Q&A: connecting veterans to civil service employment and 55A Pathways

If I may.

And what is your connection with connecting veterans to civil service employment?

I know that, you know, they take civil service exams, they get extra points, but how do we get veterans more effectively into a civil service pipeline?

So that they can actually access jobs and use those skills that in many ways can be transferable to the many hundreds of job titles in the city of New York.

Thank you for that question.

So that is something that we are very cognizant of at our agency, specifically with the utilization of the 55A Pathways program.

So that is something that we educate our veterans that we are seeing about to indicate on their resume and cover letter that they are 55A eligible.

We have also worked with the state to ensure that a veteran who has a disability rating does not need to provide additional documentation to open up the case with AccessVR, where they are able to just be qualified for 55A.

In addition to that, in 2024, we had a proposal accepted by DCAS that now for anyone who is serving active duty, they take their civil service exam.

We were seeing this a lot with firefighters, cops who were taking the test.

And then since they were deployed during the time they needed to prove residency, they weren't also receiving the additional points for residency.

The proposal that was accepted was that if they were from New York, but they couldn't prove that residency within the two years because they were deployed, they will continue to receive the residency points.