'I want to help': Malayali engineer quits Canada bank job, clears tough tests to join Toronto police

His Canadian dream was no different from a typical Malayali - study, get a job and settle down. It all went by the plan for Christan Jose, from Erumeli. It was just that he couldn't stop dreaming. He chucked a cushy 9-to-5 bank job and now serves the Toronto police force.

Thirty-one-year-old Christan, an Erumely native, moved to Toronto in 2018 to pursue his Master's in Quality Engineering Management at Lambton College, Toronto. Soon after, he was placed as an Operations Coordinator at TD Bank headquarters in Toronto, where he lives with his wife Ashme Christan.

While this essentially crossed off a major milestone for him, with each passing day at the routine 9-5 job, Christan found his priorities slowly shifting. "I wanted to do something that directly impacts and benefits people," he said.

"Whenever someone from the Malayali community needs something, they have no one they can reach out to or seek support from. I remember that I never did when I first came here," Christan said. "If an issue that affects the community happens, I feel there should be someone to help them. That's what brought me here," he added.

The selection process for the force was by no means easy. In fact, the multi-round process would be a test for anyone with even a residue of doubt about whether to join the force. But Christan was up for the challenge.

The rigorous process alone runs for half a year, and while the basic requirements to apply can be easily met, each level gets successively harder to clear. "The first is your OACP (Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police) score, which you don't even get to know. They directly communicate it to the police and you will only know if you cleared it or not, but not what your score is," Christan said.

The successive rounds include background checks, multiple physical tests, interviews and written tests, he explained.

One of the rounds includes an essential competency interview, where interviewers may ask essentially any question. However, Christan warns candidates not to get carried away by its simplicity. "You need to take a minute to fully understand the question and its underlying meaning and then answer," he said.

"Your immediate response is like a trailer. Only once they find it satisfactory will they move on to hear the entire explanation. So you have to carefully curate your initial response," he added.

According to Christan, another unique stage of screening is the psychological interview, where a professional psychologist throws a series of questions that appear simple on the surface, but whose answers strip down the candidate's personality traits and characteristics, helping assess their suitability for the job.

Even friends and family are not spared from the thoroughness of the process, as the final screening includes an extensive survey among those close to you. But one can't squeeze through this stage that easily by getting close ones to boast about you either. "They will check and cross-check everything from A to Z. So if your friends make a claim about you, they have to back it up with substantial proof," Christan said.

In fact, the department maps out your entire career trajectory and vets your performance at each and every stage, he added. "Even if you worked at a place for just one day, that would be vetted."

After getting through all of this, an offer letter is handed to the candidate. However, this is not to be mistaken for a guarantee of a job, as it merely qualifies the candidate for the rigorous training that is to come. "Even after this stage, many drop out while others fail to qualify," he said.

During the training, which occurs in two stages at the Toronto Police College and then the Ontario Police College, the candidates are taught to shoot, swim, handle police vehicles and conduct police operations, among many other skills. They must obtain an average of 75% in all the tests to qualify. Additionally, if one finishes in the top 25% of the class, they enter the service as Class 3 officers rather than the default ranking of Class 4 officer, a feat that Christan successfully achieved.

The formula is not for the faint-hearted. Perhaps that is why only about 30 are selected from the 30,000 to 35,000 candidates who apply annually.

Having completed his training, Christan was sworn into the force on August 20 and began taking calls on Monday.

For Christan, the journey has nearly come full circle. The community he wished to enrich has already begun looking up to him. "I can sense the difference in how people perceive me after I became a uniformed officer," he said with joy.