BRIGHTON, N.Y. — If you work for state, county or city government, there is now an easier path to get through the civil service process for a promotion. The New York State Department of Civil Service opened a computer-based testing center on Thursday along Brighton-Henrietta Townline Road in Brighton, one of 12 centers opening across the state by the end of 2027.
The days of waiting months for a testing date to roll around and then heading to a high school gym with a #2 pencil are over.
The new testing centers will offer promotion exams for state employees on a regular and rolling basis. The Rochester center provides space and technology for nearly 90 candidates to be tested at once and has multiple, smaller testing rooms for those who may require a reasonable accommodation.
“The old process…we would lose so many candidates because they forgot that they even took the civil service examination, that’s how long that it took for us to get those results but no, nope, no longer,” says Timothy Hogues, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Civil Service.
New government employees have largely been able to avoid taking a initial civil service test under a program called “NY Helps” which has been in place since after the pandemic.
“We had people who were working doubles, and some people working triples, so when you have that stress on you, family life becomes zero life and you need to have family life,” says Tim Finnegan, the vice president of CSEA Region 6. He feels like NY Helps has helped get people in the door, but points out, they still need to take a civil service test for any kind of promotion.
Police and firefighters are not included in the NY Helps program and are still required to take a civil service exam before starting the job. The civil service commissioner says the department has increased the number of times it administers those tests to help with staffing shortages.
For most other positions, NY Helps will be in place until June of 2028. After that, there will be an entirely new entry level civil service exam based on training and experience. “Some people can do the job, but they just aren’t great test takers, so that is a barrier that we really wanted to look at, how do we meet the obligations of merit and fitness but also break down barriers,” Commissioner Hogues says.
The exact details and format are still being worked out, but the next wave of entry tests will be rolled out in 2028. “We wanted to get it right and so, this is something that we’re doing for both the state-level and the local level,” Hogues says.
The new local testing center will be open from Tuesday to Sunday. People can go online and schedule their tests themselves.
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