Ms. Janet Cortez This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. TechLinks

   www.techlinks.net/ShowTechLink - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/30/2002   Last Visited: 5/30/2002

   Janet Cortez, vice president of ChoicePoint's employment solutions, participated in a panel discussion on this topic.
   
   "These checks, which help employers mitigate the risk of making an uninformed hiring decision, provide important security benefits to all parties in the process, including the applicant, the employer and existing employees," Ms. Cortez told the human resources, corporate security officers and chief privacy officers in attendance.
   
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   Janet Cortez, vice president of ChoicePoint's employment solutions, participated in a panel discussion on this topic.
   
   ,,
   
   "These checks, which help employers mitigate the risk of making an uninformed hiring decision, provide important security benefits to all parties in the process, including the applicant, the employer and existing employees," Ms. Cortez told the human resources, corporate security officers and chief privacy officers in attendance.
   
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2. 2. Feature Story - Feeding the Pipeline   By CHRISTOPHER CORNELL

   www.publichr.com/hrexecutive/f - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/25/2001   Last Visited: 8/25/2002

   "The original impetus began when more companies went overseas to hire information technology professionals to work in their U.S. locations," says Janet Cortez, vice president with the employment services division of ChoicePoint, based in Alpharetta, Ga. "They were giving people from foreign countries access to their most critical business data, and that made them nervous. They didn't know these individuals, and they didn't have the same type of information available about them as they had about their U.S. employees."
   
   Human resource professionals also soon realized the difficulty in trying to verify criteria such as academic credentials and employment history due to differing interpretations of degrees earned and varying ways of defining previous positions, skills and duties.
   
   Since Sept. 11, companies have extended expanded background verifications to include foreign national employees who will be working in their international offices as technology professionals, engineers, managers and financial officers. HR departments now want the same kind of background verifications performed on foreign-based employees as they have been conducting on U.S. employees.
   ...
   Hiring pre-employment screening firms to conduct international verifications can quickly add up--with a range of $150 to $500 per verification for European candidates, to as much as $5,000 per verification for applicants from African countries, according to Cortez of ChoicePoint. This compares with an average verification cost of less than $100 for U.S.-based candidates.
   ...
   This preliminary screening process can be completed within days, according to Cortez.
   
   Applicants who pass the first verification stage are next required to obtain certification from their local authorities that their pasts are crime-free, and to produce financial records when these are applicable to the job.
   
   "This two-step process, which involves applicants directly in the screening procedure, is being used by companies working with us in every Western European country," says Cortez.
   
   In China, the government is certifying whether applicants have clean criminal records, or whether they have ever been convicted of charges that fall in any of three categories of crimes--political crimes that required candidates to undergo re-education, minor offenses and more serious crimes. "They will not provide details as to what the crime was, but they will confirm whether an individual has ever been incarcerated for any of these offenses," says Cortez.
   
   HR departments working with HireRight in non-European countries have candidates complete an application containing a release that allows the consulting firm to verify all information, including criminal record history. In EU countries, employers must first register with the Criminal Records Bureau before ordering a criminal background check. The results are provided to applicants, who then turn them over to potential employers.
   
   The European Union has been steadily relaxing the data protection directive passed in 1998, which prohibits the release of any information on European Union citizens to non-EU countries.

3. 3. P&AB

   www.pandab.org/hr2002recap/pho - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/2/2001   Last Visited: 8/31/2002

   Janet Cortez, VP, Employment Services, ChoicePoint
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   Janet Cortez's "Privacy and Pre-Employment Background Checks" Presentation