- PERM requires not just recruitment but documented, good-faith recruitment.
- Every US applicant must be reviewed and lawfully dispositioned, with reasons recorded.
- The recruitment report is the core of the audit file.
It is tempting to think of PERM recruitment as a box to check: run the ads, post the notice, move on. But the rule is not that you advertised — it is that you conducted a good-faith test of the labor market and genuinely considered the US workers who applied. The recruitment report is where that good faith is proven, and it is where audited cases are won or lost.
What the Report Has to Show
The recruitment report documents what recruitment was conducted, what responses it produced, and how each US applicant was evaluated. It is not enough to say no one was qualified. The report must show that applicants were reviewed against the actual minimum requirements, and that any rejection rested on a lawful, job-related reason — not on a pretext to clear the way for the foreign worker.
The Disposition Trap High Risk
The most scrutinized part is how applicants were dispositioned. Rejecting a US applicant who met the stated minimum requirements is a problem. So is applying requirements that were not in the recruitment. The reasons recorded have to match the requirements advertised, and they have to be defensible if an auditor asks the employer to explain each one.
"The question is never just did anyone apply. It is: did you consider them the way the law requires, and can you prove it?"
Build the Report as You Go
A recruitment report assembled from memory after the fact is weak and slow. Built contemporaneously — logging each applicant, the review, and the disposition as recruitment happens — it becomes a clean record that defends itself. When the search and its results live on the case record rather than in scattered resumes and notes, an audit response is retrieval, not reconstruction.
Make recruitment defensible.
GentleCase keeps applicants, reviews, and dispositions on the case record as recruitment happens, so the report and audit file build themselves. Book a walkthrough.
