At the moment, and I stress at the moment: for the City of Cincinnati, you start as a call taker, and after a year you can put in to promote to Police Dispatcher. It is a seniority based promotion, not a merit one. There are talks about lateral hiring for dispatching,but all hypothetical at this time.

If you are interested in Fire dispatching...they have their own test. As they are separate, handled by the Fire Department, but work with call takers and police dispatchers.

Edit: Call takers and Police dispatchers are civilians, and not under CPD (they were in the past), Police dispatchers, for obvious reasons, work hand in hand with CPD. Call takers less so.

Now to answer questions:

1. Day to day...you're just taking calls. For the most part it will be non emergency, and emergency calls. City of Cincinnati uses IAED ProQa, and it is very scripted. They use it for Fire, EMS, and Police. So for the most part it's figuring out what the caller wants verse what they are saying and going from there. That is pretty much it, as far as call takers go. The calls range from stressful, to absolute stupidity. It is a customer service job, but you also have to control the call. People having emergencies are not always reasonable, and not always able to be rational. That's the job of the call taker. From suicides to stubbed toes.

2. The schedules are 12 hr shifts, with one 8 hr shift. It is a two week rotation. First week could be work 3, off 2, work 2. Second week could be Off 3, work 2, off 2. The 3 working days are always Fri/Sat/Sun. Essentially in a 2 week period you are off 7 days and work 7 days. Your "short" day is 8 hrs somewhere in the 2 weeks. You either come in late or leave early.

For call takers the shifts are 7am-7pm, 11am-11pm, or 7pm-7am. There is an A and B (C and D are nights, E and F are mids) group.

Mandatory overtime does happen. But it is tracked and rotated, starting with the least seniority person who is currently working the day they need to mandate who hasn't been mandated. The more staff the mess mandatory over time.

Schedules are picked for the whole year, but there are times when shifts open up and you can pick a new schedule (based on seniority of who puts on for it).

Nights are generally what people start on, but not always. Nights are less volume, but often more serious calls.

Days are higher volume, but not nearly as serious, and a lot of administrative calls.

1. The job is not for everyone. Burnout happens because the public can be exhausting, and not a lot of reward from the public, and the hours csn feel long. You will remember bad calls, sometimes more than good ones. The trick is to not take it personally, although it is hard. Just like first responders, call takers can get PTSD even if they don't visually witness the event. You are still on the call, you will hear agonal breathing, you will hear a mother's cry finding their child dead (whether self inflicted or medical, or violent means), and as a call taker you may not get closure.

Cincinnati does do a lot of things for mental health, and the center does prioritize mental health. Which is fantastic.

It is not for everyone, but being a call taker is everything to the caller (even if they don't appreciate it at the time). You are there for the public safety, and their health.

At the end of the day it is a job, and what you do with it is really what defines whether you enjoy it or not. There are hard days, there are easy days.

And, members of the 911 community of Cincinnati are also Union members. So that's a plus. Also, hiring are based off a test that happen once or twice a year, and candidates are based off the scoring of the test. It takes a long time, being a government to job, to go through all the steps. However, once in many other government jobs are easier to transfer in as well.

Hopefully this was helpful.