Someone had asked this elsewhere but then deleted their own post and I don’t know why! I was meaning to come back to it and read it, so rest assured that I won’t delete this one as there were some really interesting stories of unconventional ways people landed their work.
TL;DR: I got headhunted after directly emailing dozens of people and pitching myself as an available, on-call substitute in my line of work, instead of submitting job applications traditionally.
As for me, I cold-pitched myself via Google Maps and other searches as an available substitute to those in my skilled trade (upon moving to a different region) in basically a 50-mile radius, and eventually word of my availability reached a large, overarching institution that connected me with an organization that had a full-time opening. It took me probably 4-5 months from the move to the job offer.
Edit: My story is actually a little more complicated than that, now that I recall the details from years ago; there wasn’t actually a full-time opening at my now-workplace at the time, haha. What happened was that I was briefly interviewed and quickly hired as an assistant to an overwhelmed director who ended up getting massively sick and nearly died from COVID, so I subbed as the director. They had been having interpersonal problems with her and I rapidly noticed them in the weeks before she got sick and warned them of her. While I wasn’t trying to take her place, the higher-ups said they were aware of her shortcomings (she had basically said “Shut up” to another director higher than her rank, to give you one of many examples of how bad it was, and she must have been in her 50s if not 60s).
Nearly everyone at the org apparently loved my work while I subbed for her for nearly a full month, and they eventually fired her and made me her replacement after another interview. It was definitely unusual…
I’m a 911 dispatcher, basically every dispatch center in the country is always hiring. There’s a lot of turnover, obviously it’s not a job everyone is cut out for and people get burned out, but also people use it as a stepping stone or career builder to move onto other things, a couple of my coworkers want to be cops and this looks good on that application, one went to work for FEMA, a couple have gone to be the dispatchers at local stations, people get promoted or transfer to other county positions (my agency is part of our county department of public safety, in some areas it might be part of your sheriff’s department, local PD, etc) or just go chasing higher paychecks or dream jobs (pay varies a lot around the country, we make decent enough money where I am, but some places really pay peanuts)
I saw an ad on social media somewhere that they had a hiring event going on, so I went. I was working in a warehouse at the time, and a job where I could sit down in the air conditioning sounded really attractive.
Civil service type jobs were already on my radar, I looked into becoming a park ranger for a while, and I’m an eagle scout, so I had a solid grounding on first aid and such.
I showed up, filled out an application, took their aptitude test (we, and a lot of other agencies use something called criticall if you want to get an idea what that test was like. Some typing, reading comprehension, map reading, listening to some sample calls and answering questions about them, etc.)
I passed the test, so as part of the hiring event I got an interview on the spot. If I applied outside of that, I probably would have had to schedule separate times for the test and interview.
I did alright in the interview so they scheduled me for a job shadow to come in and sit in the room to listen to calls and radio dispatch for a couple hours.
Then a while later I got my conditional offer. I had to get a hearing, vision, and drug test, and schedule a psych eval with the county psychologist.
You all know what hearing and vision tests are like I hope, for the drug test they did a hair test. I shave my head, so I was expecting them to take some beard hair, but apparently their policy is to do underarms if that’s the case.
The psych eval wasn’t anything too in depth, sat down with him for a few minutes, chatted about my mental health (no real issues there) then I got handed a very long test booklet to go fill out, lots of multiple choice questions that seemed to basically be gauging if I can play well with others.
And I assume at some point in there they ran background checks and such. Some places get really in depth with that, interviews with the sheriff, polygraph tests, etc. but mine was all pretty out of sight and out of mind.
Then class started. About a week into it we had to go to the county detectives office to be fingerprinted. But otherwise after that it was just all training.
Requirements here are pretty minimal, clean background check, high school diploma/GED, ability to pass all the pre employment screening, etc. At my agency past drug use isn’t necessarily a disqualifier, as long as you can pass the drug test to get hired and don’t get caught lying about anything you have done. Some other places are of course more strict about that.
If anyone thinks they may want to pursue a dispatch job, your local agency may list the job under a couple different names, dispatcher, calltaker, telecommunicator, etc.
Interesting, thanks for the detailed explanation. Are you also using this role as a stepping stone to a target career, out of curiosity?
Didn’t know that! I guess it’s to address fully clean-shaven people…
Personally, I’m happy to just chill where I am for a couple decades until I can retire. If I have to work, this honestly feels about as good as it gets for me. I don’t have any desire to climb the ladder or go hunting for a new job.
I like the hours/schedule, we do 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 rotation, which is pretty common in this field, so it’s a long shift but it’s a long shift sitting in an air conditioned bunker, and unless you come in for overtime you never have to work more than 3 days in a row without a 2 day break. Now those 3 days are weekends, which sucks, but the flip side is every other weekend you have a 3 day weekend. And if you plan your vacations and such right you only need to take 2 days to get a whole week off, so my PTO can go a long way. Here we start off with about 2 weeks of vacation time (“about” because it’s based on 8 hour days and we work 12, it more or less works out the same but you’re always kind of left with some fraction of a day carrying over) then after 5 years you get another week, and again at a couple other milestones years. I actually really struggle to use up all of my PTO personally because nearly everything I do fits into a 3 day weekend.
Benefits are solid, pension, decent medical plan, sometimes you can qualify for first responder discounts, etc.
Different places have different policies on this, but where I am what you do between calls is pretty much up to you, as long as you’re not bothering anyone or making a mess, you can bring in a laptop and play video games or watch movies, read, work on some crafts, whatever as long as you can put it down when the phone rings.
I work night shift, so things can get pretty dead and you get a lot of downtime between calls. Most people work 7-7, but I managed to snag myself a 3pm-3am shift, which I think is great- I get to sleep in until noon every day, but I don’t have to turn my schedule totally upside down if I need to do something in the morning.
We’re not union in my county, and while normally I’m all for unions, it’s worked out well for us so far, because one of the first concessions that tends to get made in contract negotiations is mandatory overtime in some form because like I said everywhere struggles with staffing issues, and so far they’ve done a decent job of keeping our pay competitive without it (probably because I think the dispatchers in most if not all of our surroundings counties are unionized, so they know we might jump ship to them if they don’t pay us competitively)
And for all of those practical reasons, it also feels good to know I’m helping people. I have absolutely saved lives in my time here, I’ve delivered babies, I’ve helped people through disasters and all manner of scary situations.
And it’s always interesting. When the phone rings I never know what’s going to be on the other end, which of course has its ups and downs, but it’s always interesting. Some of the people and the things they call about are absolutely infuriating of course, but no matter what it is I always get a great story. I never come home to my wife asking me “how was your day” and have to answer with some boring “same shit, different day” kind of answer, there’s always something interesting. Sometimes it’s something I’m proud of, sometimes it’s something I’m pissed off about, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s “can you believe somebody actually called about this?”