SF officials approve Mayor Breed's plan to expedite city hiring process
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco Mayor London Breed's plan to expedite the city's hiring process was approved by the Civil Service Commission on Wednesday.
The city of San Francisco is currently facing a vacancy rate of over 13 percent for permanent positions, which is double its pre-COVID rate. Nearly 4,600 positions are vacant across all city agencies, including essential jobs like bus operators, police officers and public works personnel.
With an average of 250 days to fill a permanent position, Breed said San Francisco is losing applicants who are interested in working for the city, but cannot afford long wait times.
"One of the fundamental goals of good government is modernizing how our city works, including filling city positions faster so we can be more responsive to the needs of the people of this city," Breed said.
San Francisco will now make online, on-demand job testing available for jobs with high vacancy and turnover rates, so residents can be placed on an eligible list for consideration by departments within minutes of submitting their job application.
When there is no active list of eligible candidates, departments will also be allowed to conduct a recruitment process without an exam, and instead with provisional appointments. Candidate vetting processes will also be expedited for current city employees hoping to move into different permanent positions.
With the new improvements, the city's Department of Human Resources will be given more authority to decide how long tests for positions will be, create a timeline for job postings and recruitment and overall make the hiring process more consistent. The new rules are said to cut hiring times by up to 40 percent for some jobs.
The human resources department will also alter its internal policies on the hiring process, which do not need to be approved by the Civil Service Commission, to improve the hiring time even further.
"The city's hiring process is complex and requires changes at every stage to make it work for city government, applicants, and the community we serve," said Carol Isen, Human Resources director. "I applaud the commission for moving these changes forward today and look forward to working with commissioners and our labor partners on future proposals to streamline our hiring process."
The proposed policy first came about after Breed tasked a team of analysts to review the city's hiring process and vacancy rates. Analysts found that policies built over the past 120 years were slowing down the hiring timeline, and did not utilize technology and best practices used today.
Analysts also looked at practices of over two dozen local and state governments to better craft the city's new improvements.
