Exam Application

Use Form ACS-21, the Application for Examination or Employment, when applying. ALL of the sections on the application must be completed in detail, even if you elect to attach a resumé to your application form.

It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that the application and appropriate filing fee are received by the Albany County Department of Civil Service or postmarked by the United States Postal Service by the last filing date for an examination. The Albany County Department of Civil Service is not responsible for lost or late applications sent via interoffice mail/courier.

PLEASE NOTE: Effective January 13, 2009 our examination fees have increased from $15 to $20 for most exams and from $25 to $30 for all uniformed positions.

INFORMATION REGARDING CIVIL SERVICE STUDY GUIDES

As a general rule, the Test Guides developed by New York State are targeted to the "entry- level" occupations, e.g., Police Officer, Correction Officer, Fire Fighter, Clerical, etc. This effort is done to provide candidates who are not familiar with civil service testing an opportunity to become somewhat familiar with civil service examinations generally and thereby minimize the amount of test confusion that can affect candidate scores and interfere with the accurate assessment of the areas being tested.  There are relatively few exceptions to this "entry-level" (open-competitive) candidate preparation offered by New York State. These exceptions are related to examinations where there is an unusual test format, e.g., Written Incident Simulation Exercise, In-Basket Exercise, etc. In these instances, the test guides are designed more to familiarize candidates with the format of the test than to assist the candidate to prepare for the test content. An example of this type of Test Guide in the police service would be for some of the Police Chief examinations in the larger municipalities that have both Written Simulation and In-Basket exercises.

The most important document that candidates should carefully read and consider is the announcement itself.  Candidates should pay close attention to the “Scope of Examination” section of the announcements where candidates are informed about the test type and content, and focus your examination preparation upon the information described in this portion of the announcement.

In addition, a brochure entitled:  “How to Take a Written Test" is available by clicking here [PDF*].

Department of Civil Service, Municipal Service Division