Job Placement Services

What job placement is

Job placement is a direct rehabilitation service. A certified rehabilitation counselor works with an injured or disabled worker to find and secure employment that fits the restrictions a treating provider has documented. The counselor builds a vocational profile from the person's education, skills and work history, prepares the person to apply and interview, contacts employers who hire for the target occupations, and records every step until the referral is closed. The deliverable is the documented search, every contact and application dated and reported, and where the search succeeds, a placement.

A forensic vocational evaluation answers a different question. A vocational expert is retained to give an opinion for a court or a claim about whether a person can work, in which occupations and at what wage, and that opinion is written to be disclosed, deposed and cross-examined. Placement is not an opinion about capacity. It takes the restrictions as given, treats the person as a job seeker rather than an evaluee, and is measured by the search it conducts and the record it keeps. The two services draw on the same training, the same occupational classifications and the same labor market sources, which is why a rehabilitation counselor can do either and why KWVRS keeps them apart within any one matter.

Who refers for job placement

Most placement referrals come from the payers on a disability claim: workers' compensation carriers, third-party administrators and long term disability insurers whose claims professionals want a return to work with a new employer when the pre-injury job is no longer available or no longer within the restrictions. The referral names the claim, the scope and hours authorized, the reporting interval the referral source expects and the restrictions on file. A nurse case manager or an adjuster is usually the day-to-day contact, and the counselor reports to that person.

Counsel also refers. An attorney whose client has a duty to mitigate damages may retain KWVRS to run and document a supervised search, so that the file shows what the client did to find work, when, and with what result. Counsel on the other side of a claim may ask for a labor market survey with live leads that shows what openings exist within the restrictions, or for documentation of a search already under way. In each case the attorney is the referral source, sets the scope, and receives the reports.

Placement and mitigation of damages

Where a person has a duty to mitigate, the search log is the record. KWVRS keeps a dated log of every employer contacted, every application submitted, every interview held and every offer made, accepted or declined, with the occupation, the wage offered where the employer stated one and the outcome. Status reports summarize the log at the interval the referral source sets, and the closure report collects the whole of it. The log shows effort: what was tried, how often, in which occupations and in which labor market, and how the person took part.

The log has a limit. It records a search; it is not an opinion on earning capacity, on the occupations a person could hold or on the wage those occupations pay. Those are the questions a vocational evaluation answers, and KWVRS does not testify to them in a matter where it placed the person. Counsel who needs both the search record and an expert opinion on capacity in the same matter retains them from different firms, and the placement counselor's part in the case is the record itself.

How placement is kept separate from expert work

A forensic expert who also places the same person invites the argument that the placement was shaped to fit the opinion, and the rehabilitation counseling code of ethics treats the two roles as a dual relationship. The rule at KWVRS is that it does not provide placement services to a person for whom KWVRS is, or is expected to be, the retained forensic expert in the same matter, and it does not accept a forensic engagement for a person it is placing in that matter. The rule applies whoever refers and whichever service was asked for first.

The check is made at referral. Every placement referral is checked against the firm's open forensic matters before it is accepted. A match is flagged for review before any work begins, and the default is to decline or to refer the placement to another provider. Where a referral source wants both services for the same person in the same matter, KWVRS provides one of them and says which.

How a job placement engagement proceeds

A job placement engagement runs through the five steps below, from the referral and the conflict check to follow-up after a hire, with the authorized hours and the reporting interval fixed at the start. The job placement process page describes each step and what the referral source supplies at each.

Typical timeline

Placement has no report turnaround, because the deliverable is the documented search rather than a report. The phases below run for the period the referral source authorizes, with the intake meeting set once the referral is accepted and status reports at the agreed interval. The job placement timeline page states what each phase involves and what moves it.

What a job placement engagement costs

Placement is charged for the counselor's time, by the hour or within the hours the referral source authorizes, with a written estimate and the rate schedule in hand before any work starts. The total follows the scope referred, how narrow the restrictions are and how many employers the search has to reach. The job placement cost page sets out the drivers and the billing terms.

Reporting to the referral source

Status reports go to the referral source at the interval it sets, and each covers the period since the last: the employer contacts made, the applications and interviews, the person's participation, any change in the restrictions or the medical picture that the referral source has passed on, and what the next period's search will target. A report that shows a stalled search says why, so that the referral source can decide whether to widen the target occupations, add training or close the file.

The closure report is issued when the person is hired and the follow-up period ends, or when the referral source closes the file. It states the outcome, the occupation and the employer where there is a hire, the wage and hours offered where the employer stated them, the complete search log with its dates, the job-seeking skills work done and the counselor's observations on the person's participation. The referral source owns the report and decides who else receives it.

Where KWVRS provides job placement

KWVRS provides job placement in person in New Jersey and Virginia and remotely elsewhere. In-person work covers the intake meeting and the job-seeking skills sessions; remote work covers the same steps by telephone and video, with employer contact by telephone and email and applications submitted online. The person's own labor market is the search area in either case: a remote engagement still targets employers within a reasonable commute of where the person lives.