I live in China, a supposedly autocratic country and one with universal ID, and even companies here don't take fingerprints. ID will be shown when you are officially onboard. I can't say for all, but for most companies (at least the ones without the need for a security clearance), requiring ID at interview will be seen as a red flag, and requiring fingerprint would probably be put on social media and name shamed, if not straight up reported to the authorities.
> I live in China, a supposedly autocratic country and one with universal ID, and even companies here don't take fingerprints. ID will be shown when you are officially onboard. I can't say for all, but for most companies (at least the ones without the need for a security clearance), requiring ID at interview will be seen as a red flag, and requiring fingerprint would probably be put on social media and name shamed, if not straight up reported to the authorities.
You're in a much more authoritarian country, and that would be using your non-universal, national ID. How do you authenticate someone coming in from overseas?
Answer: your authoritarian government doesn't let them in, or authenticates them for you in a joint process with your HR department.
For overseas workers, a. it is quite difficult for foreigners to get a working visa in China (though I suppose it's more of an immigration issue rather than the country being authoritarian); b. companies would probably use their passports. So you're kind of correct. However, my point still holds: fingerprints for interviewees, even in China, is at best extremely uncommon, and at worst (?) illegal in most cases.
Btw, I am nitpicking here, but by universal I meant used across the whole country, i.e. national.
I have some experience working for financial institutions with access to highly confidential information, and haven't been required to produce my fingerprint for, like, ever.
Again, I can't say for all, and I'm sure there are certain companies and positions which require such measures, but I could not imagine requiring fingerprints (or even ID during interview) to be acceptable in most cases.
You didn't have to do an in-person background check that included fingerprinting? When I worked at a bank this was required. It was run by a third party company not at the office.
No, but I didn't deal with money directly. I dealt with corporate governance and capital market related information for the company, so perhaps other people needed to have their fingerprints taken.
You probably worked in divisions where the auditors didn’t issue a finding yet, or outside the regulatory scope.
It’s pretty common in finance, government and human services. Amazon is very aggressive with this - contractors in their facilities get regular background checks.
Usually the employee goes to a third party run by a company like Idemia to collect the biometric. I can’t imagine not collecting the ID information of perspective employees - that’s just asking for fraud.
In a high security environment, you can get a report from law enforcement; in the Netherlands this is called a "declaration around behaviour" (??), which is basically a signed / authenticated document saying "this person was not involved in financial crimes" - you need to have it specified for a category of crimes, the previous is for example one I had to get to work at a bank as a contractor.
The way it worked for a real US high security job (TS/SCI) was that the clearance process was totally separate from the employer. The fingerprints and polygraph exams were done off premises. The famous SF-86 form[1], all 130 pages, had to be filled out, but nobody at the employer ever saw it. The checking and processing were done by the FBI or a unit in DoD.
(The current SF-86 only wants your residence addresses for the last 10 years. Used to be "List all residences from birth".)
I live in China, a supposedly autocratic country and one with universal ID, and even companies here don't take fingerprints. ID will be shown when you are officially onboard. I can't say for all, but for most companies (at least the ones without the need for a security clearance), requiring ID at interview will be seen as a red flag, and requiring fingerprint would probably be put on social media and name shamed, if not straight up reported to the authorities.