John Finlay, Head of Learning and Development, ADT Europe and South Africa, argues that unless the security industry changes its ways, it is at risk of getting left behind in the race for good employees.
If you are reading this then there is a good chance that you are one of the half a million people who work in security in the UK. However, despite the size of the industry, when you go to a conference or an event you are probably used to seeing the same faces – experienced professionals who may be in a different role from last year, but people you have known for as long as you have been in the business. This depth of experience is of enormous value but, at the same time, it illustrates that we are facing a recruitment challenge.
To keep moving forward we also need new faces – graduates with a drive to succeed along with experienced businessmen and women who can provide new perspectives. In addition, we need to ensure our apprentices recognise they could be at the start of a long, rewarding and versatile career – the potential managers of the future.
It is a big challenge and one that we need to address right now if we want the best people to work for us. Of the 340,000 students who graduated from UK institutions this year [a figure from the Association of Graduate Recruiters] – how many will have considered security as a career? On milkround.co.uk, the graduate recruitment site, visitors cannot even search for jobs in this area. We must start to do more to attract these potential stars of tomorrow. We are competing against other industries who offer graduates tailored placements, giving them a taste of their future. As we stand now, our approach is failing to win these graduates over.
Likewise, when we are looking for people to fill more senior roles, do we ever leave our ‘comfort zone’ of the trade magazines? How often do you see positions advertised in national papers or business magazines? By restricting our searches to the security industry, we are missing out on those individuals who not only want a career change, but have skills and experience in a range of sectors that can really benefit us.
We need to refresh the way we promote a career in security to these individuals – illustrating its dynamic and challenging nature. In turn, it should be easier to attract new talent who can then complement the experienced professionals already working for us and, as a result, make the industry even stronger.
At the same time, it is important that we pay equal attention to those who have already chosen security as a career – particularly the talented individuals who often follow the family tradition and enter an apprenticeship. It is these employees that we need to nurture beyond their initial qualifications by providing them with the opportunity to go as far as they want in the industry, in whatever direction. We should not pigeon-hole them. We need to encourage them to see their qualifications as an open door rather than ‘job done’. We can achieve this change by investing in individually tailored training programmes and establishing a culture encouraging continual personal development for all employees.
This new approach to recruitment and development should benefit all security companies – regardless of their size. Training, recruitment and development are keys to the success of businesses built on people and products. With the low rates of unemployment in the UK, we cannot afford to stand still in the race to gain and retain the best people. We need to change our approach to recruitment and progress our training and development initiatives so that, at next year’s conference or annual dinner, we will have some new faces to whom we can introduce ourselves.
