On Tuesday, the Columbus City Council approved a new employment strategy that covers the cost of training in exchange for the employee agreeing to stay with the city for five years.
Instead of recruiting a certified latent fingerprint analyst, the city will instead hire an employee and pay for that person’s training.
Under the agreement, the city will pay $19,500 in tuition and more than $45,000 in lodging, meals and travel expenses to send the analyst to a Latent Print Examiner Training Academy from January through May 2027.
With the average salary of an already-certified analyst ranging from $80,000 to $85,000, the $65,000 in training cost, divided over a five-year commitment, comes to $13,000 per year. Hiring an employee at an annual salary of anything less than $63,000 would represent a savings for the city.
There are provisions to recoup some of those funds should the employee drop out of training or leave before the five-year term.
There is much to like about this strategy. First of all, it broadens the pool of candidates considerably since there are a finite – in fact, scarce – number of certified analysts. According to the International Association for Identification, which provides the industry-standard certification for this field, there are only 920 certified latent print analysts in the nation. That means trying to assemble a pool of candidates to work in Columbus would seem almost impossible.
This approach allows the city to identify prospects who have the qualities that make for good employees who don’t have the requisite training and can’t afford to pay for their own training.
Columbus is far more likely to make a successful hire with this approach.
At a minimum, the city will have a trained analyst for at least five years. We also know that someone who agrees to stay five years may find a permanent home in Columbus.
This “train your own” strategy has also been used by the city when training police recruits. It has also been used for years with great success by states and the federal government to recruit teachers, doctors and nurses to rural or underserved communities.
It’s a good model that will improve the city’s odds of securing a quality analyst while protecting the city if the terms aren’t honored by that employee. It might work for other hard-to-fill positions as well.
We applaud the council for finding the money to make this strategy work.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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