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.

Earlier this month Criteria sent out a press release about finalizing this integration. Now users of HireSelect will be able to add both a Microsoft Excel and a Microsoft Word proficiency to their already existing hiring assessment efforts.

“Our customers have been telling us that computer skills tests would be a great addition to HireSelect, and we are excited to meet that need through our partnership with Skillsarens,” said Josh Millet in the press release.

Users of HireSelect pay a flat annual subscription fee in order to have unlimited access to all of the company’s tests, which include: aptitude, personality and skills assessments. Because of the year long fee, this service might be better for company’s that don’t need rare or one time tests.
Smaller companies that would like to test their applicants before making a hiring decision will be happy to know that other computer skills testing providers exist. Some of these gear their services towards the needs of employers with fewer than 500 workers, which means that several pricing options are often available.

Usually these include a pay-as-you-go method. This means that the employer is only charged for the tests that they use. Another popular way to go about getting access to these very useful employees screening quizzes is by paying a monthly fee. Instead of being charged for a full year, this enables employers to only have to pay for such services when they are in the process of hiring several people at one time.

Many companies are basing hiring decisions on whether or not a potential candidate smokes. While not hiring someone because they are a smoker can be considered discrimination, there are only 26 states with laws that prohibit hiring practices discriminating against smokers.

In an article by Tobacco Control, Michael Siegel, a social and behavioral sciences professor at Boston University, said many young people may soon find themselves unemployed if hiring policies continue to target smoking.

“Discrimination is essentially the categorical denial of employment to a group, based solely on the membership to that group that is not related to job qualifications,” Siegel said in the article. “Right now, Massachusetts has what’s called ‘at-will employment,’ and there’s not protection against this sort of discrimination. There’s only protection for race, gender, religion, sexual orientation.”

Some companies require employees to submit urine samples to test for smoking.

“One of the problems with nicotine testing is you don’t know if its coming from cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, or Nicorette,” Robert Swotinsky, Fallon Clinic occupational medicine chairperson, said in the article. “Someone could be trying to stop smoking by chewing the gum, and they’d have nicotine in their system.”

This measure has caused some employees to sue companies on the grounds of discrimination.

One Scotts Lawn Care employee is suing that company for discrimination. Weyco, a healthcare provider in Michigan, fires smokers if they don’t quit within a year. The American Lung Association has a policy against hiring smokers and doesn’t fire existing employees for smoking, but encourages employers to help employees quit.