Aisia Williams, CSC Docket No. 2022-3036

BackgroundAisia Williams appeals the determination of the Division of Agency Services (Agency Services) which found that she did not meet the minimum requirements in experience for the open competitive examination for Senior Management Assistant (M0251D), Jersey City.

The subject examination had a closing date of February 22, 2022 and was open to residents of Jersey City and New Jersey who possessed a Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, and two years of experience performing complex administrative support work which must have included the interpretation, verification and/or application of department/agency rules, regulations, policies and procedures. Applicants who did not possess the required education could substitute additional experience on a year for year basis. The appellant was found to be ineligible based on a lack of experience. Seventeen candidates were admitted to the examination which has not yet been held.

Appellant's argumentThe appellant indicated that she possessed a Bachelor’s degree. She did not provide a resume and listed two positions on her application: Project Manager, Digital Media with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and Assignment Editor, Content Operations with Shutterstock. Agency Services found none of her experience applicable.

On appeal, she maintains that she should be eligible due to her experience, and she provides a table of comparison of the duties that she performed in her positions to the examples of work from the job specification of the title under test.

Additionally, she argues that she provided a resume with her application and described both positions.1 She provides a copy of her resume on appeal which included three new positions. She states that she has over 14 years of experience performing complex administrative support work, from federal internet and digital laws to interpreting New York City local laws. She oversees highly technical and complex operations on a digital team and troubleshoots and mitigates complex workflows for stakeholders, and translates that into small tasks of work for designers and developers to achieve the administrative goals. She argues that both of her job descriptions illustrate her experience. She questions if “executive” can be defined, and states that all major projects that she has managed are under the directive of various Commissioner level stakeholders. At Shutterstock, she primarily worked under the direction of a Director and Vice President of Content Operations and on project basis was pulled into “C level” initiatives.

CONCLUSION

RuleN.J.A.C. 4A:4-2.3(b) provides that applicants shall meet all requirements specified in the open competitive examination announcement by the closing date. N.J.A.C. 4A:4-2.1(f) states that, prior to the announced application filing date, an applicant may amend a previously submitted application.

AnalysisA review of the appellant’s application reveals that the decision by the Agency Services, denying the appellant’s admittance to the subject examination due to the fact that she does not possess the required experience, was correct. At the outset, the appellant did not provide or upload a resume with her application. She sent a resume in on appeal with three additional positions. Pursuant to N.J.A.C. 4A:4- 2.1(f), any supplemental information received after the closing date cannot be considered. As such, any positions described on appeal cannot be considered. Even so, the appellant did not provide all requisite information for those positions, such as full- or part-time hours, months of service or supervisory information. A cursory review of the positions indicates that they are not applicable as they do not have the announced experience requirement as the primary focus.

As a Project Manager, Digital Media, the appellant manages various web development projects for a small team of less than five developers and designers; has daily consultations with Digital Media and Strategic Content to assist in determining project priorities, schedules, and execution; keeps projects of varied scale prioritized using a combination of tools such as JIRA, Trello, Confluence and GoogleDocs; meets with various stakeholders to document their needs for development for both internal and front-facing projects; identifies project obstacles or improvements, devises solutions, documents recommendations and establishes consensus to move projects forward; provides quality assurance and support for projects and systems including internal testing, user acceptance testing, training, troubleshooting and issue identification and tracking; collaborates with various agencies and vendors to ensure timely task completion and overall project success; and, acts as project lead for varying projects throughout the year, ensuring deliverables and project completion on or before deadlines.

1 No record of a resume was located in the Online Application System.

As an Assignment Editor, Content Operation (Content Operations Assistant), the appellant worked as liaison between Content Operations and Content Product team on web applications, enhancement, features, workflows and general system anomalies using reporting tools such as Jira (previously Bugzilla), Salesforce, GoogleDocs and created workflows using Vizio; improved critical technical administrative functions for ID queues, Contributor Administration Pages and collection audit and management tools; provided data and insights on contributor account creation workflow and ‘newbie’ contributors; tracked, researched, and managed contributor and customer accounts for fraudulent activity (Infringement, Suspicious Activity, Fraudulent customers); was an instrumental member of a Compliance Team by identifying patterns of suspicious content and contributors; provided Level III support for global contributor base of 30K+; compiled bug reports for entire Content Department on bugs, glitches and anomalies and worked with Content Product team for resolutions; managed tax document intake and archiving; managed knowledge base standards for both Shutterstock and Bigstock; created a successful homepage and newsletter light boxes for customers; implemented sales reporting processes for all content quality issues; supported general sales team with content quality control, model release research and additional information about content; supported Premier and Exclusive Initiatives with content vetting and research; and, managed editorial acquisition via the On The Red Carpet program, communicating with contributors, press, production and event companies on a daily basis.

These descriptions do not match the announced experience requirement whatsoever. The focus of the duties of a Senior Management Assistant is to assist in the coordination of management or administrative activities of an assigned unit or work area. The incumbents act as an assistant to managers, not in a supportive or secretarial function, but rather, to relieve the managers of detail-oriented and time-consuming professional tasks. A manager formulates and/or implements policies and practices, and supervises at least second-level supervisors. A stakeholder is a person with an interest or concern in a business, and this is not the same as a management position. The appellant has not indicated experience performing complex administrative support work, and therefore lacks two years of required experience.

An independent review of all material presented indicates that the decision of Agency Services that the appellant did not meet the announced requirements for eligibility by the closing date is amply supported by the record. The appellant provides no basis to disturb this decision. Thus, the appellant has failed to support her burden of proof in this matter.

ORDER

Therefore, it is ordered that this appeal be denied.

ClosingThis is the final administrative determination in this matter. Any further review should be pursued in a judicial forum.