Author: Michael S D'Angelo
ISBN No: 9781482244311
Review date: 07/05/2024
No of pages: 112
Publisher: CRC Press
Publisher URL:
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482244311
Year of publication: 30/03/2015
Brief:
From Police to Security Professional
price
£31.99
From Police to Security Professional: A Guide to a Successful Career Transition, by Michael S D’Angelo. Published 2015 by CRC Press, 112 pages, paperback, £31.99, ISBN 9781482244311. Visit http://www.crcpress.com/.
While this book is by an American author – he writes of making his ‘career transition’ – his subject applies to the UK and any other English-speaking country and indeed anywhere with a police force. If you start early in the police or military you put in 25 or 30 years and come out – or in the recent UK public sector austerity, are made to leave – with a relatively good pension. You are still young and feel active enough to enjoy that pension – but what if anything are you going to do with the 15 years or more of working life – assuming that we can and ought to stop working at 60, or even 65? And what if the police or military was your dream job, your calling? Then what?
D’Angelo shrewdly and neatly points to the practical differences between police and military work and the private sector (in his case healthcare security management) and the intangible. Making a career change is stressful, especially if you have only had one career so far. The badge becomes part of what you are; the accident or disaster on your patch is your responsibility. Doing something as simple as writing your resume (or CV) can be hard if you haven’t done it before – practically, in terms of what you type, and intangibly, in the sense of marketing yourself, putting your best foot forward to the working world of recruiters. Changing career from public to private sector requires, as D’Angelo spells out, being humble enough to understand – and more to the point, show that you understand – that you are entering a field where those already in it know what they are doing, better than you.
D’Angelo shows you how to navigate a new world of recruitment, applying your skills to new fields, and learning new things. Yes, the move can be a ‘culture shock’ – though it’s worth pausing to wonder how someone already experienced in private security or management in general would find a move into the police or military, an idea aired by reforming UK Governments but without much sign of actually happening.
In brief chapters – it’s a short and sweet book – D’Angelo sets out interview tips, how to establish your ‘credibility’ with potential and then actual employers, and how you can and should protect your future, with an eye on retiring again, this time after a second career.
A most useful book for anyone in the shoes as described and walked in by D’Angelo – the middle-aged cop who weighs up his options – and indeed useful for anyone in mid-career.
