Qualification Evaluation

Two things prompted my post today. Yesterday, at Inquest, one of the jurors asked regarding the qualifications one of my Deputy’s might have. Second, today I was filling out a job evaluation on one of my deputies, thinking not only what qualifications that individual has but what makes for a ‘good” or better than average Deputy Coroner.

The knowledge and “book learnin’” is very important and not something that someone working in this field could do without, but I think most important is a skill set an individual develops over many years of education (their whole life?). Certainly compassion and empathy are critical to possess and use in this job, but they will avail you little in the work environment without the skills to do the job. Those skills include looking and seeing (real observation), asking and listening to the answers, communicating—verbally, in written form, and non-verbally (body language, fro lack of a better term), thinking and reasoning.

These (in addition to compassion and empathy) are the skills I think of while evaluating one of my deputies. These are the real skills/knowledge they bring to their jobs. These are the real “tools” most needed for a career in Forensic Science. That’s what you need to work for me in the Lake County Coroner’s Office.