The Sisyphus Comments

Looking For A Few Good Men Or Women – Part I

NEWS FLASH! Law enforcement agencies are experiencing difficulty recruiting qualified applicants. Any experienced law enforcement recruiter knows that the faucet of qualified applicants is not flowing as freely as it once did. Gone are the days when a law enforcement agency could simply place a help wanted ad in the local newspaper and be inundated with three hundred applicants. Unfortunately, many law enforcement agencies have not gotten the word yet so they just keep using the same techniques that they used twenty years ago and they wonder why they are not attracting the best applicants.

The bottom line is the rules of the game have changed. If you are a chief or sheriff and you still view the employment process as just “hiring”, you are probably finding yourself choosing your new employee from the “the best of what is available.” In other words, you need a warm body to occupy a patrol vehicle so you are forced to choose from among the mediocre candidates that happened to wonder through the door of your agency. The real news flash is if you are not taking a proactive approach to the employment process, the top level applicants may never find their way to your door.

The Problem Is Not Just In Our Profession

The one ride at Disney World that still sends shivers down my spine is not a roller coaster. Instead, it is that slow boat ride that constantly played, “It’s A Small World” (For some reason, that song just sticks in my head). The United States is facing an increasingly competitive world marketplace so one has to ask how well our education system has stepped up to meet the demand for graduates skilled enough to keep our country ahead of the pack. According to one survey of more than 400 Fortune 500 companies, we may not be doing too well.

Released last September, “The Workforce Readiness Report Card” from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management found our nation’s latest graduates “woefully ill-prepared for the demands of today’s—and tomorrow’s—workplace.”

The report identified certain skills that are critical to success in today’s workforce including:

1. a combination of basic knowledge and applied skills, with applied skills surpassing basics;
2. professionalism/work ethic, teamwork/collaboration, and oral communications, are the three most important applied skills;
3. knowledge of foreign languages is more important than any other basic skill;
4. and creativity/innovation, which will become even more important in the future.

Many professions are placing much greater value on the applied skills of leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving than on more traditional basic skills such as reading comprehension or mathematics. This does not suggest employers do not care about the basic skill level of new employees but rather that they seek a balance of the basic and applied skills.

This is the same skill set that the law enforcement community is looking for in new recruits, particularly those agencies that subscribe to community policing philosophies. This means that private industry is competing for the attentions of the same graduates that police departments and sheriff’s offices are trying to attract.

A Little Competition Can Be A Bad Thing

Most supervisors realize that a little competition in the workplace can be a good thing. Competition often serves as a motivator resulting in increased performance at all levels. However, for competition to have a positive impact, all of the players must realize that they are in the game. Unfortunately, too many criminal justice agencies may not realize that the game is on and the other team in playing to win.

In order to attract and retain the best qualified personnel, criminal justice agencies must realize that this game is about actively recruiting – not hiring. Several years ago, law enforcement agencies in our area went through a similar dry spell where they were having difficulty finding qualified applicants. I was present during a meeting of agency administrators where the issue was brought up for discussion. I sat with my pen poised to record all the innovative ideas that these administrators had developed to address this problem. After approximately twenty minutes of discussion, the consensus of the group was that the problem was only temporary and the best strategy would be to just “tough it out.”

Unfortunately, this time around, the problem is not temporary and it is impacting all types of criminal justice agencies. Any agency administrator that decides the solution to his or her employment issues is to just continue doing business as usual, will be relegated to selecting employees from the bottom of the barrel – or maybe even having to look under the barrel.

What Is The Solution?

There is no silver bullet that will solve the problem of attracting the best qualified personnel to the law enforcement profession. However, this series of articles will attempt to identify some strategies that criminal justice agencies may want to consider if they are experiencing problems in the area of recruitment and retention of good people. I will get the ball rolling but if you have a comment or recommendation, click on the “Comments” link below and leave a comment. We will all benefit from the synergy of the group.

Other articles in this series:

Looking For A Few Good Men Or Women – Part II
Looking For A Few Good Men Or Women – Part III