With a small number of existing vacancies in the teams active membership, combined with the forthcoming retirement in March 2005 of two of our longer serving members, we took the recent decision to have a recruiting drive, and reopened our ” On Line ” Initial Membership Application Form. We also sent out a recruitment press release to local and regional newspapers, radio and television. ( well who knows, we regularly feature on TV as a result of incidents, why not for recruitment? )
Upon receipt of a fully completed Initial Membership Application Form, we are inviting prospective team members to a two part Introduction To the Team. This is programmed for the evening of Tuesday 16th November, and all day ( well daylight hours at least! ) Sunday 21st November. Both sessions must be attended, with our next recruitment sessions not planned until at least summer 2005.
So far we have had 16 enquiries to join, with many more expected. All will receive an invite to the two sessions if they meet our initial selection criteria. From the two sessions, which are designed to give the fullest insight into how we operate and what we are about, we will then select those we feel are suitable to go onto our short Probationery Training Period, after which successful candidates will be invited to join as Trainee Team Members, for our 12th month long Basic Training period. It all seems rather daunting on paper, but the rewards of team membership are many, and to a large degree applicants to our team tend to select themselves!