LANSING, Mich. — A little more than a year after Michigan lifted its hiring freeze, the state is still looking to fill hundreds of positions.
“It’s pretty typical for us right now in a such a large organization we’re typically hiring for a lot of positions," said Mike DeRose, the human resources director for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Across the state, there are more than 500 job openings, according to the state's online job listings.
“At any given point, we have over 100 positions posted. Typically we have positions that are continuously posted," DeRose said. "We did see a lull a bit there when we had the hiring freeze but for the most part we’ve continued to see talented, diverse and a high volume of applicants.”
The Department of Natural Resources is similar, according to Ron Olson who serves as chief of the parks and recreations division.
“Right now we have about 80 positions that are open. At one point we had well over almost 100 positions that we are behind on," he said.
But the DNR received an exemption from the state so they could hire more people after seeing record attendance at state parks during the first year of the pandemic.
“We were trying rapidly to fill vacancies… now last year in 2021 of that 1,300 short term workers we hired 91 percent of that number so we were still down," Olson said.
Both department heads say they feel confident they will be able to hire more workers as time goes by and have already seen some success getting more people in the door.
“We always are going to have turnover and do have turnover like any organization. But at this point I think we’ve done a good job of backfilling the positions," DeRose said. "We feel confident going into 2022 that we’ll be able to maintain the staffing levels that are needed to serve the clients.”
State departments are using a combination of methods to bring more people in: job postings online, job fairs and targeting specific schools and universities.
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