Vacancies are reaching a point of crisis as the City faces challenges bringing on tomorrow’s municipal workforce. State and local governments have struggled to attract talent to public service in recent years: nationwide, applications to these roles declined by 32% per job from 2019 to 2021. Further adding to the challenge, municipal talent recruitment has typically been highly passive, which further limits the pool of potential candidates in comparison to the active recruitment done by the private sector. 

In order to maintain quality in City services and to meet Mayor Adams’ ambitious long-term economic goals, the City must rethink its approach to recruitment. The City is in need of a proactive strategy to bring more attention to critical vacancies and ensure key functions are adequately staffed.

Designate a Chief Recruitment Officer

The City should designate a Chief Recruitment Officer, either through internal promotion or via new hire, to develop and implement a strategy to bring in new talent, including overseeing the other recruitment recommendations in this report. Like the Chief Retention Officer, this individual should sit in City Hall to have a Citywide perspective on hiring needs across all agencies. Though it is not feasible for this individual to actively recruit for the 23,000 current vacancies in City government, the Officer should work closely with Deputy Mayors, Commissioners, the DCAS Office of Citywide Recruitment, and designees from Human Resources teams at agencies to identify priority vacancies and bring in new talent that is representative of the diversity of our city. A Chief Recruitment Officer should also develop a plan to prioritize hiring in-demand workers with high levels of digital literacy so we can modernize the workforce.

Recruiters are common in the private sector. In comparison, the City, which has twice the number of employees as Apple or Google, does not have any robust centralized active recruitment beyond general partnerships with academic and community institutions via the DCAS Office of Citywide Recruitment. Other government agencies have also been making more active recruitment efforts. For example, in 2022 Boston named a Chief People Officer to make Boston a more competitive employer and deploy new incentives to attract and retain employees.

Identify offices with the greatest staffing needs

The Chief Recruitment Officer should coordinate with agencies to identify hard-to-recruit roles and provide targeted support to divisions facing the greatest needs. The Performance Management team at the Mayor’s Office of Operations already collects data that tracks the quality and delivery of key services across all City agencies. The Chief Recruitment Officer should work in close coordination with this team to proactively track when agencies have marked declines in service quality. The Officer should then flag any concerning trends for agency leadership and partner with managers to develop a staffing and workforce plan to fill the gap. If departures are identified but no significant impact is found on agency functions or service delivery, those positions can remain unfilled. 

One potential strategy to fill critical staffing gaps is adding those positions to the list of roles that the City maintains that are deemed hard-to-recruit. New employees filling roles on this list are exempt from meeting residency requirements, which dictate that non-uniformed civil servants must reside in or move to the five boroughs shortly after starting employment. Some City offices have experience utilizing this list to fill critical gaps: the City recently added a number of attorney roles to the hard-to-recruit list following staffing shortages. Though we are supportive of residency requirements, this list may be better leveraged to tackle other major barriers to hiring in these priority roles.

Provide recruitment support for hard-to-recruit roles

To rethink how it approaches filling critical roles, the City should provide agencies with additional support for roles on the hard-to-recruit list. Led by the Chief Recruitment Officer, this could entail prioritizing certain roles for active recruitment. City Hall has already recognized the need for active recruitment, working with labor unions to create a $70 million fund for salary adjustments for hard-to-recruit positions and to host hiring halls to promote its vacancies and provide on-the-spot interviews. Expanding these efforts to better target and attract in-demand employees to hard-to-recruit roles has the potential to provide even greater returns. This could be especially useful in underrepresented communities in an effort to diversify the municipal workforce.

Municipal talent recruitment has typically been highly passive. Jobs are posted to a government portal with the expectation that candidates will apply. However, according to HR Cloud, 73% of candidates are passive job seekers, meaning they are not seeking employment but would be open to the right opportunity. Accessing the pool of passive job-seekers requires proactive searching that the City currently does not perform in a systematic way. Private sector recruiters cold call, e-mail, and network to compete for the best candidates. Though it requires resources, this methodology has a high return on investment. A study found 1 in every 72 recruited candidates is hired, compared to 1 in every 152 candidates who apply on their own.

Potential active recruitment strategies could include contracting with recruiting firms specifically for those roles, a strategy other government agencies have used successfully. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation mines resumes on third-party recruiter websites to fill roles. Recruitment strategies could also include better utilization of social media as a tool, as the City of San Antonio in Texas does with its live “Chat with a Recruiter” events on Facebook that allow potential candidates to pose questions. 

Other strategies include expanding the capacity of the DCAS Office of Citywide Recruitment to connect hiring managers and Human Resources teams with job fairs at relevant schools and programs. Where appropriate, the City could also work with unions and agencies to reconsider qualifications and reprioritize the scheduling of civil service exams for in-demand roles. 

Hiring strong leaders with a track record of success in other jurisdictions may also help attract traditionally hard-to-recruit talent. Established public sector innovators like the former president of the MTA’s NYC Transit, Andy Byford, are not only poised to benefit the agency they lead, but can also attract a new cohort of fresh talent. Rather than solely relying on existing City personnel to identify impactful leaders nationally and internationally, the City could also follow the lead of agencies like the National Institutes of Health that tap outside experts to help source and recruit candidates.

Market the City’s mission-driven workplace

New York City should leverage the sense of purpose many employees seek from their work by running a compelling marketing campaign. The campaign could highlight and celebrate the work of current City employees to put a human face on government, allowing potential hires to envision themselves in government roles. The City should also re-frame its excellent benefits package for a new audience, highlighting perks that are not often found in other sectors.

Many individuals do not think of local government jobs when pursuing careers, even though titles and functions can be similar across sectors. An Accenture survey found that nearly half of those who are or have been employed in the public sector say it is an attractive place to work, compared to only 20% of those with no experience in government. Government work often has a negative reputation, with many viewing it as a dead-end job riddled with bureaucracy. 

At the same time, there is growing demand for mission-driven careers. Many millennial and Gen Z employees increasingly value a sense of purpose in their work, stating that mission may be more important than a paycheck. They are motivated by societal issues like climate change and are willing to volunteer, contact elected officials, and engage in mission-driven activism on personal time. Yet this has not translated to civically-minded individuals recognizing local government as a pathway to large-scale societal change. Curiosity about mission-driven work and a desire for workplace stability can also potentially prompt workers to shift from the private to the public sector, especially in the face of private sector layoffs, which have recently hit the tech and media sectors.

Cities and states acknowledging this trend have engaged in robust marketing efforts to emphasize purpose within their outward-facing brands. Denver ran ads reading, “Be a part of the city you love” online, on public transit, at movie theaters, and on billboards — resulting in a 10% increase in job applicants. Minneapolis launched the tagline “Serving Communities. Building Careers,” while San Francisco urged candidates to “Choose Purpose” after market research found that a more meaningful job might motivate someone to leave a higher paying one. To attract employees seeking to do transformative work, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission re-branded as an innovative technology company rather than a transportation agency. Eighty-six percent of Human Resources professionals acknowledge that recruiting is becoming more like marketing, demonstrating the need for the City to take more active measures in this space.

The City should better publicize its benefits, as well as reframe how it describes them. The City offers a scholarship program for City workers to obtain graduate degrees in areas ranging from law to computer science. Employer-supported educational opportunities have broad appeal, with 94% of employees reporting that they would stay longer at their jobs if they were offered. Benefits have been a consistent selling point for public service recruitment over the years. However, with the rise of job hopping among millennials and people’s priorities shifting to immediate financial concerns such as student loan debt, the government needs to re-frame its benefits offerings to address these trends. For example, instead of focusing on a retirement package and pensions that reward long tenure, City government should instead center its premium health insurance and student loan forgiveness in campaigns to recruit workers and effectively compete with the private sector.

Offer incentives for joining government

City government should get creative when considering incentives for hard-to-recruit roles. The Chief Recruitment Officer could coordinate internal surveys and focus groups to determine the most effective tools to incentivize the most critical roles, and work with agencies and labor unions to identify pathways to add incentives to increase employment.

Many governments are doing this already, following the lead of the private sector in recent years by offering one-time financial incentives, like signing bonuses, for new hires. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the City Council approved hiring incentives of $3,000 for Police Academy roles, $2,000 for 911 operators, and created a total pool of $500,000 in incentive payments for critical roles such as electricians. 

Other employers have been creative with the types of incentives they offer. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is offering housing stipends to qualified police department applicants. Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall, a not-for-profit community hospital, is allowing employees to transfer their unused vacation days to pay off their student debt, at no additional expense to the employer. Surveys conducted by Johnson County, Kansas found that employees wanted more choice in how they received raises, resulting in policies allowing them in the form of paid time off, a contribution to the deferred compensation program, or a lump sum. 

Financial incentives in New York City may be limited by existing regulations and union agreements, however the City’s first major labor agreement under the Adams administration demonstrates a step in the right direction. The tentative agreement with District Council 37 includes the establishment of a trust fund to help members with child care needs as well as compounded wage increases of 16.21% over the five-year contract. This shows the City’s appetite and ability to creatively respond to recent staffing challenges. To further improve hiring and retention citywide, the City should build on this progress to address roles that fall outside of this union and provide further incentives for in-demand new hires.

Implement creative interim solutions to ease staffing burdens

The City has already made some strides in examining roadblocks to hiring and rolling out new programs and policies to ease these burdens. City government should continue expanding existing efforts to fill additional critical roles. The Chief Recruitment Officer could support specific agencies in the rollout of these policies.

For example, NYC Parks has embraced innovative measures to address its recent lifeguard shortage. The test to become a lifeguard was considered a major obstacle and was subsequently reformed to ease testing difficulty. Aspiring lifeguards who come close to passing the test are now offered free swim classes to help them pass the test when taking it a second time. Those with less swim competency may now be eligible to oversee much smaller, shallower pools. Learning from NYC Parks’ action plan on lifeguards, the Chief Recruitment Officer could work with City agencies and labor unions to identify pathways to new employment.

The City has also taken innovative measures to address the shortage of lawyers in City government, creating a Legal Fellows program to allow early career attorneys at law firms to work for the City for one year on a pro-bono basis while they continue to be paid by their private employer. The City should also make efforts to roll out a similar program for the tech sector. This could entail partnering with tech companies, so their employees have the opportunity to support the City part-time or full-time as fellows to modernize technology systems and the City’s cybersecurity infrastructure. This could be especially impactful, given the rapid pace of technological changes and the fact that the City team that works on cybersecurity has a vacancy rate of 36%.

Though many solutions to ease barriers to employment in City government are immediately implementable, others may require further assessment and negotiation. Where appropriate, the City should work closely with agencies and labor unions over the long-term to reevaluate the exams, skills and other requirements currently mandated for certain critical positions.