The New York Hiring for Emergency Limited Placement Statewide (NY HELPS) is a temporary program established to address recruitment and staffing challenges in the public sector. For the duration of the program, qualifying and approved competitive class job titles will be classified as non-competitive. Essentially the program waives the exam requirement. The NY HELPS Program will not include titles filled on a promotion basis only, nor will it include police, fire and certain peace officer positions (e.g., Correction Officer). In addition, certain attorney and health care professional titles are also excluded (e.g., Emergency Medical Technician, Paramedic, Occupational Therapist, Physical Therapist).

Employees occupying positions filled through the NY HELPS Program will be granted competitive class status in that position without the need to participate in a competitive exam.

Provisional appointment is a means of filling a vacant, competitive class position in the absence of a mandatory eligible list. A provisional appointee must apply for, and take, the exam for the position when it is next offered unless the title is approved under the NY HELPS Program (see next question for more information on the program).

A provisional appointee must meet the minimum qualifications at time of application. If the exam that is eventually offered for the position produces a mandatory eligible list (3 or more candidates), the position held on a provisional basis must be filled from said eligible list. If the provisional employee is not on the list (failed) or not reachable for appointment, the provisional appointment must be terminated within 60 days following list establishment.

In order to tell when an exam will be given, check the Albany County Civil Service Portal.  If the exam is not listed, it has not yet been scheduled.  Bookmark the page and check back frequently.  Not all exams are held on a regular basis.  Most exams are prepared and scheduled by the New York State Department of Civil Service.  Albany County Civil Service requests exams to be scheduled based on the length of the current eligible list, the age of the list and the turnover of employees within the title.  Eligible lists are valid for a minimum period of one year from the date of establishment up to four years.  

Exam announcements for Albany County Civil Service are posted on the Albany County Civil Service Portal. They are also available in our office at 112 State Street, Room 900 in Albany, NY.  Although online application is most popular, you may obtain a paper copy of both an announcement and the Application for Examination or Employment (ACS-21) at the above physical address or by emailing us at csinfo@albanycountyny.gov.

There is a non-refundable application filing fee for each exam which must accompany your application.  The amount of the fee is listed on each exam announcement. Submit application and credit card payment online via the Albany County Civil Service Portal.  If submitting a paper application, make check/money order payable to the Albany County Director of Finance.  Include the exam number on your check.  Cash will be accepted if applying in person.

For certain exams (see each individual announcement), a maximum of two application filing fees per calendar year will be waived for current legal residents of Albany County and/or current employees of a department of Albany County Government and/or a military veteran or an active-duty service member. (Employees of NYS Government, school districts, towns, villages and libraries are not eligible for the employee waiver but may be eligible for the resident waiver.) Submission of a filing fee, even if you are eligible for a waiver, shall constitute relinquishment of the waiver and payment will be deposited. You may use any remaining waivers within the calendar year.

The application filing fee is also waived for those receiving public assistance or unemployment benefits if the waiver section of the online application is completed. 

Most exams offered by Albany County Civil Service are prepared and scheduled by the NYS Department of Civil Service which is why similar types of exam are frequently offered by other civil service agencies on the same date.  The exams are prepared in such a manner so that you can participate in more than one exam on the same day even if applying with other civil service agencies.  All exams for which you have been approved must be taken on the same day at the same exam site.  It is the applicant’s responsibility to notify our department if you are taking exams in more than one municipality.

Be sure to complete the Cross-Filing section of the online application indicating that you are filing for more than one exam and indicate the civil service agency with which you wish to take all of the exams.  Only candidates who have filed applications for examinations in different civil service agencies (agencies in addition to the County of Albany) scheduled for the same examination date must complete this section.  (This section should not be used if the candidate is only taking multiple Albany County Civil Service examinations on the same day.) The applications should be filed individually with each civil service agency where the examination is posted.  A separate application must be completed for each examination, along with the appropriate filing fee, even if the examination is for the same position in multiple civil service agencies (for example, Police Officer).  Each application must include the examination number assigned by the civil service agency.  Notice of cross-file must be received by Albany County Civil Service no later than fourteen days prior to the date of the scheduled examination(s).

The experience rating scale is located under the General Instructions to Applicants.  Experience will be rated as follows: 1 - 20 hours worked per week = ½ time; 21+ hours worked per week = full time.  In the Employment History section of the application, when entering average number of hours worked per week, enter a single number that is the closest approximation and not a range.  This information is required and crucial to the approval process.

If the minimum qualifications on an announcement require a degree or course work and you have obtained this education in another country, please visit cs.ny.gov/jobseeker/degrees.cfm for a listing of agencies that provide evaluations of foreign education for employment in the civil service of New York State.  Evaluation fees must be paid by the applicant.

We advise applicants to use the "scope of examination" section of the announcement as a guide for studying.  If a study guide published by the NYS Department of Civil Service exists for a particular exam, this will be noted on the exam announcement directly underneath the scope along with a link to it.  The study guides published by the NYS Department of Civil Service provide sample questions and not exam content.  They give examples of the format of the questions but do not address the range of subject matter you may see on the exam.  Some additional materials may be available through public libraries, public employee unions and private publishers.  We can make no recommendation on the quality or usefulness of such materials nor do we provide or publish any materials ourselves.  

Applicants should be checking their email regularly following application submission as we often need more information in order to complete the approval process.  Disqualification emails are sent out in the weeks prior to the exam.  If you have been disqualified, follow the instructions contained in the email if you believe you have additional, relevant information that may change your application status.

If you do not hear from us about disqualification, you can expect to receive an appearance letter via email on the Tuesday BEFORE the week of the exam which will include notification of time and exam site.  Be sure to check both your inbox and spam/clutter folder on that date for an email containing a link to your appearance letter.  

When applying online, you will receive an auto-generated email indicating you have successfully submitted your application but that does not imply that you have been approved.  Continue to check your email following application submission for requests for additional information from us and/or possible exam rescheduling/cancellation (weather emergencies, public health emergencies, etc.).

Civil service exams may consist of a written and/or performance test, an evaluation of education, training and experience or a combination of these. The exam announcement will indicate which type of test(s) will be given.  Written tests typically consist only of multiple choice questions.  

Open-competitive exams can be taken by any individuals who demonstrate that they meet the minimum qualifications cited on the exam announcement. Promotional exams are restricted to current employees of the participating agency or appointing authority who meet the service requirement as cited on the announcement. It is possible for current employees to take both the open-competitive and promotional version of a given exam, and appear on both lists if they pass. Promotional lists are often canvassed before open-competitive lists when both lists exist for a title.

Continuous recruitment refers to those exams for which applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. The exam is held on certain scheduled dates of which you will be notified if you have applied and been approved before the filing deadline for a particular exam holding. The scores for these exams are filed with existing candidate scores to form a constantly changing eligible list. Your name remains on the list for a maximum period of one year. 

A training and experience exam is a method of testing whereby a candidate receives a test score based on the information contained in the application and/or a questionnaire completed by eligible candidates.  The score is calculated from weights given to various factors of education (training) and experience.

Lists of eligible candidates established by Albany County Civil Service are used to fill vacancies in competitive class titles in a department of Albany County Government and/or the school districts, towns, villages, libraries and special districts covered by Albany County Civil Service.  The majority of lists are only used by a subset of the total number of departments/jurisdictions we cover.  For example, some lists are specific to school districts only and/or the Capital Region BOCES.  Be aware, Albany County Civil Service lists are not used to fill positions with: departments of NYS Government, the City of Albany (including the Albany Public Library System), the Cities of Cohoes and Watervliet, the Town of Colonie or any of the adjacent counties (Saratoga, Schenectady, Rensselaer, etc.).      

Some exam questions may be open to review after the test is held.  This is called "pre-rating review" and you must request this review at the test site when you finish your exam.  Requests of this type made after you leave the exam cannot be approved.  Pre-rating reviews are held the Saturday following the exam at a site determined by the NYS Department of Civil Service (which prepares and scores all written exams).  You will be able to see the questions and the tentative answers but not your answer sheet.  This is the forum in which to challenge what you may consider to be an inappropriate question and/or answer.  Some exams are not open to review.

After you receive your score, you may request a computational review in which you will be able to review a copy of your answer sheet and the final answer key.  This review is for verification of accuracy in scoring computation only - the test booklet will not be provided.  Computational review is not permitted for certain exams or for candidates who are immediately reachable for appointment.  Requests must be made no later than ten days from the date on your result letter to either csinfo@albanycountyny.gov or (518) 447-7770. 

Albany County Civil Service has no control over the timing of exam scoring for written exams as that is usually handled in-house by the NYS Department of Civil Service after we send them the exam materials.  When we do receive the scores from NYS, we typically send result letters right away.  The amount of time between taking the exam and the sending of result letters has varied widely in the past and is typically a minimum of twelve weeks but sometimes exceeds that by many months.