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PBSA Journal PAGE 11 MAY/JUNE 2023 Except where otherwise indicated, articles are copyright © by PBSA 2023. All rights reserved. Continued on page 12 A Candidate by Any Other Name… By Chris Glencross and Andy Hellman I n today's labor market, particularly with the prevalence of remote working, organizations are increasingly becoming multinational, in turn driving demand for cross- border background checks. International screening requires that organizations update their processes and procedures to address the complexity inherent in providing a global service. One area that drives this complexity is in verifying someone's identity. The typical identifiers for people, such as names, addresses, and ID documents, can vary significantly from one country or region to another. Understanding these variances is crucial to avoiding mistakes when conducting a background check on that person. Frequently, there are very detailed internal guidelines for how to confirm identity for U.S. background checks, but in our experience, these guidelines frequently do not account for the complexity and variation found globally. Because accuracy is generally a requirement of any privacy regulation, the importance of "getting it right" is not limited to U.S. borders. Instead, companies should ensure that their guidelines account for the variations found globally so that the people actually processing the searches are able to do so consistently and correctly. The first area where guidelines often fall short is in the differences in naming conventions. In many Western countries, people have two names, a first name plus a surname, and perhaps a middle name. In Latin America, people may have multiple surnames, also referred to as apellidos. This is due to the practice of using both the father's and mother's surnames, which can result in long, complex names. For example, someone from Mexico might have the name Ana Luisa Rodriguez Garcia, where Ana is a first name, Luisa a middle name, Rodriguez is her father's surname (primer apellido or first surname) and Garcia is her mother's surname (Segundo apellido, or second surname). In everyday activities, a person might only use their primer apellido, reserving use of their full name only for very important official documents, so Ana might only write Ana Rodriguez on many documents or forms. In many Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Korea, names are often written with the surname first, followed by the given name. This is the opposite of the naming convention used in many Western countries, where the given name comes first, followed by the surname. As a result, when conducting a background check on an individual from an Asian country, it is important to ensure that the surname is correctly identified and recorded. (The surname is often capitalized to distinguish it from the given name.) Names which are written in something other than the English character set can also cause issues. Many European names may contain letters with diacritical marks. (Diacritical marks are symbols added to letters to indicate a specific pronunciation or to differentiate between two letters that would otherwise be homonyms.). Some examples are á, ë, ñ, ç, and í. If your system/technology doesn't handle these types of characters properly, it can create incorrect matching. One method for addressing this is to convert all letters to a standard alphabet without diacritical marks. Thankfully there are standards adopted for creating MRZ entries on passports which can also be used for matching logic. Asian characters can present challenges in other ways. For example, Mandarin Chinese is based on characters. The pronunciation of characters can vary depending on a variety of factors, and their Romanization into English can also be done using different systems. As a result, using only the Romanized name can present challenges in ID verification because converting back to Chinese, such as to run a criminal record check, may not correctly convert back to the original Chinese characters. To address this, companies can require a copy of the candidate's ID document, which will have their name in the original Chinese characters. In addition to naming conventions, addresses can also vary significantly from one region to another. For example, in Western countries, addresses are typically broken down into street names, house numbers, and postal codes. In contrast, in many Asian countries, addresses are often based on landmarks or neighborhoods, rather than specific street names and numbers. This can make it more difficult to identify a person's exact location, especially in large cities where neighborhoods can be sprawling and complex. Another important consideration when conducting a background check is the type of ID documents that are commonly used in different regions of the world. In Western countries, for example, driver's licenses and passports are commonly used as forms of identification. In Latin America, national ID cards, known as cédulas, are often used. In many Asian countries, identity cards are issued by the government PBSA is pleased to share this article featuring industry experts who were presenters at our 2023 Mid-Year Conference!

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