Washington D.C. The Washington POST newspaper published a story titled: “The D.C. police department tries to solve a difficult case: How to recruit new cops”.
In this story, the journalist includes testimonials from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, citing their success with eSOPH.
Snippets of the story are included below:
“The push to streamline recruiting gained momentum when Phil Honoré heard about a company in Washington state that developed a software package for managing data associated with institutional background checks. It goes by the acronym eSOPH (electronic statement of personal history). If the company had a sense of humor, it would have named the system eDOP: end dependency on paperwork.
Haiman fell in love with the program and got purchasing approval. Last December the recruiting division went paperless. A couple dozen people used to make entries in an applicant’s “bluebook” folder, each pair of hands a potential source of delay. Honoré said eSOPH has saved “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in paper costs. More important, it shaved four to six weeks off the processing time of a typical job candidate. “It’s a game changer,” he said. Why? One aspect of police recruiting has remained constant over the years: The majority of applicants accept the first offer.
On Tuesday afternoons, Haiman, Honoré and Capt. Antonio Charland, director of the recruiting division, would meet at the downtown headquarters to discuss strategy and the latest hiring numbers. Every month 20 to 25 vacancies have to be filled at the academy. The department has never come up short, but final acceptances sometimes go down to the wire.
Charland was transferred to the division in April. By the July meeting he was firmly on message. “You’re dealing with applicants like any corporation or business,” he said, adding that the department has to hop on the good ones quickly. Haiman cited a pertinent statistic: Thanks largely to eSOPH, the average time it takes a new hire to advance from Mass Processing Day — the twice-monthly cattle call for new cops that includes basic screening — “to sitting in the academy” has been reduced to 2.7 months.”
The Washington POST story can be found at:
Miller Mendel Contact:
Tyler Miller
tjm@ MillerMendel.com