Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

If any senior explorers can give me some advice on recruiting new explorers, aswell as how to instill previous returning explorers as leaders... it would be greatly appreciated.

Our post is relatively small, 5-10 members, and only two of the senior explorers ( ones who have been with the post for 2 or more years ), which there are 5 of... get involved at all.

we now have more than 20 new people interested in the post. but they are leaving for other posts due to our not having much explorer leadership, and not being as involved as other departments post in events...

what do i do?

Welcome to RP. If you plan to stick around, I would suggest introducing yourself in the Rap Sheets section of the forum.

If I were in your scenario, I would do the following: (Obviously, after permission is given from your advisor)

1) Review the new applications, and take as many as your department will permit you.
2) Pick the 2 or 3 senior explorers that you think will best suit as leaders, and promote them (or however your post runs the 'leadership' aspect of it)
3) Start to get involved in events. There are a few threads on here about how to get involved in events, they should be of some help.

This is a very general summary of what I would do. Your post may have different rules/regulations that might require a different plan of action. But I would definitely talk with your advisor about it. You don't want to lose 20 possible explorers.

Let your senior cadets that aren't contributing know that they will be passed up for promotions if they don't get their minds right. Try calling them out publicly at meetings. Public humiliation, when deserved and done appropriately, can be very persuasive. Also, a good *** chewing behind closed doors by your advisors wouldn't be out of line. Afterall, being in a leadership type role and not leading is unacceptable IMHO.

Make sure of the new applicants that you only accept those who are 100% dedicated. Not probably able to make meetings and events, but will.

And if you want to reduce your turnover, just start going to the competitions that other posts are doing.

Our post has a unique way of reinstating senior explorers.

What happens is when they want to come back, their position is determined by the time committment, they either can rejoin as a uniformed member, if they can attend meetings/details on a regular basis, OR, if they can not, they can come back as a Jr. /Assistant Advisor and serve in a planning function.

As far as details, get known, mention your post to various community/business orginizations. If you present a good impression, they may ask you to help at various functions. The best part of this is that it is self-fufilling, because once you work an event, more people know of you and request you.

How we promote is we look at time in service, amount of leadership the person demonstrates, then we have written tests with all the material that the person in that position should know, then we put them under an FTO (usually the person who is already in that position and is leaving or moving up in the chain of command.) If they do an A+ job they’ll get sent to a promotion board and hopefully get promoted.

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Our post has the same problem...We've been recruiting at high schools in the area so our numbers will change soon....also atm we don't have a rank staff so we're gonna be promoting our most senior members (hopefully I get Capt or Lt.)....other then that, as far as Seniors go, there's not much you can do (which is why we're promoting newer guys like myself who've only been on for about a year).

in my area you have to leave cops out of it or else people run

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I still think you should give it a try. You never know who might be interested, even in bad areas.

we are...

What you need to do is start giving out duties. Even if you can't promote any of your explorers, you should make squads (if you don't already have them) and assign squad leaders. You can make the squad leaders your seniors if you so desire; it's all about preference. Then tell the squad leaders they will be held accountable for actions of the people within their respective squads. Make sure you're a good example of what needs to be done and if they don't belive you then demonstrate what happens when they disobey and don't have their stuff together. I guarantee that the squad leaders are not going to want to pay for their sqaud's mistakes anymore and they will square them away. Just make sure to discipline the leaders for all of their sqaud members' mistakes.