As a prospective police officer, once you have passed the application form stage of the recruitment process, you will be invited to attend a one-day formal assessment centre.

The assessment itself will last approximately four hours. The assessment is standardised across the country, so regardless of which police force you are applying to, you will take the same assessment. On the day, you will be required to undertake the following exercises:

• Two 20 minute long verbal and numerical reasoning exercises (an IQ test)
• Four role-play exercises, each role-play lasting five minutes, but with a five minute unmarked preparation phase before each one.
• A 20 minute long structured interview, where you may be expected to answer each question for up to five minutes without prompting.
• Two written exercises, each one up lasting 20 minutes. In these exercises you will be given some written information then asked to write a response.

The assessment centre is examining seven key skill areas. These are:

• Diversity
• Community and Customer Focus
• Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Resilience
• Teamworking
• Personal Responsibility

You must obtain the required level in each of the seven areas in order to pass. To make things slightly more difficult, a single grade D in the area of diversity means an automatic fail, irrespective of the overall mark scored