Organisation: Hoban Recruitment
Job Title: Sherriff’s Officer
Word Limit: 200 words per criteria
Location: Various
Describe in your own words your understanding of the main tasks performed by a
Sheriff's Officer?
A Sherriff’s Officer forms part of the judiciary and is responsible for enforcing warrants. They work
independently and with differing tactics to enforce warrants such as attending current addresses,
using number plate searches, taking payments etc, they are often working outside in all types of
weather and will be required to complete their duties with this in mind.
Sherriff’s Officers are given a set of rules, guidelines and legislative requirements they must follow
when they are executing warrants. These must be adhered to at all times, however the Officer
may use their discretion on how the warrant is executed.
It is the responsibility of the Sherriff’s Officer to prioritise their own time and duties and execute
warrants in a timely manner. They will be required to keep accurate records, complete paperwork
and administration duties and need to take this into consideration when planning and organising
their time.
A Sherriff’s Officer needs to maintain their own and the public’s safety at all time and use their
discretion on reporting incidents if they believe this might be at risk. Dealing with clients in a calm
and professional manner is important at all times.
2. Outline your skills and attributes which, you believe, are a good fit for this role?
I am an excellent candidate for the Sherriff’s Officer position due to my many skills and attributes
that would be suitable for this role. I have demonstrated throughout my diverse work history my
excellent written and verbal communication skills. I have a calm personality and have dealt with a
lot of conflict resolution, finding myself taking the lead in turning the conflict around from what
the problems is, to providing solutions, sometimes to complex issues.
I have experienced this on many occasions through my work as a tradesperon. Working on site,
with a large number of contract tradespeople who all have different priorities and deadlines to
meet, and are not invested in the outcome of the other tradespeople, has often caused a lack of
communication and problems with completing the project to time and budget requirements.
Having developed expert listening skills, I understand the importance of letting people have their
say and explain their situation, and then provide a suitable solution to all parties. I have
management experience which gave me the opportunity to manage a diverse range of people,
which required me to be flexible and adaptable to each person’s strengths and weaknesses and
train accordingly.
3. Describe a workplace situation when you worked with a colleague who had a different
work style to you. Outline the situation:
As a Painter who works with builders, it has often the case and I am required to work with multiple
tradespeople on a project. These tradespeople, like me, are independent tradespeople and we all
have certain tasks that need to be performed, in the correct order, to ensure the quality of the
end product is high. Depending on the experience level of the builder and their understanding of
project manage, will determine for me whether my timelines, budget and potential issues could be
affected by the other tradespeople.
On the most recent project I was working on, the builder was quite new to the industry. After the
first week I recognised that none of the tradespeople knew each other, or were talking to each
other about each others expectations or requirements and there was already problems showing
up in different areas of the project.
Due to my experience in similar situations I could see the situation would continue, or escalate if
the tradespeople on the project did not start to communicate with each other and collaborate
around timelines and individual requirements. In the end this would cause issues for all of us
involved and potentially the client as well.
4. Explain your approach when working with them and what you considered?
As I have worked as Painter for many years, across a large number of projects and with a variety of
different builders, I understood the situation could be rectified fairly easily.
I approached the builder who was managing the project and outlined my concerns. He agreed that
he could see there were issues around certain areas of the project but he wasn’t sure how to work
through the issues with the other tradespeople, especially since a lot of them had been in the
industry a lot longer than he had.
I explained that when I had found myself in similar situations in the past, I had recognised these
issues arose because each tradesperson worked independently, did not know each other very well
and did not realise the requirements of the other tradespeople.
My approach in the past had been to get all the tradespeople together and discuss the project, so I
suggested to the builder that as it was close to Christmas, maybe he should organise a BBQ at his
house before the break, bringing everyone together in a social setting so they could get to know
each other and have the opportunity to discuss any issues to be resolved.
5. What was the outcome?
The builder thought this was a great idea so organised the event. All of the tradespeople turned
up and we all had the opportunity to meet the people we had seen on site but hadn’t necessarily
spoken to.
On the day, as everyone was very relaxed, they felt at ease explaining their requirements and
potential issues for the project. Through an open discussion we gave suggestions around how we
could makes changes that would alleviate or reduce the issues caused to other tradespeople on
the project.
With everyone now knowing each other, when we returned to site after Christmas, the culture on
site had changed and everyone was friendlier. This led to more open communication and less
issues on site. Any potential issues were raised before they happened, a solution was reached,
and we all moved forward with the project.
Because of this the project was completed before the deadline and came in under budget, without
affecting the quality. Personally, I had less waste due to issues caused by other tradespeople. The
builder has also recommended me to other builders and I have secured more work, plus he verbal
committed to using me for any future projects that come up.
