July 11, 2026

HR & Staffing Intake Forms: What to Capture Before the First Placement or Engagement

A staffing agency that starts sourcing candidates before clarifying whether the role is exempt or non-exempt is going to waste its recruiters' time and damage its credibility with the client. An HR consultant who begins a handbook rewrite without knowing how many states the client operates in will miss half the required policies. Both mistakes share the same origin: an onboarding process that collected a company name and a vague request, then called it "intake."

HR and staffing is a broad label that covers fundamentally different services. Temporary staffing, direct-hire recruiting, HR consulting, payroll outsourcing, and compliance auditing all fall under the same umbrella but require different information at the point of engagement. A well-structured HR and staffing intake form accounts for that range and captures the right details for each service type, so the engagement starts with clarity instead of assumptions.

Service type: define what the client is buying

The first job of your intake form is to identify which service the client actually needs, because that determines everything downstream — the team you assign, the pricing model, the compliance requirements, and the timeline. Most clients describe their need in general terms. Your form should translate that into a specific engagement type:

• Recruiting / direct hire — you source, screen, and present candidates; the client hires them as their own employee. Your fee is typically a percentage of first-year compensation. The intake needs to focus heavily on the position profile, compensation range, and the client's interview process.
• Temporary / contract staffing — you employ the worker and place them at the client site. You handle payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and benefits (if any). The client pays a bill rate. Your intake needs to capture the duration of the assignment, the work environment, and your markup structure.
• Temp-to-perm — starts as a contract placement with a conversion option. Your intake needs the conversion fee or buyout schedule in addition to the standard temp staffing fields.
• HR consulting — project-based or ongoing advisory work. This could be a compliance audit, a handbook rewrite, a compensation study, a benefits analysis, training program development, or outsourced HR management. The scope definition is critical because "HR consulting" without further definition is an open-ended commitment neither party should agree to.
• Payroll services — processing payroll, filing payroll taxes, managing direct deposits, generating W-2s and 1099s. This is a recurring service with specific data requirements (employee count, pay frequency, state registrations, garnishments) that need to be captured at onboarding.

Industry and company profile: context that shapes every recommendation

A 200-person healthcare company and a 200-person tech startup have the same employee count but radically different HR requirements. Your intake needs to capture enough about the client's business that your team understands the regulatory environment they are operating in:

• Industry — this drives compliance requirements. Healthcare means HIPAA training and background check requirements that go beyond standard employment screening. Financial services means FINRA licensing checks and specific hiring restrictions. Construction means OSHA compliance and drug testing protocols. Manufacturing means shift scheduling, overtime rules, and workers' comp classification concerns. Your recommendation engine starts with the industry.
• Company size — headcount is not just a number; it is a compliance trigger. At 15 employees, Title VII applies. At 20, ADEA kicks in. At 50, FMLA and ACA employer mandate requirements activate. At 100, WARN Act and EEO-1 reporting obligations begin. Capture exact headcount, not ranges, because the difference between 49 and 51 employees is the difference between "FMLA does not apply to you" and "you owe twelve weeks of protected leave."
• States with employees — list every state where the client has W-2 employees, including remote workers. Each state has its own employment law framework. California alone has enough unique requirements to fill a separate intake form. A client headquartered in Florida with two remote workers in New York has New York wage-and-hour, paid family leave, and salary transparency obligations they probably do not know about.
• Current HR infrastructure — do they have an HR team, a solo HR generalist, or no HR function at all? Are they using a PEO? What HRIS and ATS are in place? The answers tell you whether you are building from zero, supplementing an existing function, or replacing a current provider who is not getting the job done.

Position requirements: what recruiters need before they start searching

For staffing and recruiting engagements, the position profile is the core of the intake. Send a recruiter to source candidates without this information and you are guaranteeing wasted time and a frustrated client. Capture everything the recruiter needs to run a targeted search:

• Title, department, and reporting structure — the internal title (which may differ from the posting title), which department owns the role, and who the hire reports to. This tells the recruiter the seniority level and the organizational context.
• Job description — if one exists, collect it. If it does not, your intake form needs enough fields to construct one: core responsibilities, required qualifications, preferred qualifications, physical requirements, and success metrics. Do not start sourcing without a written description — you will end up presenting candidates based on your interpretation of a phone call, and your interpretation will be wrong about something.
• Compensation — the actual range the client is willing to pay, not the aspirational number. If the market rate for a senior accountant is $95K and the client's budget is $75K, that is a conversation to have now, not after your recruiter has presented five candidates who all declined the offer.
• Screening criteria — background checks (criminal, credit, education verification, employment verification), drug testing, skills assessments, certifications or licenses required, clearance requirements. Each screening step adds time to the placement process and needs to be factored into the timeline.
• Work arrangement — onsite, remote, hybrid, and if hybrid, how many days and which days. This is the first filter candidates apply and the most common reason for declined opportunities. Get an honest answer, not a flexible one that turns rigid after the candidate accepts.
• Interview process — how many rounds, who is on each panel, is there a skills test or case study, and what is the typical time from first interview to offer? A process with five rounds and three-week gaps between each one will lose top candidates to companies that move in two weeks.

Compliance documentation: the regulatory layer

HR compliance is a patchwork of federal, state, and local requirements, and missing one can be expensive. Your intake should capture the information your team needs to identify which regulations apply to this client:

• Government contractor status — federal contractors above certain thresholds face OFCCP obligations: affirmative action plans, EEO-1 reporting, VETS-4212 filing, Section 503 disability accommodation requirements. Many companies become government subcontractors without realizing the HR compliance implications.
• Union status — any unionized workforce means collective bargaining agreements that override standard HR policies. Even non-union companies in heavily organized industries face NLRA considerations around employee communications and handbook policies.
• Pending matters — active EEOC charges, Department of Labor audits, pending lawsuits, wage-and-hour claims. These are time-sensitive and may need to be addressed before any other consulting work begins. They also affect your professional liability exposure.
• I-9 and E-Verify — how are I-9 forms being completed and stored? Is E-Verify used (mandatory for federal contractors and in some states)? When was the last I-9 audit? I-9 penalties are per-form, and even mid-size companies can accumulate six-figure exposure from sloppy documentation.

Fee structure and engagement terms: the money conversation, handled early

HR and staffing firms use several different pricing models, and the model should be established at intake, not negotiated after work has started:

• Staffing fees — contingency percentage for direct hire (typically 15-25% of first-year salary), bill rate and markup for temp placements, retained search terms for executive roles (usually one-third of projected compensation in three installments). Document the structure clearly so the engagement letter is a formality, not a negotiation.
• Consulting fees — hourly rate, project-based flat fee, or monthly retainer. For project work like a compliance audit or handbook rewrite, flat fees give the client cost certainty. For ongoing advisory relationships, monthly retainers make more sense. Capture the model and the rate at intake.
• Replacement guarantee — for direct-hire placements, what happens if the candidate leaves within 30, 60, or 90 days? Free replacement search, prorated refund, or no guarantee? This term matters enough that clients will ask about it; have the answer documented before they do.
• Payment terms — net 15, net 30, net 45. For staffing, where you are paying the worker before the client pays you, extended terms create serious cash flow pressure. Establish terms at intake and hold to them.

Onboarding process and communication

The operational details of how the engagement runs day-to-day are worth documenting at intake, because unstated assumptions about communication create friction faster than anything else. Capture who the primary contact is, who has final decision-making authority (often a different person), how frequently the client wants updates, and in what format — weekly email summary, shared dashboard, status calls, or a Slack channel. A recruiter who sends daily candidate summaries to a client who wanted weekly updates is annoying. A recruiter who sends monthly updates to a client who expected daily ones looks disengaged. Either mismatch is preventable.

For clients who also need financial process documentation, our accounting and bookkeeping intake form covers the payroll and financial reporting side. For firms offering cross-functional consulting, the marketing and PR consulting intake form handles the marketing and communications engagement. Browse the full professional services collection for other categories.