Nearly 18,000 police officers hired without face-to-face interviews by forces prompting fears of new Wayne Couzens

12 comments

1. Based on what? Most people are not their normal selves in a job interview, for one you’re generally a bit nervous and you’re hardly going to wear your Waffen-SS t-shirt. If someone is a wrong-un and they can pull it off on a video interview, get past the vetting checks and attend the training for months and still not set off any alarms I don’t see how having a face to face interview for an hour at the start is going to.

2. And face-to-face interviews would have given away those tell-tale sex offender looks then? Christ…

3. Didn’t Wayne Couzens face about three different face to face interviews? Army, Nuclear Constabulary, and Met? And the recent report into him made clear he disguised his issues from his colleagues very effectively? (No evidence was found that the ‘rapist’ nickname was anything more than a creation by the press).

   Certainly I’m open to suggestion as to how it will be effectively used, but what, are you going to bounce people on vibe checks? That leaves you wide open to appeals and getting sued when you reject people without very strong justification. Especially given the press hysteria the second that there is any discrepancy in which groups pass the face to face interview?

   This is also going to be in an environment where the police are desperate for recruits, and forecast to still be down significantly on target numbers. So there’ll be that pressure in play.

   Feels very much a case of ‘something needs to be done, this is something, this must be done’.

4. Can we stop the vogue police bashing. Yes there are bad people as in all walks of life but they do a difficult job and let’s be thankful we have a police force.

5. Virtual Teams interviews are the norm now. I dont see the issue?

6. Face to face interviews are always crap, stilted, fake and awkward affairs.

   I much prefer a Teams or Zoom session in the comfort of my own home. I feel much more relaxed and I’m able to focus my mind on the questions and really show my best without feeling like I’m an animal in a zoo pen.

   I don’t think face to face interviews are any better than the “modern” methods many recruiters employ and for many people, I think they’re worse at getting the real “them” out of themselves.

   Surely what these forces are failing to do is properly psychologically and background screen applicants.

   But why would they? This is a crap job, on crap money that few want and the ones who want it invariably want it for one reason only.

7. Job interviews are only good for an ID check, they are an extremely poor predictor of job performance, let alone an indicator of criminal intent.

   Proper multi-day assessment centres would be good, but are prohibitively expensive.

8. I joined the police eleven years ago and no one ever asked me why I wanted to join.

   My assessment day consisted of a load of role plays where I had to pretend I was the customer service manager at Sandford shopping centre and deal with a load of complaints.

9. Lovely. It’s well known criminal gangs like to embed officers.

10. Just so they could have Boris and braverman say that they’ve recruited x amount of police. No quality control or anything. 

    Zero shame.

11. Government targets and funding meant that Forces were forced to hire as quickly as they could and were disincentivised from firing underperforming cops as if they didn’t meet Home Office targets, they didn’t get the requisite funding.

    Doesn’t sit right with me. Recruit the right people, the Govt really fucked this one up. Can’t say I’m surprised in the slightest.

12. This seems a bit of a non story. Wayne was an old boi so would have all the old interview boards etc.

    So I don’t see what relevance this really has. The checks are different now.

    In the old days, the brass would come round to where you lived and made sure everything was in order etc, can’t really do that now with most newer officers living with the parents or a house share.

    The background checks will show more now because more things are recorded, Domestic violence non crimes etc. so background checks are technically better because we just have more information about people. Social media, banking, and families are all checked.

    Will it prevent some random gezza going postal and doing something mental for the first time. Nope not really.