If you have decided you want the job as a police officer (or PSD) in this climate of such negative attitude toward law enforcement, more power to you, and thank you.
Step one is deciding and finding which agency you want to work for. There are lots of ways to do that. POST has a section on departments that are hiring. PORAC does as well, and there are many other sites, too many to list, that provide that information. You can also go to any department’s website and find out if they are hiring; they likely are. Sample
Ok, you’ve found a few departments you think you’d like to work for. Carefully check the qualifications. California law requires you to be a citizen of the United States to be a peace officer. Public Safety Dispatchers are not required to be a citizen, but you must be legally allowed to work in the US.
You must be 18 years old and possess a high school diploma, GED, or equivalent from an accredited high school. That’s it for state law (not including background issues such as convictions, etc.). Departments can require more strict requirements, but not less. Easy examples are 99.8% require you to be 21 years old at the time of graduation from the police academy. Also, many have higher education requirements, such as so many college units or a degree.
Back to the high school diploma and GED from an accredited school, I have had to DQ (disqualify) many candidates because their high school diplomas came from schools that did not have the required accreditation. An example is some Adventist or other Christian schools that are not accredited by the authorities in the regulations. If you are unsure, you can check the POST website to see what accreditation authorities are accepted and check with your school. Recently, that was it. A recent change is if you have a college degree, you are good to go, even without the accredited high school.
Is the agency hiring academy grads or trainees? If they say they are only hiring academy grads, you can still apply, and they might decide you are a stellar enough applicant that they might consider sending you to the academy. The worse that can happen is you just won’t be considered. But, you never know; they may be considering sending some candidates to the academy in the future and keep your app. Sometimes there are not enough suitable academy grad applicants, and they decide to send some applicants to the academy.
The application is your first foot forward, and like the rest of the hiring process, it should be your best foot. Pay attention! Follow directions. Do not turn in a piece of shit application that looks like a raccoon filled it out. Don’t have your significant other fill it out. Keep in mind that a peace officer application is usually different from a regular application for that city (or?). By law, there are certain things that the city (or?) cannot ask a non-law enforcement applicant, so the information the police department wants will not be on that other application.
I remember receiving a stack of applications for a couple of positions in one of my departments. Unfortunately, there were a few that were on the wrong application, so we shredded them.
Also, some applications will have instructions to fill out the application completely and submit a resume no longer than two pages. So some applicants took it upon themselves to purposely not follow directions by thinking, “I’m submitting a resume, so why bother filling out the past employment on the application?” Shred. Or, if they want you to list your employment for the last ten years, you don’t because there is insufficient space on the application. Shred! Make an additional copy of the pages, or put the required info on a blank page or pages.
The worst are the applicants who don’t read the directions and, for example, turn in the application without a resume. You guessed it…Shred.
One of the most frustrating things on the job history part is when someone lists the reason for leaving one (or more) of their jobs as “left.” No shit. I know that is code that they were TERMINATED, FIRED, BOOTED. Just put terminated because anything else is NOT HONEST. Shred.
Follow directions for how to submit it and where. For example, I had people submit it to HR when the directions were to submit it to the police department or vice versa.
Read and follow directions. If you can’t follow simple directions on your application, what kind of employee will you be?
All this information applies to online applications as well.
An important note that will be repeated in this series. Consider everything you do to get a LE Job as part of the process. Dress appropriately. If you are submitting your application in person, even if just walking up to the counter to turn it over, wear at least a collared shirt and dockers…and business casual for females. Don’t arrive in Daisy Dukes and a wife beater T-shirt, wearing flip-flops. You never know who is going to see you. When I was Chief of Police, and I was available, if someone brought in an application, I would invite them back to my office to chat with them.
Next week is “The Interview.”
Scattered Thought 