CLEVELAND — Cleveland Council President Blaine Griffin and Ward 8 Councilman Michael Polensek are hoping the city will speed up its hiring process as soon as possible after learning it could take up to six months.
Polensek said the civil service testing process is one reason why it could take up to a half year to fill crucial city jobs at a time when staffing shortages have hit key city departments like EMS, Building and Housing and the Department of Health.
“It should never take six months for someone to apply for a job and wind up getting hired, that’s ridiculous, it was never like that," Polensek said. “It should not take that long to hire people. They need to take a step back, take a look at where we need critical people, whether it be personnel, civil service, where ever, do what you can to fill those ranks. If you have to increase salaries, so be it.”
Polensek believes the slow hiring process could have an impact on some city services, and is causing the city to lose high-quality candidates to other cities.
“If you got to wait for six months to be notified, wait a minute, if there’s another job I’m going with the other employer, I’m going to go where I can get hired quicker," Polensek said. “It’s like with the whole issue with EMS billing, we never had a problem in the past, but now we do because they don’t have enough people handling the billing; you go from 15 to five people.”
Griffin said he understands the importance of the civil service commission in ensuring fair hiring practices but said changes must be made to speed up the testing process, even if it means making a change in the city charter.
“I want it in place because I want it to protect the hiring process, but if it’s an impediment then we need the best minds possible on the administration side in order to help figure out how to streamline," Griffin said. “We just need this process fixed because we are losing too many good people that we could be hiring in the City of Cleveland.”
Ahmed Abonamah, Cleveland's Finance Chief, acknowledged the slow hiring issues during the Feb. 26 city finance meeting and said Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb's administration has been working on improving the hiring process.
“The civil service staff, HR, myself and my colleges in the finance department, these conversations have been happening at those levels over the last year," Abonamah said. “The time it takes to get people hired is frustrating to everybody involved."
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb's office responded immediately to News 5 and said its effort to improve the hiring process is a key part of the Mayor's Stategic Plan that looks to upgrade all city departments over the next ten years.
Meanwhile, Abonamah said he understands changes are needed.
"If you’re looking for a job and you have to wait six months to work here, and you have an offer somewhere else, you’re going to go somewhere else," Abonamah said. “It's a lot of civil service requirements, and just our long standing processes that can certainly be made more efficient. It’s a combination of issues that come together to create this incredibly long time to hire process."
News 5 will follow through on this developing story.
