Every year, Customs hires about 1,000 highly qualified employees for a wide variety of occupations to replace Customs employees who leave the agency. But congressional initiatives can increase staffing requirements - the recent initiative to add frontline Customs officer positions is a perfect example.

Advance planning is the key to meeting the Service's strategic recruitment needs, but the good news is that the Customs Quality Recruitment (QR) process is making Customs a front-runner in the race to hire the best and brightest. Under QR, a network of national recruiters has mounted an ongoing campaign to promote Customs as an "Employer of Choice." Recruiters are out there on the front lines, canvassing schools and other organizations for likely candidates and encouraging them to apply as soon as nationwide vacancy announcements are issued.

Photo Credit: Gerald L. Nino

Annmarie Pecore being interviewed by Supervisory Inspectors William Doyle and Mary Carman. Pecore passed the written assessment and drug test, and interviewed successfully for the job, all in the same day.

With increased staffing requirements, particularly for remote northern border locations, Customs needed to accelerate the inspector hiring process. In March, four teams of personnel specialists and inspectors were sent to key northern border locations for 16 days to recruit and hire high quality applicants - on the spot. Ads in local papers brought in over 1,400 applicants. The applicants signed up within hours of the publication dates and received screening and interviews from team members.

This special recruitment effort paid off as planned when Ms. Annmarie Pecore from Peru, N.Y., was interviewed for an inspector position in Champlain, N.Y., by supervisory inspectors William Doyle (Philadelphia) and Mary Carman (Dulles). Pecore passed the written assessment and drug test, and interviewed successfully for the job, all in the same day. Norceia Daughtridge of the Office of Human Resources Management witnessed Pecore accepting Customs tentative job offer later that day.

Pecore was among the more than 750 successful applicants who accepted Customs "same-day" tentative offers for northern border positions under the Federal Career Intern Program. These applicants must still pass a medical examination and background investigation. In the meantime, the positive response to its recruitment efforts is allowing Customs not just to fill immediate hiring needs, but to build a surplus of cleared applicants for FY03 hiring as well.