What’s likely to carry more weight and be more beneficial in your police application? Qualifications or experiences?
G’day, I’m Russell from Prime Motion Training. And that question often comes up about what’s more valuable to the police service that I’m applying for. These qualifications or these experiences? Now, often people who have put a lot of time and effort into a university degree, especially something like criminology, have that belief that that’s got to be worth a lot to the police force that they’re applying for. The reality is a certificate on the wall doesn’t really increase your value as an applicant.
Sure, you’ll have some information and some knowledge that will be helpful for you as you go through the recruit training because a lot of the structure about law and procedures and the court systems and hierarchy and all these things will sound familiar to you, which will make it easier to get through that training with that existing knowledge. But in terms of the actual job, they’re more interested in people who have been out there in the world interacting with the public, things as simple as retail work and hospitality work. If you’ve travelled a lot, you’ve been overseas and you’ve got all sorts of different cultural experiences, that’s more valuable to the police service that you’re applying for because those are the tangible skills that you need when you’re out there on the beat patrolling as a police officer.
So if you are at that junction where you are wondering whether you should go off and do some kind of university degree to help improve your chances of becoming a police officer, I would say forget that. Let’s go off and get some life experience. Work in retail, work in hospitality, travel, experience different cultures, different laws, different religions, different all sorts of stuff, whatever you can expose yourself to. That will be far more beneficial than putting in three or four years to get a certificate. To be honest, it doesn’t really carry a lot of weight. Sure, it carries weight, but you’re better off getting life experience that’s much more tangible. And in most police forces, most police services around the country, that’s that life experience that carries the most value when compared to something like a certificate or qualification.
Well, I hope that didn’t upset you. If you’ve just spent four years trying to get some sort of degree, finish it off. By all means, finish it off. Then get some life experience, get yourself into the police force. If I can help, reach out and contact me. Either way, I look forward to seeing you again in another video soon.
