Your hiring standards and resumes with overseas experiences.

My apologies to everyone for getting this out so late, going through the agency licensing process while working took a bit of a toll on my free time.

OK, enough guessing, which guy should I hire? Actually it doesn’t matter because all of those pictures are the same person, me! To me it was obvious, and I wondered how many people would see that all the pictures were of the same person. But, misconceptions can change your viewpoint. Thanks to everyone who read the articles and voted, I appreciate you taking the time. The voting results were interesting, of course I really have to wonder what the logic was in selecting “None of the above.” Was it misconceptions, just don’t like contractors, I don’t fit a certain image in my suit? Who knows but it was fun to watch. The type of experience was also very interesting, a good variety as well as 5 with no experience. Here’s the results, judge them for yourself;

Over the last year I have heard a lot of discussion on hiring practices. Some of this has been good relevant discussion, but it has pointed out a few things that in my opinion need correcting in this business. There seems to be a wide range of thought on what hiring practices should be, or more to the point, hiring requirements. I’ve seen a wide variety of requirements for protection jobs, some I think are very relevant, and some are just bizarre. So let’s discuss that before we move into what to look for on a resume from someone who worked in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I know that sometimes as a hiring manager you don’t always get to control what the hiring requirements for a job are, that might be set by your boss, or even by someone in human resources. If you don’t have a say in the hiring, find out how you can, then go about improving it.

As I said earlier, there have been a lot of strange requirements, and opinions vary on exactly what is the most important skill to have. Fortunately that’s not what I want to talk about, I would like to talk about common sense requirements. What good does it do you to require someone to carry a gun when the only people allowed to carry are police officers? This alone can be a long discussion, however how many police departments do you know of that are loaded with “qualified” and “experienced” protectors? Outside of a mayors detail I can’t think of any myself. So, why require it? Is it driven by the principal? Is it driven by the old boy network so someone can hire all their friends? If it’s a principal request, have you talked to them about this? Have you explained how often (or infrequently) someone, or even the Secret Service has drawn guns? I understand they don’t always want to listen to reasoning from you, believe me. If it’s due to the good old boy network ask yourself how well has that turned out, did everything look professional or were your buddies goofing off, sleeping, and drinking coffee when they should be doing something else? You see where that is going don’t you? Personally I won’t hire a buddy unless I know for certain I can let him work unsupervised and he fits what is needed for that job, I’ve seen too many details go bad because it was a group of friends who ended up doing something stupid and making the client mad, or worse.

So let’s take a look at a couple of the requirements I’ve seen lately. I have to admit I had to look this one up, and while I understand the requirement, it’s a silly one. Yes, this is an actual requirement for an EP job.

• Candidate must be eligible to apply for, and successfully complete a federal background check and training to become an Armed Security Officer through the Transportation Security Administration.

So, what this means is that unless you were a law enforcement officer of some sort, you can forget applying to that job. Apparently you need to have an armed agent to fly private aircraft into a few certain airports. I still don’t get it, but then again I don’t get much our government does even after working for them for a few years.

One I was contacted for wanted me to submit copies of my previous advance work and a few other things. That’s the first time I had seen or heard of that, maybe I’ve been under a rock lately but that’s not happening. My previous employers expect confidentiality, and they will get it from me. Maybe, just maybe if I had time I might sanitize something, but this really made me suspicious, if I’m behind the times please let me know.

This was for an estate position.

• Bachelor’s degree and minimum of three years’ experience in an Executive Protection capacity.
• Experience providing protection for private, high-net-worth families; government officials or diplomats

OK, the experience requirement I can live with, it makes sense. But a degree to do a residence detail? Wouldn’t it make more sense to require that person to attend a good EP school? Or better yet, why not give a good person a chance and use some of your training budget to send them to one, I’ve found people to be better employees when they feel the company is willing to invest in them. I also know of a detail that required a degree and no experience, they found out the hard way that wasn’t such a good idea from what I hear. Not that education isn’t important, it just doesn’t make sense for this job.

And my favorite requirement, military service.

• Must have minimum of 5 years experience in the Military and Law Enforcement. If experience is in the Military, active duty required with Special Operations, combat Arms, Military Police and/or PSD.

Let’s start with the 5-year requirement. I’ve never seen a 5 year enlistment, they are usually in 3 or 4 year increments, I think the nice lady in HR put this in there. Or maybe it’s combined experience between military and law enforcement, it really isn’t clear. What does being in Special Forces have to do with corporate protection? I get that hiring former military you’re probably looking for dependability, really I do, but I’ve also seen a few guys who made me wonder how they ever got into Special Forces that are working in this business. Having said that there are a lot more military personnel that have gotten good protective training due to current events. My question is, do they have any experience with the corporate world? If they are a good candidate, are you willing to provide them the opportunity for corporate training? I will give this company credit for adding PSD, as you’ve heard me say before some people think all PSD guys did was drive around at 100mph shooting everything that moved.

Do you know what all of these had in common besides having some odd requirement? Not a single EP job that I looked up said you must be physically fit. Think about that one.

Here’s my advice, and this comes from hearing people complain about silly hiring requirements, as well as hearing from hiring managers about the poor quality of applicants. If you are going to seek applicants then get used to weeding them out as they say, people see a job and they apply even if they don’t meet the requirements. One reason is they can’t follow directions, but also because a lot of times they know a company won’t get the person they are seeking so why not apply, they might get lucky. So, both sides are equally as guilty. Let’s all start by getting it together and having some common sense relevant requirements, and all you protectors out there start paying attention…it’s part of your job, if you can’t follow simple directions why do you think someone would hire you?

Here’s my example; At least once a week I delete an email from someone seeking a job when it clearly states I am not hiring and not currently accepting resumes. One email that was sent to me was so poorly written I have to wonder was that person even a former federal agent as he stated. I don’t even bother to reply, I hit the delete button and move onto more important things.

As a hiring manager I would sit down with my team members and decide on a core group of skills that we would like someone to have if we were to hire them. I won’t go into what’s more important, or should they be armed or not, have they been to this school or that school. It’s your vacancy, you figure it out, but do everyone a favor and make sure it’s relevant. If you make it so only a retired Secret Service Director could get the job you’re not doing yourself any good. See my point? Do you think a retired director wants to stand post? He’ll get bored in 5 minutes, if that. If you have a residence opening then determine what skills are needed for that. If you need an advance agent then look at the relevant skills and request that. Just know that you are never going to get the perfect agent, it’s just not possible, by the time someone is able to get 10 years experience, a 4-year degree, and 10 years of law enforcement with another 6 years of military would you honestly think they want to stand in someone’s garage for 12 hours?

OK, enough about that. Let’s move on to figuring out overseas experience. There has been so much misinformation about the people who worked overseas, some of which I have already covered. What I have not really touched on too much is that not everyone who worked overseas actually did protection. This is by no means to say they did not do a good job, or were not necessary, they just didn’t protect a principal, that’s it. There were also people who did laundry, cooked, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. There were also a lot of people doing guard work, convoy security, training, etc, none of which applies to protecting principals unless you want to split hairs about the guard work relating to residence protection.

I ran into a guy on my way in/out of country once who was telling me what a bad ass PSD guy he was, former Ranger, could shoot out a fleas eye at 5 miles with a straw and a spitball. Sure he could. If he was any of those things then I’ll probably be the next Pope. He was the guy who handed out bed sheets at Camp Victory and probably couldn’t run to the chow hall if his life depended on it, you see where that is going don’t you?

News flash, people lie, people tell big giant sparkly lies, and they also put them on their resumes. As a hiring manager it’s your job to figure that out and file it in the shredder. Here’s another news flash, there are people who never worked overseas that have it on their resume. Verify everything!

A while back I got a phone call from an old friend who was pretty upset. It seems someone was questioning my background on another web site. So what. I appreciate the call, and I appreciate that they corrected the person asking questions but it’s not hard to verify my background. The problem was just another internet  guy running his pie hole before he put some actual thought into it, or better yet contacting me and asking. I still don’t know who that was, nor do I care, my background is out there, go verify it for yourself, I’ll even have my old boss contact you if it’s that important.

OK, back on topic. So, how do you as a hiring manager verify work history of someone who worked in a high threat area? Any decent company will have a number to verify employment, you might have already asked for it on an application. Call it! Now days most companies will only give you dates of employment and maybe if they were eligible for rehire, the latter is not always dependable information for a number of reasons. Why? First because I saw so many good people fired over absolutely silly things, or worse yet because a certain manager just didn’t like them. I saw one guy fired for doing his job, no kidding, he did his job during an attack and got fired but that’s another long story. So verify that the person worked for who they said, they actually held that job, and the dates, easy enough. Ask the applicant to provide a phone or email contact for his old boss, coworkers, personal references, etc, and then go out and ask the right questions. When you are talking to those people ask them for another name and contact to talk to. Why, because applicants will give you their good references, not the guys who might tell you that you shouldn’t hire him or her.  You’ll get a good feel of whether or not that person did what they say they did, the guys doing PSD work don’t like people who lie about their experience and pretend to be one of them, they will gladly point that out.

During the last year or two that I was overseas it became a requirement that you had to provide your own employment verification. This was used for submitting a BIO for promotions. I’m assuming it was  because in the past they found that far too many people had slipped through the cracks so to speak. I had to track down people I hadn’t talked to in over 15 years and ask them to write me a letter verifying that I actually had a job at a company that no longer existed. You could also do this, if the person is organized they may already have it.

If it’s that important to you, and you have a good candidate for a job contact me, I’ll be glad to assist you as long as I don’t become your unpaid full time resume reader. I’ll be honest, I won’t be able to verify everything and people will slip through the cracks at times, but I do know a lot of guys still working overseas that I can ask for help. If it’s someone I worked with believe me I’ll be glad to tell you if they could fill the job or not. The last thing I want to see is the bad apples continue to give the good guys a bad name, it’s in everyone’s best interest.

I see a good number of corporate security managers as well as current and former PSD guys on social media, there’s another good resource for both groups. It may take you a little longer to verify some overseas experience, but it can be done and anyone with a bit of worldly experience should be able to spot a fraudulent resume or applicant.  So in closing, verify what you can, find a contact that knows about the overseas protection business and get them to assist you. It’s not really rocket science, and you just might get a great candidate that has real world experience and adds value to your team.