With unemployment rates low and workers in a stronger position to choose where they want to work, cities and towns have faced the daunting task of keeping their employee rosters full. It can be especially tough in a smaller town where finding the right fit for a position is vital — or in larger cities where there can be more than 100 jobs to fill at any given time.
To recruit workers, cities have used job fairs, citywide hiring events and social media to tout the benefits of employees working for their hometowns.
Woodruff uses social media to advertise its job openings. Photo: City of Woodruff.
For the City of Woodruff, finding the right fit for their team of 45 employees is more important than having to live with an open position, said City Manager Lee Bailey.
“For us, it’s about our culture,” Bailey said. “You have to be willing to look a little harder to find the right person.”
Bailey has worked for the city for 24 years, the past 10 as city manager. His resume is an example of something the city often looks for — a person who joins the city as a career, and then moves into a leadership position.
“You will not always find a successful candidate immediately. Sometimes you have to be patient. I will sit on a spot for six months if I have to,” he said.
Bailey said the first step to attracting the right employees is getting them interested in what the city is doing. Woodruff uses its social media channels to share messages about the city’s efforts and activities.
“What you put out on social media, helps create a buzz and interest in what the city is doing,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, social media is a powerful tool. It gets the word out a lot faster than traditional advertising.”
Bailey said he also relies on current employees — especially police officers — to help recruit new workers.
“If you have a group of workers who are happy with where they are, that is the best recruitment tool,” he said.
Florence’s twice-yearly hiring events now draw more than 200 people.
Photo: City of Florence.
The City of Florence began using hiring events in 2021 after the recreation department director asked for help recruiting workers for his department. The event was held in the city council chambers, and drew an unexpected 70 interested applicants.
“I didn’t know if we were going to have anybody come,” said Jennifer Krawiec, human resources director for the city. “Then all these people showed up.”
The city then decided to host an event for all departments, located at the city’s Pearl Moore Basketball Center. The events, which took place quarterly in 2022 and which now take place twice a year, routinely draw more than 200 people.
“We have representatives from each department who are able to do interviews on the spot,” Krawiec said. “And for some positions, we can offer jobs that day.”
The city is averaging about 10 hires from each event, according to Krawiec, and the workers acquired from the job fairs have filled positions from sanitation workers and heavy equipment operators to accountants and planners.
“For the number and the varied type of employees we’re getting, these hiring events have been the most successful thing we’ve done in recruiting new employees,” Krawiec said.
For hiring police officers, however, the city has had to take a different approach, because the number of officers was so depleted after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“We were down 20 to 25 officers at one point,” Krawiec said of the force that typically has about 100 sworn officers. “We were calling other agencies to find out what they were doing. It was a difficult time in 2021.”
The city went to work figuring out how to modernize hiring practices for police. To recruit more officers, the city revised policies to allow facial hair and tattoos, and is offering $1,500 signing bonuses to new recruits. A new program allows high school graduates who are not yet old enough to be officers to work as cadets for the department until they turn 21.
Some of those ideas came from exit interviews with officers leaving the force and from groups of current officers.
“We’re always looking for good ideas and we’re always trying to be innovative,” Krawiec said. “Some of our best ideas we get are from our employees.”
Career fairs help the City of Columbia fill its jobs. Photo: City of Columbia.
For the City of Columbia, keeping up with openings even in the best of times can be difficult.
With more than 2,200 employees — about 850 of whom are firefighters and police officers — the city has about 10% of its positions open at any given time, said Tiniece Javis, human resources director. About 50 employees are hired each month to replace those who leave for one reason or another.
To help recruit new workers, the city has held career fairs looking for candidates for all available jobs citywide. In the event’s third year, about 1,200 people registered and about 700 showed up.
City departments had tables at the event where they could introduce attendees to what they do and take resumes.
“We actually conduct interviews at the career fair,” Javis said.
To increase interest in the career fairs, the city teamed up with a local television station to create and promote paid segments called “Talent in the City” that spotlighted different departments and what the workers there do.
“People don’t have a really good idea of what happens in the city, the work that has to be done,” said Javis, who worked for 28 years in public schools as both a teacher and administrator before joining the city in 2019. “We thought it would be a great idea if people saw the employees in their element.”
For the next career fair, the city will produce similar television spots that will focus on employees who have multiple family members working for the city.
The hope is that more people will see working for the city as a career, Javis said.
To that end, the city offers training for its workers — particularly on those interpersonal “soft” skills that enable people to work better with fellow employees and the public. The city also offers management training for department heads and other executive employees to improve opportunities for promotions within the city and to create a leadership pipeline for the future.
“We have begun offering professional development courses to our employees,” Javis said. “The next step is to have proscribed courses and have a way to get them on a track to a supervisory position.”