Policing the Recruitment in your Business

Recruitment is the biggest issue you will ever face.

If a business is to grow then it’s going to need not just more staff, but the right staff.

Get it right and you have a winning team; get it wrong and you will not just have a failing team but all the ancillary headaches you might expect from such a situation. Such as sorting out staff disputes, which is both tiresome and time consuming. High staff turnover on account of the wrong people in post does little to help steady the business ship as it tries to go forward. Then there are the really disgruntled staff who can’t do the job but end up blaming the employer! This can end up in court and is your worst headache – and nightmare.

No. Recruitment is something you need to get right.

When you do you get the sort of people they will take your business to the next level – sometimes a level you never even dreamed of!

Last week recruitment hit the headlines in the United Kingdom. As many of you will know the UK has a new Prime Minister. One of the first things that Boris Johnson promised a Brexit exhausted British public is that he intends to recruit 20,000 new police officers across the country.

Police recruitment has been depressed for years, while police numbers have been dropping.

But saying you want additional staff – be the British police or your own business – still requires the right people to apply and then be trained.

The UK’s Home Office report, released last week, speaks volumes about the recruitment of police offices and about recruitment of what are known as “millennials.” The Home Office Police Front Line Review took evidence from 244 officers and members of staff from across the 43 forces in England and Wales.  Its conclusions were damning about the latest bunch of police recruits as being ‘wrapped in cotton wool’ and, who struggle to cope difficult hours and demanding tasks.

Now remember this is the police. They are meant to struggle with the difficult tasks that the rest of us don’t know how to deal with: like assault, theft and such like.

The report was compiled from evidence given by serving officers. One senior figure said that many recruits had ‘no idea what they’re coming into; they’ve lived in a society where they are wrapped up in cotton wool an awful lot . . . Their mental health or their ability to cope with certain situations is just not evident from day one’.

So not just wrapped up in cotton wool but it sounds like Britain’s future police officers are equally soft – and equally useless – for the job of protecting the public and detecting and preventing crime.

But here was the really interesting bit for our purposes. Examples were provided of how at recruitment interviews candidates stated that they ‘do not like confrontation’ or were shocked by shift patterns that included nights and weekends.

Now this starts to smack of the cardinal sin for any prospective job hunter. These people applying for the job of police officer had not fully researched what it was that they were applying for. That much is clear. But, and here is the really depressing thing, they expected the interview panel to interview them about what they were interested in – not the job at hand! In fact one could safely imagine that many of the recruits were well qualified – why else would they be interviewed – but were applying in all likelihood for a range of jobs, probably with the same CV, in the hope that someone would take them on.

The report went on to quote senior police officers from across the country that believe that the youngest members on the force ‘are not prepared for the realities of policing’.  I don’t think you need to be Sherlock Holmes to work that out.

The UK’s Home Office report concluded that millennials appeared to have an inability to adapt to the tough work environment and that this is creating a new challenge for Home Office trainers. However, the report was explicit in suggesting that the issue of the ‘unrealistic expectations’ of new police recruits could in fact be a generational, or a ‘millennial thing’ – and not unique to policing.

Probably right. But weren’t those fresh out of university always in need of a reality check?

Depressingly the Home Office report started to ask if this challenge is considered so real and potentially serious to getting those 20,000 extra police officers that police forces are asking whether they should consider changing their working practices. Yes, you read that right, the police are to change rather than expect the recruits to adapt to the demanding job of being a police office on the streets of Britain today.

It was suggested by some participants in the report that there is a ‘perception’ that training for recruits is ‘inadequate’ and leaves them ‘ill-prepared’ to carry out there duties.

Wrong. No matter how much training you give the wrong person they will never be any good at the job. There has to be greater focus on aptitude and personality type for the role at hand. For example, some parts of your business will need extroverted types and other parts will manage just fine with introverts Similarly some parts of the business will be people focused and other parts data intensive. Again, it may be stating the obvious, but you recruit not just competent people but those best suited to the different demands of the role.

Problem areas identified in the report included an insufficient knowledge of first aid training, and, more worryingly still, poor training on how to deal with members of the public who are mentally unwell. And, weirdly, an inability to use a two way police radio -?

‘We’re just getting people to come in and do something without actually giving them the skills behind it and expecting them just to hit the ground running,’ said one senior officer. Before adding: ‘Some people do it, some people can do it and thrive on it, but other people sink and then eventually go off, because they can’t deal with the stress with all the demands.’

That last bit start to make sense. But it seems that sense is sadly lacking in the recruitment processes of the British police forces.

To be fair most of the business owners Mount Bonnell deals with do not have the logistical and political headaches attached to recruiting for a national police force. Nevertheless the principles here are worth noting.

Look for the person and their character traits and personality type. First. That will tell you a lot about how they are going to contribute to the team overall and about how much of team player they will be. Next, but definitely in second place, look at the candidate’s experience and qualifications. If the candidate has lots of the former they can always be trained up to the knowledge levels required. If they lack these team qualities, no matter how good they are, they are going to be no good for your business needs!

Most businesses look at things the other way around. In the process, they recruit well-qualified people who are a disaster, and turn away good people with bags of potential.

Just ask the British police.