|
 Hiring a security officer in Texas –
Before the interview
The days of the night watchman are gone
By Amy Lister-Neal
SUN CITY SECURITY SERVICE, INC.
Interviewing prospective security officers is crucial to matching the right person to the job. Owners and managers are faced with the task of interviewing and hiring security officers who may be responsible for other’s lives or property worth millions of dollars. The security industry has traditionally been low paying, monotonous and lacked higher educational standards. The influx of untrained people into this profession has created the problem of finding the right person for the job. Criminal, professional and employment checks have become a vital tool for determining the qualifications and honesty of the applicant.
To begin the phase of hiring a security officer, a telephone interview or pre-screening allows the employer to determine if the aspirant’s qualifications, experience, workplace preferences and salary needs are congruent with the position and organization.
The telephone job interview saves managerial time and eliminates unlikely candidates. It is important during the telephone interview to establish with the candidate what the position requires such as: reliable transportation, a specific background check with includes no
Class A misdemeanors within 20 years, no
Class B misdemeanors within five years and no felonies. (However, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Rules and Regulations, some first time
Class B misdemeanors do not disqualify an
applicant.)
Once the candidate has passed the pre-screening, they are invited to fill out an application and possibly go through an interview. It is important not to lead the candidate on because rigorous hiring and screening programs consisting of background checks may unveil something about the candidates past and disqualify them from obtaining a license, which means no interview.
When the candidate arrives, the personnel handing out the applications should run through the requirements for the position once more; just to make sure. Your personnel will then give an application to the candidate and once the application is complete, there should be a background check system set up within your company which is state mandated for your files.
Some companies will use online background check services. Background checking and work history references provide much less personalized and more factual
information. But the job interview remains essential to assessing the candidate’s cultural fit.
The job interview remains the tool you can use to get to know your candidate on a more personal
basis. Questions should center on previous situations encountered by the applicant and how they were handled. Avoid a person who has aggressive tendencies, anti-social attitudes or is a police “wannabe.” They are going to get you sued if they hurt someone unnecessarily. Cool is the rule.
Ask legal interview questions that illuminate the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses to determine job fit. Avoid illegal questions and practices that could make your company the target of a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit.
The job interview is a powerful factor in the employee selection process in most organizations. To learn more about the interview process, i.e. behavioral interviews, see the next issue of
Managing Security Today.
|
