Job providers are going to greater lengths than they have in 20 years to find their best fits.

They’re more proactive in recruiting. They’re trying to hire people faster. They’re even dropping certain drugs from employment screening in non-government, non-transportation occupations.

Many more businesses have shifted away from mandatory marijuana testing in the past six months, said James Reidy, a management-side labor and employment lawyer from New Hampshire who has focused on the subject. “But I think they aren’t necessarily advertising it,” he said.

It’s the first major workplace drug policy shift since widespread screening began about 30 years ago, but is it catching on here in Iowa?

The Des Moines Register surveyed multiple central Iowa job placement firms and found that while the move away from marijuana tests is happening in the state, it is far from a sea change.

Kim Kramer, the Iowa manager for QPS Employment Group, which works with about 100 clients in Des Moines and has 1,800 clients across five Midwestern states, said she could count on one hand the number of companies that have eliminated marijuana screening from the hiring process. [Read more at Des Moines Register]