting each of your former employers is very company dependent. If all your experience is in a foreign country, it may be more likely that the company decides to do a more thorough check than if your experience is local but that's going to be very dependent on the company and possibly the hiring manager.

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  • You give several options (all valid) which companies will usually perform, but I think it's perhaps worth mentioning that "Verify with the previous employer" is pretty universal, with the assumption that each employer checked the one before. – Jon Story Jan 30 '15 at 11:03

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