By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

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

An HR consultant who begins a compliance audit without knowing how many states the client has employees in is going to discover halfway through the project that the scope — and the price — should have been three times larger. A staffing agency that starts recruiting for a "marketing manager" without confirming whether the role is exempt or non-exempt, what the compensation range actually is, or whether the client has a skills test built into their interview process is going to send candidates the client would never consider. Both failures trace back to the same root cause: an intake process that collected a company name and a vague description of what the client wanted, instead of the structured information required to scope the engagement correctly.

HR consulting and staffing are two distinct businesses that often operate under one roof, and each has intake requirements the other does not share. A staffing firm filling a contract developer role needs different fields than an HR consultant conducting a handbook rewrite. But both need a thorough picture of the client company, and both need to establish billing terms before work begins. A well-built HR & staffing intake form captures all of it — the client profile, the engagement type, the compliance landscape, and the commercial terms — in a single document that eliminates the slow drip of follow-up questions over the first two weeks of a new engagement.

Client company information: know who you are working with

Every HR and staffing engagement starts with the client organization. This is not just a name and address — it is the operating context that shapes every recommendation you make and every candidate you source. Your intake should capture:

• Company name and legal entity — the entity that will appear on the engagement agreement. For companies with multiple subsidiaries or DBAs, clarify which entity is the contracting party.
• Industry — this drives everything from compliance requirements (HIPAA for healthcare, FINRA for financial services, DOT for transportation) to the candidate pools you will access. A "marketing manager" at a hospital system and a "marketing manager" at a SaaS startup are entirely different searches.
• Company size — total headcount and, critically, headcount thresholds that trigger specific compliance obligations. Fifty employees is the FMLA and ACA employer-mandate line. Fifteen is the Title VII threshold. Twenty triggers ADEA. One hundred triggers WARN Act and EEO-1 reporting. Your intake needs to capture precise numbers, not ranges.
• Office locations — every state where the company has employees, including remote workers. Each state triggers its own employment law obligations. A company headquartered in Texas with three remote employees in California has California wage-and-hour compliance requirements most Texas-based companies do not anticipate.
• HR structure — does the company have an in-house HR team, a single HR generalist, or no HR function at all? Is HR currently outsourced to a PEO or ASO? The answer determines whether you are building from scratch, supplementing existing infrastructure, or replacing a current provider.
• Current HRIS and ATS — what systems are in place? BambooHR, Workday, ADP, Gusto, Paylocity, Rippling? What applicant tracking system, if any? This matters for both consulting (you need to pull data from these systems) and staffing (you need to submit candidates through the client's ATS or know they do not have one).
• Company website — for staffing, this is where candidates will research the employer. For consulting, it tells you how the company presents itself publicly, which often reveals gaps between the employer brand and the internal reality.

Engagement type: define the work before you scope it

HR and staffing firms offer a wide range of services, and most client inquiries start vague. "We need help with HR" could mean anything from a one-time handbook review to a full outsourced HR function. Your intake form should present clear categories so the client selects what they actually need, and you can scope accordingly.

HR consulting engagements

• Compliance audit — review of current HR practices against federal, state, and local requirements. This is the most common entry point for companies that have grown without formal HR infrastructure and now realize they are exposed.
• Employee handbook creation or revision — drafting or updating policies. A company with a handbook last revised in 2019 is missing COVID-era leave policies, updated state-specific requirements, and likely several NLRB-driven changes to social media and confidentiality policies.
• Training programs — harassment prevention (mandatory in CA, CT, DE, IL, ME, NY), management training, DEI initiatives, workplace safety. Specify which training and whether the state mandates it.
• Benefits administration or advisory — plan design, carrier selection, open enrollment support, ACA compliance. Benefits consulting overlaps with broker work, so clarify whether you are advising or administering.
• HRIS implementation — selecting, configuring, and migrating to a new HR information system. This is a project with a defined timeline, not an ongoing service.

Staffing and recruiting engagements

• Direct hire — permanent placement. You source, screen, and present candidates; the client hires them directly. Fee is typically a percentage of the candidate's first-year salary.
• Contract / temporary staffing — the worker is your employee (or your staffing firm's), placed at the client site. You handle payroll, workers' comp, and employment taxes. The client pays a bill rate that includes the worker's pay plus your markup.
• Temp-to-perm — starts as a contract assignment with a conversion option after a defined period. Your intake needs to capture the conversion fee structure and the evaluation timeline.
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) — you embed in the client's organization and manage all or part of their recruiting function. This is a large-scope engagement that requires detailed intake about the client's hiring volume, current process, and technology stack.
• Executive search — retained search for senior leadership positions. Different fee structure (typically one-third of first-year compensation, paid in installments), longer timeline, and deeper client immersion.

HR outsourcing

• PEO (Professional Employer Organization) — co-employment model where the PEO becomes the employer of record for tax and benefits purposes.
• ASO (Administrative Services Organization) — the client remains the employer of record; the ASO handles payroll, benefits administration, and HR support.
• HRO (Human Resources Outsourcing) — full or partial outsourcing of the HR function without the co-employment structure of a PEO.

Staffing-specific intake: the position profile

When the engagement is a staffing or recruiting assignment, the intake must capture a complete position profile. Sending the first candidate slate without this information is the fastest way to waste your recruiters' time and lose the client's confidence. Capture:

• Position title and department — the exact title the company uses internally, plus the department. "Business Analyst" in finance versus "Business Analyst" in IT are different roles with different skill requirements.
• Reporting structure — who does this position report to? What level is the hiring manager? This tells your recruiter how to position the opportunity and what seniority level the candidate needs.
• Job description — does one exist, or does it need to be written? If it exists, get a copy. If it does not, your intake form needs enough fields to build one: core responsibilities, required skills, preferred qualifications, and success metrics.
• Required vs. preferred qualifications — these must be separated clearly. A client who lists "MBA required" when they actually mean "MBA preferred" will reject your first three candidate slates and blame you for not understanding the role.
• Compensation range — salary, hourly rate, or on-target earnings (OTE) for commission-based roles. Get the actual range the client will pay, not the range they hope to pay. If the market rate for the role is $120K and the client's budget is $90K, that is a conversation to have at intake, not after you have sourced forty candidates.
• Benefits overview — what benefits package comes with the role? Health, dental, vision, 401(k) match, PTO policy, equity. Candidates ask about benefits in the first conversation. Your recruiter needs this information to sell the opportunity.
• Work arrangement — fully onsite, fully remote, hybrid (and if hybrid, how many days in-office). Post-2020, this is often the first filter candidates apply. If the role requires four days onsite in a suburban office park, your recruiter needs to know before sourcing remote-first candidates.
• Start date urgency — is this a backfill for someone who already left (urgent), a new headcount with a target start date, or a future need the client is getting ahead of? Urgency determines how you prioritize the search.
• Number of positions — one senior accountant is a targeted search. Eight warehouse associates is a volume play. The recruiting strategy is completely different.
• Interview process — how many rounds? Who is on the panel? Is there a skills test, case study, or work sample? What is the typical time from first interview to offer? A five-round process with a two-week gap between each round will lose top candidates to faster-moving competitors. That is useful information to surface at intake.
• Exclusivity — is this a retained search (exclusive to your firm) or contingency (multiple agencies competing)? Retained searches justify deeper investment. Contingency searches require faster turnaround because another agency might fill the role first.

HR consulting-specific intake: the organizational assessment

When the engagement is HR consulting rather than staffing, your intake needs to assess the client's current HR infrastructure and identify where the gaps are. This is diagnostic work — you are building a picture of what exists, what is missing, and what is actively creating risk.

• Current pain points — why is the client calling you now? Compliance gaps they just discovered? High turnover they cannot explain? A culture problem? A lawsuit or EEOC charge that forced them to realize they need professional HR support? The triggering event shapes the engagement priority.
• Employee count by state — this is not a nice-to-have. It is the single most important data point for compliance scoping. California alone has dozens of employer obligations that do not exist in most other states. New York City has requirements that differ from New York State. An employee count by state is a compliance map.
• Exempt vs. non-exempt mix — misclassification is one of the most common and expensive HR compliance failures. Understanding the client's current exempt/non-exempt split tells you immediately whether a classification audit should be part of the engagement.
• Current policies and documentation — does the client have an employee handbook? Offer letter templates? A termination procedure? Performance review process? Progressive discipline policy? Each "no" is a gap that increases risk. Each "yes" needs to be reviewed for compliance and currency.
• Pending issues — active EEOC charges, DOL audits, pending lawsuits, workers' compensation claims, unemployment appeals. These are time-sensitive matters that may need to be addressed before any longer-term consulting work begins. They also affect your professional liability exposure, so document them thoroughly.
• Benefits current state — current insurance carrier, plan type (HMO, PPO, HDHP), renewal date, contribution structure, and whether the client is satisfied with their current broker. If the client's renewal is in sixty days and they are unhappy with their rates, benefits consulting jumps to the top of the priority list.

Many of these HR consulting intake points overlap with what employment attorneys need to assess when a company comes to them with a workplace problem. If your firm also handles the legal side — or refers clients to employment counsel — see our employment law intake form guide for the litigation-focused counterpart to this intake process.

Compliance landscape: the regulatory context

HR compliance is not a single body of law. It is a patchwork of federal, state, and local requirements that vary by employer size, industry, and geography. Your intake needs to capture enough information to identify which regulations apply to this specific client:

• States with employees — every state where the client has W-2 employees or 1099 contractors who may be misclassified as such. Each state triggers different employment laws: at-will exceptions, paid sick leave, pay transparency, non-compete enforceability, final paycheck timing, and dozens more.
• Industry-specific regulations — healthcare employers must comply with HIPAA for employee health information, not just patient data. Financial services firms face FINRA background check requirements. Transportation companies must comply with DOT drug testing. Construction firms have OSHA requirements that differ from office environments. The industry determines which additional regulatory layer sits on top of general employment law.
• Union presence — does the client have any unionized workforce? A collective bargaining agreement overrides many standard HR policies and creates NLRA obligations that non-union employers do not have. If the client is non-union but in an industry with active organizing, that is worth noting too.
• Government contractor status — federal contractors and subcontractors above certain thresholds face OFCCP compliance: affirmative action plans (AAP), EEO-1 reporting, VETS-4212 reporting, Section 503 disability obligations, and pay equity analysis. These requirements are substantial and often overlooked by companies that became government contractors without realizing the HR compliance implications.
• I-9 and E-Verify practices — every employer must complete I-9 forms, but practices vary widely. Is the client using E-Verify (mandatory for federal contractors and in some states)? When was the last I-9 audit? Are forms being stored correctly? I-9 violations carry per-form penalties that escalate quickly across a workforce.

Billing and engagement terms

HR consulting and staffing use different fee structures, and your intake should establish the commercial terms before work begins — not in a separate conversation two weeks later when the first invoice is due:

• Fee structure — for staffing: contingency percentage (typically 15–25% of first-year salary for direct hire), bill rate and markup for contract placements, or flat fee for retained search (often one-third of projected compensation, paid in three installments). For consulting: hourly rate, project-based flat fee, or monthly retainer. Document the structure at intake so there is no ambiguity when the engagement letter follows.
• Replacement guarantee period — for direct-hire placements, what happens if the candidate leaves or is terminated within a defined period? Industry standard is 30–90 days. Some firms offer a prorated refund, others offer a free replacement search. This must be established before you present the first candidate.
• Payment terms — net 15, net 30, net 45. For staffing, weekly or bi-weekly invoicing is common because you are paying the contract worker before the client pays you. Cash flow management in staffing is existential — extended payment terms from a large client can create serious working capital pressure.
• Exclusivity and non-solicitation — is the client agreeing not to work with other staffing agencies on the same role? Is there a non-solicitation clause preventing the client from directly hiring candidates you introduced if the placement does not go through the first time? These terms protect your investment in the search and should be captured, not assumed.

Engagement logistics: making the work work

The operational details of how the engagement will actually run day-to-day are often left undefined, which creates friction as soon as the work starts:

• Primary point of contact — name, title, email, phone, and preferred communication method. For larger companies, the point of contact for a staffing engagement (often a hiring manager) may differ from the point of contact for an HR consulting engagement (often the CEO, COO, or head of HR).
• Decision-maker — who has final authority to approve placements, sign off on policy changes, or authorize additional scope? If the point of contact is not the decision-maker, you need to know who is and how to reach them.
• Timeline — when does the client expect to see first deliverables? For staffing, that is the first candidate slate. For consulting, it might be a preliminary compliance assessment or a draft handbook. Aligning on timeline at intake prevents the "it has been two weeks and we have not heard anything" conversation.
• Communication preferences — email updates, weekly status calls, a shared project management tool, or a Slack channel? How frequently does the client want to be updated? Some clients want a weekly email summary. Others want to be copied on every candidate submission. Document the preference so your team delivers information in the format the client expects.

Building a practice on structured intake

HR consulting and staffing are relationship businesses, but relationships do not scale without process. A firm that relies on a principal consultant's memory of what the client said in the introductory call will struggle to delegate work to associates, onboard new recruiters, or maintain service quality across a growing client base. The intake form is the institutional memory that makes delegation possible.

When a recruiter picks up a job order, they should be able to read the intake and understand the client company, the role, the compensation, the interview process, and the urgency without asking anyone a question. When a consultant begins a compliance audit, they should be able to open the intake and know which states to research, what pending issues to prioritize, and what systems they will need access to. That is what a complete intake delivers — not just data, but the ability to start working immediately.

If you are building documentation across a professional services practice, the Professional Services Bundle includes HR & staffing alongside 34 other service categories, each with profession-specific intake fields.