For my CLE interview, I decided to speak to someone who held a job that was not specifically one I had been researching during this assignment. This person’s job contained a little of two jobs I had considered, though, and this job would also be an area of interest for me. Although they are now retired, my interviewee was able to tell me a lot about her work in the Coquitlam R.C.M.P. building. She was one the people in a department who worked to prepare police documents and compiled them like a book to then forward to Crown Counsel.
One thing I learned about this job was that there was a high level of security involved. Many measures had to be taken to ensure that sensitive information was dealt with in a proper way. A part of my interviewee’s job, for example, was to “redact all sensitive material that Defense Lawyers were not allowed to see.” Further, even applying for the job involved an extensive amount of security. Everyone working in the detachment had to obtain a high level security clearance to be there, and security clearances could take anywhere from three to six months. This meant that competition was very high for an entry level job, and it only got more so from there.
Something else that I found interesting about this job was that there are a lot of opportunities to gain experience in the field beforehand. For example, in this case, working for the City of Coquitlam means there are many accessible departments and job locations. My interviewee pointed out that this includes City Hall employees, Library, Fire hall, Bylaws, and Animal Shelter. Working with the city for longer helps to better your chances of moving up to a specific position.
The last point I will share from my interview is that I learned that having a routine in this job was a rarity. When she went to work in the morning, my interviewee said, she never knew what projects she was going to be faced with that day. There are both team projects and individual projects involved, and my interviewee described it as exciting to find out what investigations she would be working on each day.
There was much more I learned about this job and working for the R.C.M.P. than what I shared here, and I loved that I was able to gain some insight on a position that I was not specifically aware of and considering before. From the interview I conducted, it sounds like this is a job or area of work that I could learn to work quite well in and enjoy.