Naturally, Victoria Police will want to speak with your current employer as part of their background checking, we’ll take a look at when this is likely to happen and how you could go about telling your employer.
Summary
- At the end of the application process
- They will ask for your permission before contacting your employer
- We discuss these points as well as timing.
- When should I tell my employer
Transcription
00:00 – At some point in the application process, Victoria Police Recruiting is going to contact your existing employer. So when is a good time to tell your employer of your police application? Well, of course, that’s going to depend very much on you as an individual and your relationship with the company that you’re working with. You know, I think this comes down to a little bit of timing and also a bit of integrity about this particular issue and when should you tell them.
00:28 – Well, I think you could defend not telling your employer about your Victoria Police Application process until you’re much further into the journey because you can always say if someone was to find out that you have applied to join the police force … And this actually happened with one of our members. The manager found out that she had applied to join the police force, confronted her about it, and was not happy with her at all for not telling them about her intentions.
00:57 – Now to defend not telling them, especially early in the process, early in the application, I think it’s pretty easy to defend that by really playing down your chances of getting in by saying, “Look, I’m very early in the process. It’s a long journey, at least 12 months to go through the application. There’s no guarantee of even getting onto the waiting list let alone getting in. It’s very, very competitive. There’s a billion applications, etc. I just have no idea whether I’m going to end up in a position where I could be offered a place at the police academy or not. And it was far too early to concern the company about whether I am or I’m not leaving. So for that matter, I just didn’t want to stir anything up. If I reach the final stage, where there’s a chance I might be added to the list, it’s at that point that I was going to speak to the management about the application.” I think if you’d said something like that, you’d probably be able to defend it.
01:55 – Look, if someone you work for is not supportive of what you actually want to do with your future career, well, you’re probably in the wrong place anyway. If they genuinely care about you, they’re going to be happy for you chasing after the dream of something that you really want to do.
02:12 – But getting back to the timing issue, you know, recruiting will contact them. It’s one of the last things they do when you’ve completed your selection panel interview and they’re finalising your paperwork to put you on the order of merit. At that stage, they will contact your employer. And so really once you’ve done that panel, it’s probably in your best interests to contact your employer and just let them know what you’ve done. And even then, if you wanted to, you could play it down a little bit, “Look, I’m on the waiting list now. Look, I just don’t know what my chances are of getting in. It’s very competitive. There’s a million applications, etc. etc.” And again, just play it down.
02:50 – Look obviously, this is something that each individual applicant has to decide for themselves, but I just wanted to make sure you’re aware that Victoria Police will ask you if it’s okay to contact your employer before they just go off and do it. This won’t even come up until the end of the process and eventually if they ask you two or three times, “Can we contact them now? Can we contact them now?” sooner or later they will say to you, “We’ll be contacting them early next week, so you need to deal with it, because that’s as long as we can hold off before we then will be able to finalise your application.”
03:29 – So rest assured they’ll give you plenty of warning when they intend to do it, and they will ask you if it’s okay to do it before they actually contact them towards the end of the process.
