posted 02-24-2009 01:00 AM
Hi Alan,I would agree with the emphasis on interviewing skills and report writing abilities.
Sadly, more polygraphs are screwed up in the pre-test than in any other phase, yet we don't pay this critical phase enough attention. Check out Gordon Barland's court testimony to corroborate that statement (available on his website).
I have been in the position of heading a selection board on four different occasions to select law enforcement examiners.
Here's what we did:
1) First of all, determine whether you want to open up the selection to all officers or just to investigators.
Lots of pro-and-con here but bear in mind that a polygraph examiner is, above all, an interviewer. Our preference at my department was to open the selection process to investigators and/or patrol officers who had a previous investigative background.
It's too expensive to send someone to polygraph school only to find out that he/she is a lousy interviewer without any natural ability......we all know examiners who conduct a pretest, formulate adequate test questions, administer the test, then consistently come up with inconclusive results....you don't need that.
2) Have the selection board pick (at random)three investigative reports written by the applicant within the last year.
Don't just look for spelling and grammar, but also review the reports for thoroughness and the ability to write in a clear, concise manner.
This is where it becomes obvious which officer prepares professional reports and who is lazy and does the minimum "just to get by."
3) Have an assessment center selection process with a couple of evaluators and a role player.
Provide the role player with a lot of "role" information, which is only discoverable by the applicant asking the right questions.
We used a situation where the role player was reporting that someone scratched his car's new paint job.....further probing by the applicant revealed that the "victim" had a suspect in mind......he suspected his ex-girlfriend....who may have retaliated because he damaged her front door; he himself has been charged with stalking her and he ultimately declined to prosecute for the scratched car!
Our thought was this simulates the common situation where someone comes in for a polygraph and the examiner ends up getting so much information during the pretest that the test isn't run or the test is over a whole different topic.
Lots of fun: some applicants got all the information, some never got any of it and just took a basic crime report without the "back story" and some got the story all screwed up in their written report.
I'm getting too long-winded in this post but remember that going to polygraph school won't make someone a good interviewer. In fact, considering its importance, a minimal amount of time is spent at basic poly school on the topic of interviewing.
So, don't pick someone who sucks as an interviewer in the hopes they will somehow get sprinkled with magic polygraph dust and come back from school as a good interviewer.
I may have the written evaluation material from our assessment center. If you need it, let me know.
Polygraph Place Bulletin Board
posted 02-23-2009 11:00 AM
