Due to the difficult economic conditions, the Department of Labor has hinted that it will implement supervised recruitment on more cases going forward. This, in essence, rolls back the clock five years on the progress made in streamlining the Labor Certification process under PERM. Currently, the PERM labor certification process is an audit based system. This means that the application under PERM is filed without supporting documentation and DOL either randomly or based on trigger system audits the applications for compliance.
While not all cases will be processed under supervised recruitment, larger percentage of cases will be subject to this process. Supervised recruitment is spelled out in 20 CFR 656.21. Pursuant to the regulations, it gives the Certifying Officer the choice of requesting a supervised recruitment process. The Certifying Officer is the person with the responsibility of issuing labor certification. The practical impact is a slower process. Under the supervised recruitment, there are additional steps to be undertaken, not required by PERM, and they are summarized below.
• The employer must provide a draft advertisement for review and approval for the Certifying Officer.
• The advertisement must direct applicants to send resumes to the Certifying Officer, who forwards them to the employer;
• The Department of Labor will provide guidance as to where and when to advertise.
• The employer will notify the Certifying Officer when the advertisement will be placed.
• The Certifying Officer at his option may designate other appropriate sources for recruitment above and beyond the required Sunday advertisements.
• In addition to the normal recruitment report in PERM, the Certifying Officer will normally expect the name, address and resumes of all US workers who applied for the job.
This process will be sure to add further delays. Under PERM, we are seeing approvals in six months with no audit, and 18 months in audited cases. We expect that supervised recruitment to add approximately six months to a year to the process. The good news is supervised recruitment will not be subject to an audit which may save time on audited cases.
