When companies set out to try and hire foreign nationals, they have to participate in a wide variety of steps in order for the government to approve their foreign candidate. The biggest section of this process is completing the various PERM advertising requirements for the Bay Area. Crafting these job advertisements for the purpose of hiring foreign nationals is something that needs to be done in a very precise manner. Otherwise, it could result in the US government’s refusal to approve the company’s application to employ a worker from another country.
Unfortunately, not very many American companies are familiar with the process of creating immigration ads in the Bay Area. This puts them in the dark when it comes to completing the demanding steps required for hiring foreign nationals. Luckily, there are several companies which exist solely to help businesses navigate the treacherous waters of hiring foreigners to do American jobs.
During this process, companies will come face-to-face with many different terms that they may have not seen before. An example of something that will pop up multiple times throughout the process is the term professional and non-professional job. It may seem silly or arbitrary to some companies that a specific job would be seen as being professional whereas others would not. However, this is the standard for which the PERM process classifies different types of employment.
Understanding which of these two categories a specific job falls under is important if they want to complete the process exactly as they need to in order for it to become approved. That is why this article sets out to break down the difference between a professional and non-professional job and what this different classification results in when it comes to the PERM process.
What Is a Professional Job?
The reason why most companies seek to hire foreign nationals in the first place is because they do not believe that they can find sufficiently qualified workers in America. Therefore, the vast majority of positions that are hoping to be filled with foreigners are ones that are more technical jobs that require a vast amount of training.
Some of the most common examples of this include being an engineer, nurse, criminologist, and many other positions. In order for people to qualify for these types of positions, they need to have a very specific set of formal skills. These are usually achieved by receiving extended training at some type of higher education facility.
For the purposes of PERM advertising, a professional job is classified as something that can only be done by an individual who has some type of degree or other advanced certification. If a position could be held by someone without either of these things, then chances are that it does not meet the standards of what would be considered a professional job.
What Is a Non-Professional Job?
Just because a lot of the companies that use PERM advertising are seeking highly qualified individuals, that does not mean that this is the case for every American company using this system. Sometimes, a company is looking to hire individuals for a position that no one in America is both willing to work.
Some examples may include being a janitor, orchardist, and other similar positions. Since these are not particularly glamorous jobs, there is a chance that there is no American in the surrounding area who would be willing to take the position.
When companies are faced with this situation, they often do not have much of a choice and are forced to use PERM advertising in order to find someone who will do the job. These jobs really only require someone who is physically capable of performing the duties of the job and is willing to take the role, so they are classified as a non-professional job. If someone without any kind of advanced formal education is capable of doing the job, then chances are that it falls into the role of being non-professional when it comes to PERM advertising.
The Difference Between How Professional and Non-Professional Jobs Are Processed
The only reason why the PERM advertising process would make a point of creating distinctly different classifications for a job is if they require different processes to be conducted for each type. That is exactly the case, which is why it is so important that American companies know which category the job that they are hiring for falls under. If they mistakenly classify their job and the government disagrees with the classification that they have chosen, then they can reject the application altogether and cause the business to have to start from square one again.
An important part of the PERM advertising process is creating a carefully developed job advertisement and then placing it in a very specific set of mediums. For example, the most basic form of this process is what is used for non-professional jobs. It involves having to post the advertisement in three different areas.
The first area is on the company’s personal site for ten consecutive business days. After that, it needs to be placed in two different Sunday editions of a newspaper that is in general circulation. The third type of place that the job advertisement needs to be posted to is the State Workforce Agency (SWA), which is where it needs to stay for a minimum of 30 days.
This may seem like a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but if a job is classified as being a professional position, then it requires even more. Not only does the company have to complete the three different types of postings as mentioned above, but they also need to use an additional three different types of postings as well.
The specific types that they use are generally up to the company and what they have available to them at the lowest cost possible. The various options that they get to choose between include television ads, radio ads, internet ads, college or university campus recruitment, job fairs, and local newspapers.
