Hudson asks about hard-to-recruit specialty titles and urgent situations

And then I just had another question.

Many city positions are vital to the health and well-being of New Yorkers, but require extremely technical and detailed knowledge.

For example,

For example, the current Legionnaires outbreak may have been exacerbated by staffing shortages for water inspectors, and trained DOB building inspectors are integral to support the city's ambitious housing strategy.

How does DCAS target its recruitment for hard-to-recruit or specialty titles that require immediate staffing of highly qualified technical experts?

And are there any special processes for urgent situations, such as the Legionnaires outbreak?

Are there methods to expedite accreditation or certification for positions that require such credentials?

So what I will start by saying is that, you know, DCAS, we work in partnership with city agencies to develop our annual examination schedule.

You know, 80% of the positions that are used across the city requires exams.

So that's first and foremost.

Our first step with agencies is understanding their immediate hiring needs to ensure that we're developing a recruitment strategy to support their immediate and or future hiring needs.

Can I just ask you there, do those assessments ever change in real time?

So you might do, you know, you might.

Coordinate with or find out from an agency at the beginning of the year what their needs may be, and then you have an outbreak such as this Legionnaires outbreak, and then the needs may change.

How quickly are you able to shift your recruitment efforts?

We're able to shift immediately.

So immediately meaning we can move an exam.

Later in the exam schedule to give the agent

see more flexibility to conduct interview-based hiring, or add an exam to the annual examination schedule and use the applicant pool, for instance, as a recruitment source.

So as folks are applying, we provide that data to agencies so that they can immediately engage with prospective applicants for immediate hiring needs.

We also have the Office of Citywide Recruitment, boots on the ground, that can help amplify immediate hiring needs and also host what we call special hiring events to attract top talent for immediate hiring needs.

So it's really more about agencies communicating their needs to us and us being available to, you know, immediately available to address any hiring needs that they may have.