When one continuous year of qualifying employment with the related organisation abroad sits inside the three years before the petition is filed. Part-time or interrupted service is assessed, not assumed.
Segments, not a general sense of tenure
Hypothetical example: Long service with a company is not the same fact as the qualifying year. What counts is a continuous year in employment with the qualifying organisation abroad, located within the three-year window that ends at the petition. A Selwyn operations director with eight years at the firm but only nine months since returning from a period elsewhere has a question to answer, not a formality to complete.
The practical method is to write the employment history as dated segments: employer entity, role, start, end, and whether the entity was part of the qualifying group at that time. Then place the intended filing date on the same line and see which segments fall inside the window. Doing this before choosing a filing month sometimes shows that waiting eight weeks converts an argument into a plain fact, which is a better outcome than filing early and defending the gap.