Hiring Halls: Rebuilding the City with a New Generation of Public Workers
By MIKE LEE
Workers, the City needs you!
To fill a significant gap in vacant job positions across City agencies, District Council 37 partnered with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to host ‘hiring halls’ throughout New York City.
So far, they are an outstanding success, with more than 6,000 applicants seen in eight events held in the last three months.
The hiring halls take a more proactive approach in filling vacancies by holding multiple events in neighborhoods where the public workforce lives and streamlining the process to include onsite interviews and opportunities for taking the Civil Service Exam.
At a Hiring Hall in Staten Island on May 11, the City reached 1,000 official job offers to applicants, filling 46% of the positions featured at these events.
“The increasing impact of the City’s vacancies on their ability to provide services required an innovative and proactive approach that streamlined the process for filling positions,” said DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido. “The success of these hiring halls is a clear picture of the demand for reliable employment in New York City and the desire to work in public service. We’re grateful for the partnership with Mayor Adams and the incredible staff at DCAS for making these hiring halls come to life.”
Because of the impact of the pandemic on the City’s public workforce, the Adams Administration joined DC 37 in working diligently to meet the challenge of filling thousands of available civil service positions.
In the last three months, by helping the City coordinate and publicize the Hiring Halls, the union has taken a hands-on approach to rebuild a vibrant workforce and provide the services communities rely on.
These Hiring Halls are unlike traditional job fairs. Instead, they go deeper and with more immediacy, leading to interviews and conditional job offers all in the same day. At these events, representatives from more than a dozen City agencies are ready to meet and interview job applicants for available positions ranging from entry-level hourly to salaried positions to high-paying technical roles.
As part of creating a new generation of workers in civil service, the City is reforming the hiring model to encourage more applicants to enter the workforce. These reforms include standardizing the pre-hire process and expanding the emphasis on qualifications for entry-level positions to prioritize work experience and needed skills over strict educational requirements.
The hiring halls are ongoing throughout the summer.
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