The following is an extended version of the story that appears in our latest print edition.

 

There were all manner of City jobs up for grabs at the NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services job fair held at Monroe College in Fordham Manor on Saturday, April 22. New York City Mayor Eric Adams also showed up to encourage Bronxites, and others who had traveled to the Boogie Down, about the benefits of working for his administration.

 

Addressing the sizeable afternoon crowd of an estimated 350 people, which according to the fair organizers, had dwindled since the morning, Adams said, “We have thousands of jobs, thousands of jobs, and many of you have attempted to get the services you wanted from the City, and because we have not had the number of people to fill all those jobs, we want to reach out to the community and say, ‘We know the type of city you want!’”

 

He continued, “You know how the City needs to operate based on your experiences throughout the year. Now, you can come in and be part of City government.” Adams talked up what he said were “good, union jobs,” with retirement and great benefits.

 

The mayor continued, “It’s one of the best jobs you can have. I was a DC 37 member when I was a clerk in the district attorney’s office. I was a PBA member when I was a police officer, my mother was a DC 37 member as a food service worker. My brother was a union member.” He added, “This is the first time, in probably all the time we can remember, that we have a mayor that is a card-carrying union member!”

We spoke to “Candice,” a job seeker attending the fair about what she thought of the event. “I actually think this event was a really good idea because a lot of people are looking for work right now, especially after COVID, and we’re looking for jobs with good benefits and things that can actually help,” she said. “So, I really appreciate Monroe having this job fair here today.” Asked if there were City departments she was particularly interested in, she said, “I really want to do like customer service representative so right now, I’m on the line for the DDS so I’m excited, and I’m ready to see if they have any open positions.”

 

We spoke to two other female attendees who declined to be identified. One said she currently worked for the NYPD and her friend said she was interested in joining the NYPD. Asked what they thought of the event, the current NYPD employee said, “I think it’s great. I think it’s very nice for the community that they’re doing this, and I think it can help a lot of people to figure things out.”

 

The woman added that she was just looking around to see if she could find something better than her current position, though she added that she was “fine” in her current job too. Asked if she enjoyed working for the City, she said, “Yeah, I do. It feels very secure.” Of the event itself, she added, “I noticed there are openings here that you wouldn’t find if you didn’t come to the event.” We asked if the City did not advertise internally.

 

She replied, “They do, but you have to kind of know where to look, so this is a good way to get people to actually come and talk and see ‘Oh, I didn’t know this is available,’ so I think that it’s good to attend such events.” The woman’s friend, the NYPD job seeker, then said of her friend, “She kind of invited me here and it’s great. It opens opportunities for people like me who are new immigrants and stuff, for people that are working towards residency or citizenship. It’s great. It’s a good beginning.”

 

We asked her if the sometimes controversial image that some New Yorkers have of the NYPD colored her opinion at all when considering working for the department. “I think it’s how you see things, how people experience them, themselves,” she said. “I, honestly, never had a problem with it [the department] myself. If I were to have a problem with the NYPD, it’s because of the police officer and not exactly because of the program. Although I do understand that they’re trained to treat people in a certain way, I don’t think that people should go into really harsh manners in implementing those things that they’re taught in the NYPD. I just think it’s a personal thing. I don’t think it’s the entire unit of the NYPD.”

Her NYPD-employed friend concurred, saying, “Yeah, it’s what she said; it depends. You’re taught to handle people in a certain way for public safety, but it falls into your discretion to do so or not, right? Like it has to do with who you are, in reality, because you have power in your hands and you can do better.”

 

The NYPD-employed woman continued, “There is a controversy. Some people hate NYPD, some people love us and they thank us in the street, but at the end of the day, it has to do with your personal experiences, right? Like if my child was beaten to death, I would hate the cops wouldn’t I? But if they came to my house and saved me, or helped me with something, I would love them. We need to keep an open mind and understand the other side. Like they’re here to help us primarily. Now if you have a few incidents of mishap, I guess it happens, you know?”

 

We also spoke to DCAS Commissioner Dawn M. Pinnock and asked if the turnout was what she had anticipated. “Absolutely!” she said. “The event has been tremendous. This is actually our fifth government hiring hall. Our goal is to hit every borough multiple times so we’ve been doing these events every week, and we’re going to continue to do that until June 30. The goal is for us to aggressively and boldly try to offer as many positions as we can to New Yorkers who are interested in working in government.”

 

Pinnock went on to say that New York City, similar to other municipalities, was dealing with a staffing shortage. “So, in order to provide the best services and continuous service to New Yorkers, we want to fill our jobs quickly,” she said. In the past she said they would have thousands of applicants responding online to numerous job offer postings, but now she said they’ve decided to completely revamp their hiring approach.

 

“We wanted to scale that back, come to the community, bring the jobs to the community,” she said. “So, in this particular setting you can actually be interviewed today and receive a conditional job offer today. So, this is unprecedented. It’s something we’ve never done.”

We asked Pinnock if remote work was available or if all jobs were on site in Manhattan. “For now, and I think that it’s been made pretty widely known that for New York City government, there really is no telework program currently,” Pinnock said. “There’s also been talks about there being some kind of agreement, about thinking about how best the City of New York may want to pilot that, in partnership with DC 37, as part of a recently negotiated agreement, but for now, we’re very transparent when folks ask about the schedules. We share that.”

 

We asked what the situation was for immigrants who might be interested in working for the City. Pinnock said, “From a visa standpoint, the City of New York doesn’t officially sponsor individuals. However, we do have our public engagement unit who comes to every job offering, every government hiring hall, and we walk people through the process of getting the appropriate documentation to be legally able to work within government.”

 

She added, “So we felt that having them here, along with individuals who provide translation services, interpretation services, really ensures that everyone who wants to work in government knows that we are an accessible government.” Asked which were the most popular City departments, Pinnock laughed and said, “It has to be my agency! We have our internships here, where we’re letting our recent college grads know about government, so that table has been buzzing, and we also have some other positions, one in our fleet area, energy management area, but if I’m also being honest, we certainly have had many folks who want to work for the New York City Housing Authority. They have many vacancies… Department of Buildings and Department of Health.”

 

Job seeker, Cosbert Henry, told Norwood News he was browsing online looking for City jobs when he found information on the job fair, and decided to apply. “They responded, I uploaded my resume, and I got invited to the job fair,” he said. Asked if he was interested in any one City department in particular, he said, “Yeah, Department of Social Service.” Asked why, he said, “My background is pretty much in health education and substance counseling, and I feel that a community coordinator position kind of fits into the realm of what I’ve studied and gone about.”

 

Asked if he felt the job fair was a useful way of searching for employment, he said, “It’s been useful in terms of the folks that are here, helping out the agency they’re representing, when they’re giving you advice as it relates to what job may fit you well. They say, ‘Okay, what we’re hiring for right now is not your background,’ but they will take your resume, so at least they’re giving you hope.”

We later asked Scott Kleinman from the Upper West Side how he heard about the job fair. “Quite a while ago, I was actually in contact with Workforce 1, and they just kept me on their email list,” he said. Workforce1 Career Centers help New Yorkers prepare for, and connect to, jobs across the City’s five boroughs.

 

Kleinman continued, “A lot of it isn’t relevant to me, but then some of it is. So, I like to just keep in touch and I found out about this and I thought fantastic!” We mentioned that a lot of people at the event seemed to be past or existing City workers who were maybe looking for a change, and asked Kleinman if that was his situation also.

 

“Well, I work in New York City Health + Hospitals at the moment so I think, strictly speaking, I do work for the City. Frankly, working for the City isn’t my number one priority. I’ve graduated, and I’d like to get jobs in program management, project management. I looked at the jobs that they had here, and they have project management jobs so that’s why I’m here really. When do you ever get the chance to meet interviewers face-to-face just like that? Usually, you send an application off into the internet and you never hear again so this is a fantastic opportunity.”

 

We mentioned the added advantage of departments seemingly hiring on the spot on the day if they found suitable candidates. Kleinman said, “Yeah, I think it’s also relevant to the position you’re applying for. I think if you’re applying for, perhaps, like less-skilled jobs, it’s a lot more of a straightforward process. I’m applying for project management jobs, so as much as I’d like someone to say, ‘You’re hired,’ unfortunately, I think it’s going to be not quite that simple.”

 

We asked Kleinman how he felt about potentially working for the Adams administration given many New Yorkers are supportive of the mayor’s approach to running the City while others are less so. “I don’t know an awful lot about him,” he said. “I get an email from him being part of New York City Health + Hospitals. I like his energy. I think he brings a good vibrancy to it. In terms of his policies, he may be, it seems to me, I don’t know the specifics, a little sort of police-focused.”

 

He added, “He may well be promoting the law and order thing, and yet actually sort of doing other things but it definitely seems like he’s promoting the law and order which, you know, seeing as we’re post-Black Lives Matter, when we really got hopeful that we were going to sort of change our attitudes towards policing, it doesn’t seem as if that’s the perspective he’s coming from. So really, that’s my limited view on Mr. Adams.”

Another job seeker, Dawn, had traveled from Brooklyn for the event and was also interested in a job with the NYPD. “I like the turnout,” she said of the event. “And I like the fact that you have all the City jobs here.” We asked if she was working or had worked for the City previously. “No, I’ve been trying to get a job with the City for years, so I’m hoping I’ll get picked up today.” she said. Of the NYPD, she added, “I’m going to look and see what they have to offer, clerical or whatever they have.”

 

Meanwhile, Luis Rodriguez told us, “I’m here looking for any jobs to do with electrical apprentice jobs, because I’m graduating within two weeks so they told me to start looking, and I heard about this about three days ago so I just gave it a shot and so far, I only see probably three openings, maybe like maintenance worker,” he said.

 

Asked more about his studies, Rodriguez said, “I’m studying advanced electrical and electrical circuits such as binary pro-commercial installations, residential installations, fibre optics or pipe bending, mostly stuff that works with electrical….stuff like that. It’s a 7-month program at Apex, so this is my seventh month in. Two more weeks and I’ll be able to get my certificates but it’s best just to start applying two weeks beforehand, and get the information out there so by the time they reach back to me, I’ll have all my papers ready to go.”

 

We mentioned that Norwood News sometimes publishes stories about recruiting apprentices advertised by the Department of Labor for carpenters or or other trades. We asked if someone like Rodriguez would be eligible for such apprenticeships, given he has just completed a 7-month training course.

 

“Yes, I’ll be eligible for apprenticeships,” he said. Most [apprenticeships], you need to do between 700 hours or 900 hours of learning through either a school or landing a job and they give you those hours, but you also need to get certificates from the Department of Health. So, I’m trying to get something called fire guard, and something called the S95, which helps you get more jobs. You got to get your OSHA card, you got to get your SSE, so there’s a lot of requirements people in the blue collar field have to get.” Rodriguez added, “I just hope I land a job pretty soon. Two weeks is a hectic time to start looking for jobs, especially for an apprentice or anybody in a blue collar field, so I wish everybody luck.”

 

We also spoke to job seeker, Ms. Jones, who said the event was a great opportunity for the people to access good jobs. “There’s a lot of [non-City] jobs but they’re not good paying jobs that give you benefits,” she said, adding that she had previously worked for the Board of Elections. We asked what that was like and if things got contentious around election time. “It’s always, you know, the anticipation..” she said.

We discussed rank choice voting of which she was not a fan. “I’d rather just be able to vote on my own. I don’t care what you want to rank, just leave my vote alone!” We asked what her reason was for wanting to work for the health department in particular. “Well, it’s not really in particular,” she said. “I just need something to get me out the house! I need something to do and there’s just a lot of benefits of working with the health department that helps our community and I’m a community person!”

 

Adams summed up the day, saying, “I know what it is to be a union member. I know what it is to be employed with the City. The sacrifice has been a lot, but it makes our city a greater place and a better place. So, I want to do something that’s in contrast to Donald Trump. He says you’re fired! I’m saying you’re hired!”