Review when qualifying full-time foreign work actually occurred and the relevant three-year period. The original hire date alone may not answer that question.
Use the complete employment history
Identify schedule changes, interruptions and work locations before committing to a transfer date. Do not assume eligibility from an anniversary without also assessing the claimed knowledge and qualifying organizations.
Within the next few weeks, with premium processing, and only after the workflow documentation is complete. Separate total tenure with the qualifying organization from the specific periods that actually count as full-time service performed physically abroad, since the two figures are not automatically the same. Identify any secondment, part-time arrangement, assignment to a non-qualifying entity, or extended visit to the receiving country, because each of these can interrupt or fail to count toward the qualifying period even while the person remains continuously employed. Assemble a chronological record of role changes, assignment locations, and any gaps, and confirm which continuous stretch within it actually satisfies the requirement. Ask the organization's records custodian to confirm assignment dates independently, since personal recollection of when a particular posting began or ended is often less reliable than payroll or assignment records. Resolve any ambiguity in the timeline before committing to a specific qualifying period, since an inconsistency discovered later is harder to correct than one identified during preparation.