Dept of Justice - Forensic Scientist

Arciphel

Hi there,

Anyone on here at the exams today for this post? I was there and was surprised at the large amount of people sitting the exam (it was the standard Executive Officer verbal & numerical reasoning exams). Does anybody know how many positions are available?

Saibh

standard practice for position in public sector (i.e executive officer, clerical officer) is for a panel to be created following interviews and said panel would usually close after a certain length of time not too sure could be year or more

it would all depend how many vacancies there are available at present time for your job and where you are placed on the panel.

BostonB

Arciphel wrote: »

...was surprised at the large amount of people sitting the exam ...

Theres suddenly a lot of interest in Forensics these days loads. I wonder why.

Shield

BostonB wrote: »

Theres suddenly a lot of interest in Forensics these days loads. I wonder why.

CSI has a lot to answer for. The job most definitely is not what you see on glossy American TV. The bit that gets me every time is: "Here's the DNA results from the sample you gave me THIS MORNING". Class.

jd83

The show make it look all glamorous and exciting where in reality it can be quite tedious and repetitive job. Had a mate who done forensics in college said a lot of people went into first year of a course in it thinking it would be like C.S.I and then dropped out after a few months.

Arciphel

I definately agree. My own experience is in the area of microscopy, some of the things i see them doing on CSI makes me blow my top! Oh well, we were told the exam results will be out in about two weeks, i assume after that they will start shortlisting people based on the aptitude exam results and their experience as per their CV's.

ixoy

psni wrote: »

CSI has a lot to answer for. The job most definitely is not what you see on glossy American TV. The bit that gets me every time is: "Here's the DNA results from the sample you gave me THIS MORNING". Class.

Precisely. It's not even the worse - I was watching "Bones" today and they had some skeletal remains. They then created a 3-D model of it, realised that it was a pitchfork and the asisstant blithely says he'll go off and get the make of it. What is there a central database of pitchfork tines that he can just log into? And that's just an example from today. They're always able to tell where a murder occurred due to the type of soil on a tyre - right down to the nearest five metres. Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

Very few shows portray it as I imagine it is ("The Wire" being an example of it probably being right and taking weeks to get a DNA result back). Even if they have the fancy equipment, there's assumedly many hours/days of work/tedium between the montage that takes all of five seconds on screen. I've heard of the "CSI effect" hampering juries in court because they believe the "evidence never lies" and it can tell everything they need to know about a case.

auslaender

I was thinking of going for that too but dont have enough experience in a sufficient number of the analytical techniques they were looking for.More synthetic experience.I know a few people that went for it and as far as I know there were 12 positions for forensic scientists available.

Arciphel

auslaender wrote: »

I know a few people that went for it and as far as I know there were 12 positions for forensic scientists available.

Wow, really. thats quite a good number. I got a letter today saying that i had passed the examination and would proceed to the next part of the selection process, which i think is the part where they start reviewing CV's and interviewing people. It's my dream job, so fingers crossed.

auslaender

cool.Well done!Best of luck for the next round!
Yeah sounds like a really cool job and I think you'd get some really good analytical chemistry/biochemistry training on a wide range on intrumentation.

Think I probably would have applied anyway but just started a job over here in holland in december so would have been a bit early to leave!

in any case best of luck with the the few steps of the selection process

Arciphel

Well i got a letter the other day syaing that i had a good performance on the written exams, and that my score placed me in the top 87-100% of applicants. I was delighted...

Then today I got an e-mail to say to check the status of my application on the website. I logged in and got a message which said that they were calling the top 60 applicants for interview, and that I wasn't in the top 60! I am super duper bummed out, I thought being in the top 87-100% would have meant I would have done better. I hear there are 12 jobs, so I think they should be able to find 12 hires from a pool of 60 people. There goes the dream job :mad:

Then I was doing some rough calculations in my head... If I am in the top 13% and 60 got called for interview and I'm not one of them, does that mean then that, lets say; I am 61st in order for interview and i am in the 87th percentile (for arguments sake). That means that almost 470 people applied for the position by my logic!