Interest high in police, military jobs
By DANA HERRA dherra@daily-chronicle.com
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| Sgt. Gary Dumdie of the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office helps contain a loose dog in Sycamore. |
With U.S. unemployment at a 26-year high, some people who may not have considered military or public safety jobs a few years ago are taking a new look at the government sector.
The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office and Sycamore Police Department are both accepting applications for police officers, and both Sheriff Roger Scott and Sycamore Police Chief Don Thomas are expecting more applicants than usual.
“When I first started policing in the early 1970s, there was sort of a mini-recession,” Thomas said. “I was going for police jobs competing with 250 people at a crack for a list of 25. It was brutal.”
While a lack of private sector jobs does typically result in more applicants for public safety jobs, the rigorous testing tends to weed out those who aren’t really interested in police work, Scott said.
“We do have people who apply just because they need a job and don’t have a real sincere desire to be in law enforcement,” he said. “Usually they get weeded out, because it’s quite an involved process. ... Really, those who have the interest and capability usually come to the top.”
DeKalb County has traditionally been a strong recruiting market for the U.S. Army, local recruiter SSG Chambala Cuney said, but since early this year she has seen an unusually large number of people coming in who have lost private sector jobs, she said.
“It’s not uncommon for us to have college graduates, those with Master’s degrees. All walks of life always come through that office,” she said. “But lately we have seen an increase in people coming in with interest due to losing a job.”
Most people who talk to a recruiter follow through with the qualification process, Cuney said, though there are still many who gather information and say they want to wait it out and see if the economy improves before they enlist. Because of a surge in enlistments nationwide, the Army has been faced with a new problem, she said: new recruits are waiting four to six months to ship out for basic training.
“We’re just starting to run out of spots,” she said. “We’re actually getting pretty full.”
Though specific numbers were not available, Maj. Clayton Kuetemeyer, director of recruiting and retention for the Illinois National Guard, said in a written statement that tough economic times traditionally bring more people to consider the military, and the current recession is no different.
“Military service has long been recognized as a solid, stable employment opportunity, with extremely competitive benefits,” Kuetemeyer said in an e-mail.
Federal budget cuts are affecting many recruiting stations, Kuetemeyer said, and though the number of recruits is increasing, recruiters still have the arduous task of making sure only qualified individuals make the cut.
“Many people who are interested in serving cannot meet the entrance requirements, so our recruiters still have a challenging mission to find those that can,” he said.
