It’s become more necessary nowadays for companies to broaden the scope of their employment search, often looking overseas to fill key positions and recruit skilled employees. This isn’t to say anything about the American labor force, only that with the growing number of tech firms right now, many of the best qualified American employees are already happy with their current positions. This puts companies that are looking to expand in an awkward positions of not having enough employees to man positions key to their expansion. In the end it ends up stifling the American economy.
But the process of recruiting workers overseas requires employers cut through a considerable amount of red tape. It includes filing a petition with the Department of Labor, and being completely transparent about the process by which the employer seeks out new employees. Since the Department of Labor and the Justice Department have a vested interest in filling positions domestically before attempting to recruit overseas, employers must be able to prove that they exhausted all their options in the local market before broadening their search in another country.
As such, the DOL has very clear and specific guidelines when it comes to PERM advertising and recruiting for employees overseas. Specifically, CFR Part 656 states:
(B) Advertisements in – or professional journals. ( 1 ) Placing an advertisement on two different Sundays in the newspaper of general circulation in the area of intended employment most appropriate to the occupation and the workers likely to apply for the job opportunity and most likely to bring responses from able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers. ( 2 ) If the job opportunity is located in a rural area of intended employment that does not have a newspaper with a Sunday edition, the employer may use the edition with the widest circulation in the area of intended employment. ( 3 ) The advertisements must satisfy the requirements of paragraph (f) of this section. Documentation of this step can be satisfied by furnishing copies of the newspaper pages in which the advertisements appeared or proof of publication furnished by the newspaper .
For instance, a company looking for an business manager, must be able to state the requirements of the job specifically. The job description should not include any duties that are beyond the general scope of the job. The pay for the job must be within a small range of the industry standard or average for the position. Beyond that, the employer’s name and address must be located in the ad, and the ad must run for a set period of time. All of this information must be provided to the Department of Labor.
For a variety of reasons, PERM advertising has become a specialty among marketing firms due in large part to the need to conform to DOL regulations and the severity of the consequences for not doing so.
