Nine employees were recognized by the Carson City Board of Supervisors on Jan. 19 for years of service and other awards. They were joined on the floor of the community center board room by coworkers from Community Development, the Carson City Sheriff’s Office, Public Works, Health and Human Services and other departments. There were 63 promotions within city government last year, according to the human resources department.
James Salanoa/Carson City
With a relatively low vacancy rate and high average salary, Carson City is receiving thousands of applications for city positions every year as the human resources department boosts efforts to find the right candidates.
“We are actively posting positions and interacting with potential candidates across multiple platforms including Government Jobs, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, SimplyHired and LinkedIn,” Carson City Recruitment Analyst Shane McGowan said by email. “We expect these sites to be more valuable in recruiting qualified, experienced candidates this year as we will work to grow our reach within these sites.”
Last year, the human resources department screened more than 4,500 applications for 227 positions, a fact Mayor Lori Bagwell mentioned in her State of the City speech. She also emphasized 63 promotions during the past year.
“We have to retain the employees we have,” Bagwell said in her Jan. 31 speech. “That is good for all of you.”
As of Feb. 7, according to McGowan, the city had 657 full-time employees and 263 part-time employees.
“We currently have 45 open positions,” McGowan said. “Our vacancy rate is 4.11 percent.”
In comparison, as of Feb. 14, the vacancy rate for the State of Nevada was 23.94 percent, according to the Nevada Department of Administration. In his Jan. 23 State of the State speech, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo proposed a 12 percent pay raise for state workers over the next two years to help address the vacancy rate.
In Carson City, it doesn’t hurt the average annual salary for a full-time position with the city is $74,653, according to McGowan. In comparison, the U.S. Census lists the annual per-capita income in Carson at about $35,000. The median household annual income in the capital city is about $62,000.
“Carson City is an equal opportunity employer,” McGowan said. “We hire applicants who have the knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the job functions.”
McGowan broke down some workforce statistics. Fifty-seven percent of Carson employees have been on the job five years or less; 18 percent for 6 to 10 years; 7.5 percent for 11 to 15 years; 12 percent for 16 to 20 years; 4 percent for 21 to 25 years; 1.2 percent for 26 to 30 years; and .3 percent have been working for the city for more than three decades.
Another way to recruit top talent is to attend job fairs, McGowan said. Carson City HR has been active at Carson High and University of Nevada, Reno, among other venues and job events in the region. And the department has started a new initiative for hard-to-fill positions. Such positions can range from an IT network analyst to a jail cook.
“We have started working on a project creating recruitment videos that show ‘a day in the life’ of positions that we are having difficulty recruiting for,” McGowan said. “We hope this will shed valuable light on what it’s like to work in these positions.”
McGowan said these videos will be embedded in job postings. HR is also working on a more general video about the culture of Carson City.
“What it’s like working here, what employees like about working here, the opportunities they are given,” McGowan said.
To view Carson City’s open job positions, visit https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/carsoncity.