May we contact your current employer question

[Streetmarine]

I'm in the middle of a police background paper work and they asking me about my current employer and if I said yes I'm afraid of risking my current job which pays decent and if I say no it looks like I'm trying to hide something. What can I do in this situation anybody had this problem before?
Like if I don't get the police job my current job would be like oh he is trying to leave let's find someone and I'll get replace which I don't want to happen.

[Ratatatat]

Ask yourself this question- do I really want this job? Do I want it enough to risk losing my current job if I don't get it?

Life is fraught with risks...

[Streetmarine]

Yea but if I lose this job and I don't get in it will be hard to find a decent job that can pay my bills and rent.

[L-1]

You can always tell your employer you are applying as a reserve, which will not impact your employment with them.

[L-1]

I was in that situation when I first got hired. It was the practice of my then employer to immediately terminate anyone who was looking for another job or who found one and tried to give two weeks notice.

I explained that to my BIs and asked that contact with my current employer be left as the last thing they did. I never had difficulty obtaining compliance.

[orangebottle]

That's a tough question, and I've experienced it from both sides -- as the interviewer and the interviewee.

When I'm conducting a background investigation for an applicant, I tell them I will be speaking to their current employer and ask the applicant if they would like me to leave that until the very end. That way, if I find other reasons that lead me to believe the applicant won't be moving forward earlier in the investigation, I don't put their current employment at risk.

As the interviewee, I requested the investigator let me know when they were planning to contact my employer, which they were willing to do.

The first time I got to that point in an application process, I told my supervisor. It was a big risk, because they very much had a history of letting people go that were looking for alternative employment. I told them I was considering the position but hadn't decided to take it if it was offered. That time, I did get an offer, but decided it wasn't the right fit for me at the time and declined it. I continued working for that company for many more years.

When I went through it again and reached that point, I said the same thing to my bosses. That time the company was different, and it was not unusual for people to move on for 'professional growth'. They took it in stride, and were actually really good about it when I told them I decided to take the new position.

When you get to that question on the application, it's certainly a gut-check moment; how badly do you really want it? The bottom line is that no police agency doing good background investigations is going to NOT talk to the person's current employer.

[CompanyMan]

I had the same situation with an applicant. She explained to me that her current employer would immediately terminate her if they found out she was looking for new employment.

We had no issue working around this because we knew she would make a good cop. So we completed her entire background, except for her current employer. We allowed her to finish the entire hiring process so that was the absolute final step. We then called her employer and finalized everything on our end. We called her and gave her, her final offer. She stated she was ecstatic because she had been fired two hours prior by her current job. So for her it worked out as she was fired on a Friday and started with us on the next Monday but it doesn't always work out that smoothly for everyone.

In the end you have to decide what's best for you. If you work at a place like that do you really want to be there the rest of your life and regret not trying to become a cop? At some point you have to make a jump head first and allow fate to take its course.

[Levithane]

Isn't there some sort of legal issue when employers do that? I do background investigations on the Federal side and have never come across the potential termination issue when interviewing people as apart of the security clearance investigation.