Staffing, recruitment and placement professionals are often viewed as the most visible and important part of human resources. According to an article by HRGuru, this is because staffing is the first entry point of prospective employees to the company.

Recruitment professionals may be responsible for: creating a company staffing strategy, sourcing candidates, screening and conducting preliminary interviews of candidates, conducting background checks, and communicating decisions and compensation information.

Staffing and recruitment professionals who work with larger companies may be involved with workforce planning, such as projecting skills and attributes that will be required in the future based on the business strategy and current demographics of the current workforce.

There are opportunities in this industry across many occupations for individuals with a variety of skill levels and experience. The average salary for recruitment and staffing professionals is $43,000 per year.

While the majority of temp jobs only require workers to have a high school diploma, some permanent jobs, such as those in management, may require workers to have at least a bachelor’s degree. It is predicted that as the industry grows, so will the number of jobs requiring advanced degrees.

Recruitment and staffing professionals must have a certain set of skills, including the ability to relate to different types of people, find less-than-obvious data, be aggressive and take “no” for an answer, and the ability to negotiate and work up to mutually beneficial agreements.

The outlook for these workers is mainly a bright one. Staffing and recruiting has long been one of the fastest growing industries, and although future job growth is expected to continue faster-than-average, that growth will represent a decrease from the industry’s growth during the 1990s.

Overall, the industry should gain about 692,000 new jobs between 2006 and 2016. At the same time, wage and salary employment in the employment services industry is expected to increase by 19 percent, which is higher than the 11 percent projected growth rate for all industries.

Phoenix serves as the state capital and home of the state legislative branch. That branch is made up of the state House of Representatives, which has 60 members, and the state Senate, which has 30 members. Arizona is split into 30 legislative districts, each of which elects one senator and two representatives.

According to Wikipedia, all legislators are elected to two-year terms and are limited to serving four consecutive terms, although there are no limits on the total number of terms a legislator can serve. Republicans currently hold the majority of seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

The state executive branch is run by a governor, who is elected to a four-year term and can serve no more than two terms in a row, but can serve any number of total terms. Jan Brewer, who currently serves as the governor of Arizona, accounts for the state’s fourth female governor, which is more than any other state has had. Janet Napolitano, the previous governor, now serves as the secretary of Homeland Security.

Other elected officials in the executive branch and the people currently serving in those seats include:

• Secretary of State – Ken Bennett
• Attorney General – Terry Goddard
• State Treasurer – Dean Martin
• Superintendent of Public Instruction – Tom Horne
• State Mine Inspector – Joe Hart
• Corporation Commission – Gary Pierce, Kristin Mayes, Bob Stump, Sandra D. Kennedy and Paul Newman

All of these officials are elected to a four-year term and can only serve two consecutive terms, except for the state mine inspector, who is exempt from term limits.

Arizona is one of only eight states that does not elect a lieutenant governor. The secretary of state is first in line to succeed the governor, followed by the attorney general, state treasurer and superintendent of public instruction.

The state judicial branch is headed by the Arizona Supreme Court, which is the highest court in the state. The court has appellate jurisdiction in death penalty cases, original jurisdiction in some other circumstances, and has the power to declare laws unconstitutional.

The court is made up of a chief justice, a vice chief justice and three associate justices. All justices are appointed by the governor from a list recommended by a bi-partisan commission and are re-elected after the first two years, with subsequent re-elections occurring every six years.

The Arizona Court of Appeals, which serves as the intermediate court in the state, handles most other appellate cases. The court is divided into two divisions: Division One, which is based in Phoenix, and Division Two, which is based in Tucson.

Division One consists of 16 judges and has jurisdiction in the western and northern regions of the state, as well as the greater Phoenix area. Division Two consists of six judges and has jurisdiction over the southern regions of the state and the Tucson area.

In addition, each county in Arizona has a superior court, with the state currently having 16 counties. The size and organization of those courts are varied depending on the size of the county.

When it comes to federal government, Arizona is represented by two senators and eight representatives. The state was granted two extra seats in the House of Representatives following the 2000 Census.

The Senate seats are currently filled by Republican John McCain and Republican Jon Kyl. The House of Representative seats are currently filled by: Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, Republican Trent Franks, Republican John Shadegg, Democrat Ed Pastor, Democrat Harry Mitchell, Republican Jeff Flake, Democrat Raul Grijalva and Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.

As for political affiliation, the state went from being dominated by the Democratic Party from statehood through the late 1940s to consistently voting for Republicans since 1952, with the only exception being Bill Clinton during the 1996 presidential election.

At the state level, there is a political rivalry between Maricopa County and Pima County, the state’s two largest counties. Maricopa County – which is home to Phoenix, about 60 percent of the state’s population and most of the state’s elected officials – has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1948. Pima County – which is home to Tucson – is considered to be more Democratic.

myStaffingPro recently announced that they have updated their Hiring Manger Quick Response (HMQR) by adding new scheduling capabilities. On top of giving HR professionals the ability to request and receive information and feedback on applicants, hiring managers will now be able to seamlessly mange the scheduling of interviews.

“Before we had HMQR we had difficulty getting feedback on candidates from our managers and the rest of the interview team,” one myStaffingPro client, Sarah Conroy of Penobscot Bay Media, was quoted as saying in the recent press release.

Instead of setting HMQR to require training as many staffing software options do, myStaffingPro has given this software option an innovative, easy-to-use interface. This also enables users to review applicants’ information and submit feedback without having to log into myStaffingPro. This will save HR professionals time and give them the ability to quickly handle information when they the available time without having to check to make sure they are logged in to the program.

The updated HMQR module now features a request form, feedback request, a web-based hiring manager portal, and a scheduling tool designed to create interview appointments. The feedback request will be specifically useful to recruiters because they can alter the form to include only desired hiring mangers, add response due dates and applicant attachments. After the form has been fixed to contain the desired information, these requests can then be sent by e-mail or text messages to hiring mangers with a link to the portal.

After the hiring manger has the link to the portal, they will have to ability to access and review the applicant’s information, requisition for more information, or submit their feedback immediately. If the hiring manager desires, they can then create appointment times and request that the applicant schedule an interview during one of the already allotted time slots.

Once the hiring manager finishes offering their feedback, the information is immediately tied to the applicant’s file. This makes it accessible through myStaffingPro so that it can be accessed at another time. During this whole time the individual who requested more information is constantly sent updates so that they can know the status and progress of their request. myStaffingPro believes the result of this is a streamlined process that will improve response rates without requiring training.

“Our pre-release testing partners have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this cutting-edge HR technology,” said myStaffingPro’s product development manager Jennifer Brogee in the release.

Tentstreet, which supplies services designed to help truck fleets manage human resources and driver pools, is offering a small business edition of its software. According to Truck News, the Basic Version, which is available free-of-charge, provides fleets with 200 or fewer trucks with basic functions needed to improve driver recruitment.

“Hundreds of thousands of drivers have used this technology, which was previously available only to the larger carriers,” Craig Johnson, chief executive officer of Tenstreet, said in the article. “Now anyone can use it, and we decided now would be a great time to make this available. That’s because we are doing this, in part, to support the smaller carriers that need a better way to recruit drivers but can’t afford it in this down economy.”

The new software includes: a customized application page with Tenstreet’s digitized signature feature that eliminates faxing and streamlines the collection of drug and alcohol releases and a gap detection feature that ensures completed applications include all necessary documentation, including employment history, safety history and other data validation.

“We know that there are literally thousands of fleets that are currently operating in North America with less than 200 trucks,” Johnson added in the article. “The Basic Version allows these fleets to take advantage of our transportation-specific technologies, which are similar to what some of our biggest customers like Prime, CRST, and FFE Transportation are using.”

Tenstreet also offers a Professional Version and Enterprise Version of its software.

One of the new additions to Pointwing 1.4 is a Job Publisher application, which many users will be pleased with. Instead of taking the time to handle each individual site, this recruiting software speeds up the process by announcing available positions on multiple job boards at the same time. This not only increases the amount of exposure that each job gets but also saves much needed time.

Resumes from applicants who choose to apply online are then immediately available in Pointwing. The applicant tracking portion of this recruiting software then enables the user to search through candidates using a variety of parameters to find the best matches for their companies. In addition to this, the user is able to monitor each job board’s performance and ROI.

In addition to these new features on VCG’s Pointwing, there is also Resume Sourcer. This gives users the ability to send a “spider” crawling through job sites online in search of the best workers. It looks over resumes posted on the Internet and returns those that best match the user’s search criteria. Instead of having an employee scour the web in hopes of finding the right passive job seeker, Pointwing enables workers to be freed up for more important tasks.

“The integration of Pointwing Job Publisher and Pointwing Resume Sourcer are further evidence of the growth of Pointwing as a comprehensive recruiting and staffing tool for success,” said Steve Taylor, VCG’s President and CEO in a recent press release. “The Internet gives recruiters and staffing company’s broad access to an ocean of data. What we’ve done is enable them to leverage that access and use it or filter the data to their ends. That reduces the time and effort that recruiters have to spend finding qualified candidates and ultimately means a faster, more successful and profitable placement.”

VCG has been in the business of helping businesses sine 1976. A variety of Pointwing producats are available through their website, including Front Office, Self Service, and the Software Kit.

The survey, completed by participants at the 2008 Taleo World User’s Conference, asked respondents to explore their practices regarding the candidate experience, tracking and reporting on 120-day turnover, according to an article by Talent Management.

The results found that 72 percent of respondents don’t know the cost of on-boarding for their highest-turnover position and 86 percent of respondents aren’t asking candidates about their online employment application experience.

The survey found that:

• 43 percent of respondents aren’t tracking and reporting 120-day turnover rates
• 72 percent don’t know the cost of on-boarding for their highest-turnover position
• 86 percent of respondents stated they don’t conduct candidate satisfaction surveys
• 94 percent of respondents state they don’t include a multi-media realistic job preview as part of their candidate experience
• 43 percent of respondents stated their online candidate experience isn’t positive enough to create referrals

“Staffing waste can be quantified as the company’s investment for on-boarding a new employee who quits or is terminated in less than 120 days,” the article notes. “It is common to invest $10,000 to $15,000 on-boarding new employees into entry-level jobs, such as tellers and call center agents. A loss of 10 new hires in less than 120 days can easily waste $100,000.

“Turnover is typically reported on a company-wide, annual basis,” the article continues. “This practice obscures the impact of the worst hiring decisions — those which lead to turnover in 120 days or fewer. Candidates who quit or are terminated in fewer than 120 days are called false starts. The impact of false starts can be measured as staffing waste and the subsequent need for staffing rework.”

Companies can improve their staffing process by examining the hiring process for the jobs with the highest turnover rates and collecting data about the candidates.