National Forensic Society Conference - 3 June 2009

 

Having attended the National Forensic Science Conference at the Barbican on 3 June, I've finally got round to putting my thoughts down..! Here were my views of the day.    Dr Jody Wilson works as Account Manager for SRG, the UK's leading recruitment & resourcing company for scientists. Amongst others, Jody recruits and supplies temporary DNA analysts, analysts and forensic scientists to the UK's leading provider of forensic services.

Be Flexible - I found Dr Angela Gallop's presentation really interesting and in particular her point about the new procurement system giving suppliers challenges in dealing with large swings in workload. My solution naturally is to point out the flexible model of sourcing staff through temporary/contract labour suppliers. SRG supplies DNA analysts and other staff on contract to the traditional supplier to allow them to peak-load & quickly reduce staff numbers to cope with swings in workload. We are used in this manner by many of the UK's leading pharmaceutical, food and health care manufacturers - indeed we're recruited 40 temporary staff in the last two weeks for swine flu vaccine development!

In-house teams - Dr Gallop alluded to this and I also spoke to one police force that has just recruited a team of twenty laboratory staff to handle their own analysis. Using their normal local advertising methods they were flooded by unsuitable applicants and it took a lot of administration time. Forces in similar circumstances could look to outsource the advertising & response-handling for these specialist roles to suppliers like SRG which have more niche advertising already established. Also, why hire directly onto police contracts? Why not outsource the recruitment & supply of the team to a contract workforce supplier like SRG?

Candidate flood - Most people I spoke to said it was not a problem attracting applications for jobs, rather weeding out suitable candidates from the absolute flood of CSI fans. This is of course a day to day part of my job - regularly getting more than 100 applications for any Forensic job I advertise. I'm lucky because all of my admin at SRG is supported by our Adapt candidate tracking system so I'm happy to filter response for anyone looking to advertise!  I had some interest in our free advert offer on New Scientist magazine - still time to register for that here.

Specialist courses - I heard that standard Forensic Science degree courses did not provide enough expertise in specific methods and certain employers were recommending specialist courses provided by a certain Northern University. Don't want to name specific names as this was a one-off remark. Anyone else got favourite University courses? E-mail me your favourite.

Faster, Cheaper, Better - all at Once - finally to return to Dr Gallop's presentation that neatly summarises the challenges we all face. At SRG we have the motto "Always First" - with the best candidate, the new solution and the best price.

Thanks for reading my views from the Conference. I'd be really interested to hear anyone else's views.

Jody

Dr Jody Wilson CertRP MREC
Account Manager