The new center builds on strategic efforts to streamline the hiring process in the city, fill job vacancies, and support existing employees
SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor London N. Breed and the Department of Human Resources (DHR) on March 14 announced the grand opening of the new City Career Center at City Hall’s Room 110. This innovative space serves as the main onboarding point for newly-hired City employees and the principal career development location for current employees.
A first-of-its-kind for city employment, the Career Center is an integral component of San Francisco’s broader strategy to streamline and create more transparency in the hiring process, remove barriers to hiring, and create better access and awareness about the various pathway programs the city offers for prospective employees.
Staff at the Career Center will help candidates navigate the city’s hiring process and offer a wide range of resources, including information on how to prepare for the civil service examination process. This City Hall extension for DHR will also serve as a drop-in center for one-on-one career counseling and an access point for both applicants and city employees to receive tips on how to write a resume and interview, among other services.
“Our workforce makes our city run and delivers the services our residents rely on,” said Mayor Breed. “This Career Center will help us to attract new workers in the future and support our current employees as we work to create a stronger, more resilient workforce. This is just one part of our broader efforts to expedite and improve hiring and support workers across San Francisco.”
Through the Government Operations Recovery Initiative (GovOps), a government efficiency operation launched by Mayor Breed and led by the Offices of the City Administrator, Controller, and DHR, San Francisco has seen significant improvements in hiring times over the last year and a half. In addition, this initiative has improved contracting and financial operations, making city government more efficient and effective in delivering services for residents.
The achievements of hiring initiatives by GovOps include a nearly 50 % increase in applicants for vacant city positions and 36 % decrease in the vacancy rate compared to last year.
“We are thrilled to launch the City and County of San Francisco Career Center. This is the culmination of years of work to ensure that we are able to effectively recruit new employees to the city workforce and retain our employees by supporting them throughout their career with the city – and this is just the beginning,” said Carol Isen, Human Resources Director.
In April 2022, San Francisco launched a new Careers website and DHR recorded over 1.8 million unique visits to the page in calendar year 2023, the highest since the city began recording visitor data.
“As we face the challenges of rapidly changing technologies, new kinds of work, and barriers to advancement due to systemic racism, we must create pathways for workers to advance and upgrade their skills, knowledge and capabilities,” said Theresea Rutherford, President of SEIU Local 1021, the largest union with the city representing more than 13,000 employees. “City employees are the backbone of our local economy and deserve to have the opportunity to advance in their careers for the benefit of themselves, their families and the City of San Francisco. This Career Center is a proactive step in that direction.”
“The City Career Center is an intentional and proactive approach to economic and workforce development,” said Vince Courtney Jr., Assistant to the Business Manager, Northern California District Council of Laborers. “The grand opening coupled with continuing equitable training pathways like Apprenticeships marks the beginning of a journey towards empowering local workers with the knowledge and expertise necessary to excel in their chosen fields and paves the way to good-paying jobs, including union jobs.”
“For far too long, it’s felt like job seekers in our communities needed to know someone who already worked for the City & County in order to gain access to inform them of the unique hiring process and insider terminology – no longer,” said Dion-Jay “DJ” Brookter, CEO of the Young Community Developers, a 50-year-old non-profit organization endeavoring to break the cycle of generational poverty for Communities of Color by offering education, workforce development and housing programs. “At YCD we believe that every individual should have the right to sustainable and generational economic mobility and the Career Center’s workforce training programming will help invest in residents of historically underserved neighborhoods and further transform life changing career opportunities.”
As of March 1, 2024, the City and County of San Francisco has 35,200 full-time employees – the largest workforce in city history. For more information about the new City Career Center and to learn about job opportunities in San Francisco, please visit https://www.sf.gov/city-career-center.
(SF Mayor’s Office Release)
