The Big Apple wants YOU for its civil service workforce.

With more than 10,000 job openings within the municipal workforce, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), the city agency tasked with —among other things— recruiting, hiring and training city employees, told amNewYork Friday that it was looking to raise awareness about working for the city along with encouraging New Yorkers to join its ranks.

Yume Kitasei, the city’s commissioner at DCAS, who began her career in civil service right after she graduated from college said that working for the city is a “great feeling.”

“ I know it sounds really corny, but you do have the satisfaction going to work and not only feeling like you’re making a difference and you’re having a positive impact on the city that you love, but also that everyone around you is motivated to do the same,” Kitasei said in an interview with amNewYork.

The first thing that prospective employees need to understand about jobs with New York City, Kitasei said, is that the diversity of careers offered by the city is as broad as its residents. 

But the paths to a career in city government have several different starting points for prospective job seekers to consider.

Search Online

The city’s de facto job board or classified ad is the City Jobs website, cityjobs.nyc.gov. There, New Yorkers can search for jobs, filter job postings by city agency, or simply view all the available openings within the city workforce.

The City Jobs landing page also directs potential workers to resources and workforce training programs run by the city, as well as internships and fellowships available for high school, college students and recent grads.

Kitasei said that recruiting and training the city’s workforce was not just a priority for DCAS, but a broader effort across the city.

“ This is a multi-agency effort, but one of the best ways to do it [job training] is if you become an apprentice, or you go through one of our fellowship programs— we’ve got a number of different pathways,” she said.

In fact, searching online is how DCAS Commissioner Kitasei said she got her first civil service job as a community liaison for Community Board 1 in Manhattan. 

Go to an event

One of the lesser-known aspects of DCAS is its role in recruiting workers for the city. The workforce management agency lists recruitment events on the City Jobs website about a month in advance.

Commissioner Kitasei told amNewYork that the city was especially interested in recruiting for STEM jobs.

“All of the technical jobs that are associated with a lot of those STEM areas are definitely areas where we are trying to staff up and always trying to find,” Kitasei said. “Electricians—we love electricians. We’re constantly looking for mechanics.”

She said that DCAS collaborates with city agencies like Small Business Services to offer hiring events that not only expose job seekers to public sector jobs, but also those in the private sector. She even hinted at an upcoming popup jobs event that DCAS isn’t ready to announce yet.

Take a Civil Service Exam

Jobs in NYC fall into four categories, or “classes,” each with its own requirements and hiring process.

Most jobs within NYC’s civil service are classed as “competitive” which means that job seekers vying for these positions are required to take an exam to prove their qualifications. Over 80% of the positions offered in the civil service are classified as “competitive.”

Jobs considered “competitive” can range from civil engineers to corrections officers to morticians to parks horticulturalists, DCAS officials said.

But nearly 20% of the rest of the municipal workforce jobs are considered “non-competitive,” “exempt,” and “labor class” positions. These positions do not require job applicants to complete a civil service exam for various reasons, such as: needing no specific skill requirements for labor class jobs, or requiring skills that cannot be easily measured in a test format for non-competitive jobs or jobs of a sensitive nature which are considered “exempt.”

Regardless, any position posted on the NYCJobs website should list all requirements, DCAS officials said. The civil service exam is only one way to measure an applicant’s qualifications.

“The civil service exam was created to make sure that everybody has equal access to jobs and that jobs are being based on merit,” Kitasei said.

The Future of NYC Job Applications

But the process to get a job through the civil service exam is lengthy and convoluted. It’s something that DCAS and Council Member Shirley Aldebol both identified as a bottleneck in the hiring process at a council oversight hearing on municipal vacancies in April.

Kitasei said the complex nature of gaining employment is one of her pet peeves and something she aims to streamline.

During the oversight hearing DCAS officials identified the infrequency of civil service exams as an area to be improved, but Kitasei also told amNewYork that the agency would prioritize user experience and speed of applications.

“Is this actually easy to understand?” she said. “If you look at our information, which is based on the website, how do we make it easier? Are there systems that we can build out that would make the process smoother for our job applicants?”