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San Benito County is struggling to fill open positions because of systemic flaws in its hiring process, according to a report released by the San Benito County Civil Grand Jury on June 17.
The grand jury found that outdated job descriptions, limited involvement from subject matter experts and budget constraints are impairing the county’s ability to hire and retain staff, leading to an ongoing issue with unfilled positions or vacancies.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors recently addressed the vacancy issue during budget meetings for the 2025–26 fiscal year. All supervisors agreed that the county was engaging in “vacancy budgeting” and cut about 80 unfilled positions. The grand jury report offered a different conclusion: the root of the problem is in how the county recruits.
Because of “extensive legal requirements,” the report says, all hiring is centralized in the Human Resources Division, which is responsible for the recruitment process. That ends up overwhelming the human resources department and leaving department heads and other experts out of the conversation, which ultimately leads to outdated job descriptions and reduces the chances of identifying strong candidates.
Currently, human resources reviews all job applications to ensure they meet the minimum qualifications before forwarding them to individual departments. But the grand jury report says that this system may disqualify applicants who don’t meet rigid criteria.
“Review by the subject matter expert may reveal an applicant who is not quite ready for a position advertised,” the report reads, “but potentially could be offered a lower position to obtain appropriate experience and training.”
To address this, the report recommends that department heads work with human resources to review and update job descriptions within 45 to 60 days, and that human resources involve subject matter experts earlier in the application screening process in order to identify qualified candidates.
The grand jury also found that the county’s budget constraints cause recruitments to be delayed or cancelled, an issue that was evident throughout the budget hearings. Those same constraints have forced senior county employees to take on additional duties outside their primary roles, which contributes to the problem of outdated job descriptions.
“In some cases, these new duties were incorporated into updated job descriptions; in other cases, the job descriptions were not updated,” the report reads. “The unintended consequences of this are that, in many cases, the job descriptions are out of date or inaccurate.”
To help fill vacancies despite budget constraints, the jurors also recommended county staff explore paid or unpaid internships as a way “to support staff, build talent pipelines, and mitigate budget-related hiring gaps.”
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