Tip (law enforcement)

Transcription

If I've seen someone in the law enforcement community give an applicant or candidate advice once, I've seen it hundreds of times. It happens for two reasons. You ask for advice from an officer, or worse, they volunteer advice. Both are dangerous and both avenues of advice are potentially toxic to the career that you're working diligently to land. If you've seen any of my other videos you know I like to use analogies. This video will be no different. Preparing for the police oral board can be confusing at best, particularly if you're looking for information on the internet from unreliable sources, and even worse, from "friends" who've been through a few orals, or from a cop that passed his oral and landed a job. Seems everybody's an expert and most every officer that I've ever spoken with is more than happy to give oral board advice to anyone who'll listen. None of the advice that I received from officers, so willing to tell me about their oral board experience, was accurate in the sense that it applied to my oral board, not a bit! It's not that they didn't want to help, I think they all did, but anything over and above "brush your teeth and comb your hair" was useless advice. Why? Because they didn't know anything about the oral board process or the psychology behind it! They simply passed their oral board interview and quite honestly, didn't really know why. The problem was really quite simple, and I recognized it very early on in my search for a career in law enforcement. Imagine crawling into the driver's seat of a fast car. You drive it around a race track as fast as you possibly can and when you finish your first lap, you felt qualified to tell your friends how to be NASCAR drivers. Utterly ridiculous of course but that analogy applies to passing an oral board, then giving advice to others how to pass their oral board. It's important to know that the level of knowledge a person possesses regarding the oral board process doesn't necessarily increase with their time on the job or with their rank for that matter. It's no different than a very versed SWAT cop telling a citizen how to properly process DNA at a crime scene. SWAT cops aren't detectives just as detectives aren't SWAT cops. A cop that passes his oral board exam, or a sergeant, or lieutenant or captain isn't necessarily an expert in the oral board process. Police officers, supervisors and even higher ranking administrative department officials, unless very well versed in the disciplines of the varied techniques, methods and styles, honestly know very little about the oral board process. They certainly knew what it was like to go through an oral board. They did it themselves of course, to land their own job in law enforcement. The bad news is one, three, seven or even 10 oral boards do not an expert make. And so it goes with advice from cops to the huge group of men and women that badly want to be wearing their own uniform. The advice is generally coming from people that went through a few oral boards to land their own job, and now they somehow feel qualified to give recruits "tips" on how to answer this, and how to answer that. With that said, one of the most common misgivings associated with how the police oral board works, is the pre-conceived supposition that it's all about answering questions. While that is of course a component, and a very important one, it's only a portion. I love analogies and I'll use more, but imagine learning how to start a chain saw. You can spend the rest of your life effectively starting that saw, but unless you've been shown how to properly cut down a tree, you might just kill yourself attempting to use it, on the wings of bad advice. The advice improves only slightly if the "advice giver" has served on his or her agency's own oral board process as a panel member. There remains a problem with even this type of experienced person. Their knowledge is narrow and often very limited in scope. Why would I say that? I've seen it many times first hand. They're given a question sheet with a ranking scale, told to ask questions number 3, 6 and 9 to all the candidates and to rank their answers from 1 to 5. This doesn't make anyone an expert. It means they know how to read and use a pencil at the same time, and that's about it. I've seen this conversation take place a zillion times... Applicant to Officer: "Can you tell me about your oral board? You told me you've done interviews before. I'd really like to learn about your department's oral because I have one coming up next week. What kind of questions do they ask and how should I answer?" Officer to Applicant: "Yup, I've been on a bunch of oral board panels and even did a few for another department. They're going to ask you blah blah blah (fill in whatever scenario question you want) and this is what you need to say. Blah, blah, blah and don't forget to look'em in the eye kid, they like that." Applicant: "Man, thanks for all the great advice. I feel SO much better now!" Potentially worse than that, is the advice that is given on police forum web sites. This advice isn't coming from friends and while I don't mean to sound cruel, there are some exceedingly judgmental and nasty people in those forums and they could care less if you pass or fail. Conversely, a great number of the people that frequent forums are nice people and their intentions are clean, but their advice is often substandard. Most often, they fancy themselves as an expert advice giver, based only on the fact that they are a police officer, and for no other reason. Please, be very careful, suspicious and cautious following any advice given in forums, for that very reason. People that love to give tidbits of advice about police oral boards are the same people that love to give directions to lost motorists. They really want to help, they may even feel genuinely bad for the lost motorist, and so they give directions even when they're really not sure if the directions are correct. It just makes them feel good. They believe they sound like they know what they're talking about and at least for a moment, the recipient of the advice feels as though this person that's helping them is a "really nice guy." They find out later, the directions sucked and they're still lost. The guy that gave the directions still feels self-satisfied and the one that had the most to lose, is now more lost than he was before he asked for help. In many instances, the advice offered on forums is a repeat of what the "advice giver" has read somewhere else and parroted on that particular string. In short, some forum users are established forum participants they will post responses, not necessarily to genuinely help people, but to sound as knowledgeable as possible in the presence of their co-forum peers. Please don't misconstrue my attempt to build caution. Some advice on forums is spot on, excellent advice but as the candidate, how do you know what's solid, and what's garbage? Be careful. So what makes an expert? What qualifies someone to give sound, effective advice on the topic of police oral boards? That population is restricted to those select individuals that have been intimately exposed to, have worked on, and been involved in every facet of the oral board process. Additionally, the most knowledgeable will also have been directly involved in the final selection, and hiring of police candidates. My final word on the "free advice" that applicants and candidates often receive from their friends or acquaintances in law enforcement is this. Everybody and his uncle will tell you what you should say in the oral board setting. NONE of them will tell you what NOT to do and what NOT to say in the police oral board and in fact, few of them actually know what not to say or do. This, my friend, is why The Seven Deadly Sins of the Police Oral Board exists. I don't want you to find yourself lost in the intimidating and mysterious world of the police oral board. You absolutely MUST know what you SHOULD say and what you SHOULD do at the oral board. That is critically important information but if you don't know what NOT to say and what NOT to do, you may very well be in trouble when your name is called and it's your turn to walk into "the room." I don't want you to be lost. My exposure to the police oral board process includes the beginning phases to the very advanced. From participating in oral interviews as a Field Training Officer very early in my career, to later structuring, guiding, managing and conducting panel and one-on-one interviews for promotional screenings for supervisory positions, police chief selection interviews and oral interviews for so many law enforcement candidates, I've lost count. Finally, my experience includes the selection process and that's where the rubber, as they say, meets the road. That's the part of the process that determines who gets hired. I know what gets the candidate hired, and I know what causes to applicant to leave the process still unemployed. I invite you to visit me at EarnYourBadge.com I'm Chief Russ, and here's to your success!