It is a tough job to attract the right staff
THE jobs could not be more different but there is a theme growing around recruitment in Guernsey.
It is getting increasingly hard to find the right staff.
Example one, for today at least, is the police force, which has been holding recruitment drives for the best part of eight years.
The results have been mixed. New staff have been found, some from the UK, others are trained locally, but not all stay the course and the overall picture after resignations and retirements is a substantial net loss.
As a result, since 2010 there are 10% fewer police officers on our streets.
While that makes the overall drop in crime in the past eight years since the chief has been in charge all the more impressive, it cannot hide a looming crisis in policing if the trend continues.
In specialist areas such as financial crime, for example, it is a significant problem. The island needs quality, experienced officers who can chase down and convict sophisticated criminals operating in the rarefied atmosphere of high finance.
Such officers are in short supply across the UK. It is not simply a question of putting an ad in the Police Gazette and sitting back as the applications flood in.
Education is a world away from such criminal concerns but the story on page 2 today tells a different side of the same story.
For, whether the process of recruitment to the top position at Education was correctly handled or not, the more worrying point is that only two qualified teachers applied for what should be a plum job in the local education service, worth well in excess of £100k.
Where were the legions of UK head teachers and top educationalists the island would expect to be all too ready to swap the grind of sink cities in the UK (or further afield) for the delights of Guernsey with its quality of life? Nowhere.
For as with nurses, doctors, teachers, chefs, waiters and skilled builders, it is getting harder to attract quality staff to Guernsey.
Hundreds of jobs are vacant, just a few are on the dole, but the package does not seem to be right.
Until it is, the island can expect more plum jobs to go begging.