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.