Conditional offers...

[SpacemanSpiff]

I just received an offer of employment conditional upon successful completion of a polygraph and psychological. My question is, do departments send out a large number of conditional offers with the assumption that some will not pass, or are conditional offers sent out based strictly upon number of vacancies?

[Jay7376]

My department only gives conditional offers to applicants that will be hired. It is rare that my department takes back an offer, mostly because by this time the background has been completed and no problems were found.

[mobrien316]

In Connecticut a department must make a conditional offer of employment before they can send someone to a polygraph exam. That's because of the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which was passed in 1988. The act makes it illegal for most employers to require any of their employees or prospective employees to take a polygraph. Local, state, and federal agencies are exempt from the act.

For that reason, in Connecticut getting a conditional offer of employment does not mean you will be hired. It just means you are up to the step in the hiring process where you go to the polygraph, which is required by law for all Connecticut police applicants.

Obviously, private polygraph firms do not give out their statistics, but the failure rate for applicants to the Connecticut State Police (who have their own polygraph examiners) is reportedly fifty percent. Anyone who does not "pass" their polygraph will not be offered a job.