News flash - sourcing talent can be tough. Sourcing talent across international borders can be even tougher. And as many of you are painfully aware, coping with immigration and visa processing for talent is just not something that gets HR professionals excited. It can be complicated, time consuming, and the application process can be very competitive.

And given today’s environment, it’s unclear whether demand is increasing or decreasing. Just last week the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the economic downturn causing a slump in H-1B applications, while this week BusinessWeek countered with a piece stating that the H-1B lull in visa applications is only temporary. Confused yet? I know I am.

Like many traditional HR processes, this one may be ready for something new. So over the past few months we have been exploring the immigration processing world in intimate detail.

I know you’re jealous.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we’ve found that the majority of services in this area are provided by law firms. And although there are many such firms offering services, there seems to be little variation in what’s provided.

So this is where you come in. If you’re an HR professional who deals with visas and Green Cards for your organization, we’d love to get your thoughts and opinions on the process. As an added bonus, we’ll donate $5 to a selection of charities for each survey completed.

Click here to take the survey

It should only take you ten minutes to complete (I promise!). This is your chance to be heard and mature the market while helping those in need. If this isn’t your cup of tea, please feel free to forward this link to your (lucky) colleagues  - http://bit.ly/imsurvey.

Stay tuned as we’ll be posting an update on our initial findings in the next few weeks!

While we’ve been working on that, a fantastic group of thought leaders have been putting together an event which embodies pushing the status quo - HRevolution. It begins today and I’m honored to be a participant and facilitator on “The Future of HR”. So don’t forget to follow HRevolution on Twitter over the next few days. It’s going to be a great event.

Thanks again for taking the time to participate in our survey. Let’s keep the conversation going.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 10:01 am and is filed under Human Capital/Human Resources, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.