To be fair to the police service, there is no foolproof way in the world today to guarantee that a person selected using any available criteria will be able to perform in the role required of them. The best an organisation can do is to utilise a method of selection that offers the highest chance of successful candidates being able to do the job. Assessment centres in general have been proved time and time again to provide the highest probability in a successful candidate being able to do the job. In general, assessment centres are presently the best way to assess a candidate’s potential.

Having said that, the police being the police have built several flaws into the assessment system which can impact very heavily on whether or not the right candidates are selected. The qualities required of a police officer are many and varied. The person who makes a good detective may make a terrible public order officer. A great traffic officer may be a terrible custody officer. That is one of the interesting things about the service. However, the new national system tests people in a comfortable (relatively speaking!) environment, where, for example, the people they meet in role-plays may be rude, but never obnoxious, verbally but never physically threatening, and the situations themselves have a huge dollop of “ideal” as opposed to “real” world about them.

Although it would be denied by the police service, the system totally fails to sufficiently test strength of character. Anyone can act “assertive” in a role play lasting five minutes, or challenge an inappropriate comment. Whether they can do so on the street outside a nightclub to an aggressive drunk at 3am is a different matter. Conversely, any trace of “political incorrectness” will result in an automatic fail. Whilst that is all well and good, sometimes in the real world of policing, you need people whose idea of political correctness is less important than their ability to act decisively in the face of danger. One of the best police officers I know is ex army and totally politically incorrect. He does not believe in force strategy, or the wider implications of issues such as sanction detections or corporate development (if you are not sure what they are, have a look at your local force’s website!). All he is interested in is arresting the bad guys. He is also extremely capable in defending himself in a physical encounter (or to put it the old fashioned way, he is a “hard man”!). This officer is the one that I as a supervisor and operational officer was always glad to turn to when either a prisoner became violent, or we were dealing with a nasty public order situation. By way of example, at one incident, the officer responded alone one night to an assault in progress on a pub car park. On arrival, he found two offenders hiding, who upon realising he was on his own, attempted to assault him. By the time other colleagues arrived to assist the officer, suffice to say he had already put both offenders on the floor, and they were begging him to let them surrender. Whilst I am not suggesting that every officer should be like this one (as that would be a supervisory nightmare!), some officers like him are needed in the police. The new system would never have allowed such a character to get in.

So, do assessment centres work? Maybe. Ultimately though, for you the candidate, it does not matter. They are a fact of life, and if you want to join the police, you need to accept their rules and play by them.

I am often asked what the police think of assessment centre preparation such as we provide. Well, as far as the police are concerned, I promise you they would much prefer every candidate to turn up at the assessment centre with an equal level of prior knowledge of the assessment process and the exercises it contains. Ideally this knowledge would be zero. Their argument is that this gives each candidate an equal chance of passing. Consequently, it would be fair to say that the police have no interest whatsoever in assisting privately run preparation training courses.

The official police line therefore is that the assessment centre is merely testing your potential to be a police officer. There is a definite suggestion from the service that the best way to prepare for this process is to simply be yourself. So, they argue preparation cannot help.

As with many things to do with police policies and aims, the reality of life is completely ignored. Assume there are two candidates attending the assessment centre on the same day. One is a taxi driver, who spends his or her working day driving around a large city in a black cab, having numerous short conversations with people they are unlikely to meet again. They have never found themselves in a situation where they have had to take part in a role play which has been marked and assessed. The second candidate is a sales person for a photocopying company. Any professional sales company will subject its employees to numerous training courses, a fundamental part of which will almost invariably involve role-playing. They will have been taught how to ask questions, they will know about the principles of time management, they will be aware of the principles of finding solutions. It is clearly foolish to suggest that both candidates go into the assessment centre on an equal footing. Consequently, to suggest that every candidate would go to the assessment centre with an equal level of knowledge is simply naïve. Special constables for example are a group of volunteer police officers who are not paid, but clearly have exposure to the police organisation and culture that non police staff will not have. Therefore, they must have an advantage over say, a taxi driver. Having said that, many special constables and members of support staff actually fail the assessments as they treat the role-play scenarios as they know they would in dealt with in reality (i.e. with a typical policing attitude), and subsequently get low marks.

The assessment centre process is supposed to assess a candidate’s ability to be a police officer or PCSO. It basically makes candidates perform a certain number of tasks and whilst doing these tasks, if they display the skills and abilities desired to the required standard, they will pass. On the face of it from the police perspective, every candidate should enter the assessment with an identical level of knowledge. As illustrated above though, there is a huge flaw in this argument. If your life experiences – your background, education, employment or any of the dozens of factors that make you an individual – have made you particularly good at some of the skills being assessed, then clearly you will have an advantage over somebody who has not been fortunate. The notion therefore that all candidates walk through the door at the assessment centre with the same opportunity to pass is clearly flawed. No matter how much the police recruitment system may wish otherwise, preparation is a huge factor in passing.

Many forces actually pay companies to run promotion courses for their officers. It is nonsensical for the police to then argue that training courses for recruits are worthless, when forces are actively providing (and funding) courses covering the same principles for promotion examinations.

Another factor to be considered is that when the police say they are against preparation training courses, what they really mean is that they do not like the average candidate being given preparation and coaching advice for the assessment. Yet the police service is in favour of providing the same support to people who are under-represented in the service. If you are from certain minority groups, chances are you will be offered the opportunity as a candidate to go on some form of assessment centre preparation course run by the police themselves. My view therefore is this – if one group of people are to be allowed the opportunity to prepare in advance, so should any other. It makes a mockery of any police claims that there is no need for preparation. If preparation is of no value, then why do the police themselves run preparation courses for minority candidates?

To summarise, the police as an organisation do not like privately provided assessment centre training (although privately many officers actually recommend us!). You, as the candidate, need to ask why this is the case. The police argument is that preparation training serves no purpose and will not help you to pass. Whilst they will not admit this, the real view is that they want to see you, the candidate, as you really are. They want to see you in the assessment centre, warts and all.

If you fail, it doesn’t really matter to the police, because they have another 60,000 people to assess. It’s the candidate who misses out. Aside from this, it is not in the police interest to have even more successful candidates. It just makes it harder for the police to select people if everyone is good. Also from a political perspective, if the standard of candidate goes up, it makes it even harder for the police to recruit from disadvantaged communities or groups.

None of this of course should really be the candidate’s problem. If you have the ability to prepare, and the determination, then there is no reason why you should not be allowed to do so.

So if the candidate pays to attend a course, or buys a book, and that preparation will do them no good whatsoever, why should the police be bothered? If attending a course is a complete waste of time, why would the police care? If the ideas contained within it, along with the information and techniques were of no value, why would this trouble the police? They have another 60,000 candidates to see. Are they that concerned about you wasting your money? I suspect not.

Even if you’re a cynic, and to be honest I like cynicism in a police officer, the only logical conclusion is that the police service will try to play down the value of such preparation because they do not want you, the candidate, to do it. Ask yourself this final thing. Are they really concerned about you wasting your money on a course or a book? Or, is it more likely they are concerned that having prepared thoroughly you will fly through your assessment centre. Think about it!

I know this is a favourite topic of mine, but I do despair about how police assessment centre candidates answer questions or deal with role play situations involving inappropriate behaviour. We check literally dozens of forms that describe how the candidate has overheard inappropriate remarks made in public over a period of a few days or weeks, so they wait until they can speak to the victim to see what they want to happen. Having done so, they then have a word with the offender to tell them to stop it, as it is not very nice. This is completely wrong. Think about it. To begin with, why wait? Inappropriate behaviour MUST be challenged there and then. If you wait, you are effectively condoning it, and the victim probably has to put up with more of the same treatment. This is YOUR fault, as you could have stopped it had you acted earlier. Then speaking to the victim. Why do this? If the victim says they want no action taking, would you leave the matter there? Hopefully not, so why speak to them (other than afterwards to explain why you did what you did and offer support). Finally, why speak to the offender in private? You should challenge them in public at once, so that they know immediately their behaviour is unacceptable. The victim knows you are supporting them. Any witnesses will know that if they use the same kind of behaviour you will challenge them. You are also setting an example. Speaking to the offender in private does away with all these advantages. If they get embarrassed because they are challenged over a sexist remark, that is more incentive not to make such a remark again.

Taking any other form of action is soft soaping things, and shows us that you probably have little moral courage. We are looking for people at assessment who would challenge at once, so you need to show us you can play the game. If you do not understand this, you will fail. Police interviews and assessments are designed to test your moral courage, and your ability to behave ethically, and you must understand this.

Had a busy week this week, as we ran large courses in both Southampton and Hatfield. However, when I logge donto my email this morning, I fund the below comment one delegate had obvioulsy shot home and done. We are all very proud of Talking Blues and the success our people have, but the below does make us all feel that we are very god at what we do: Forgive me for blowing our own trumpet, but this comment sums up the company ethos for me. yes, we all go to work to get paid (including you dear reader and me), but we try to get across our passion as well, and clearly here we have. This is why we are so successful in the police recruitment field.

John,

I would like to send you both my utmost gratitude, for the wonderful course you provided yesterday 03/05/09 in Hatfield. I have to be honest your course was fantastic, informative, humorous, a real eye opener. It has been without a shadow of a doubt a) The best £145 I have ever spent and b) The best 10hrs I have ever given time to. The day went really quick and I could have stayed on listening to the wise words. I have to admit I am now quietly confident I will do well on my assessment day, I say quietly because I don’t want to assume. In the weeks leading to my assessment I will be working hard to dissect all the information provided by yourselves and within your guide all the while remembering ‘’Piss poor preparation leads to piss poor performance” Again thank you, and I will keep you guys updated on my progression.

Warm Regards
XX

That kind of comment works for me!
We actually get loads of stuff like that on our feedback sheets, just maybe not quite as eloquent.
Made my day anyway
John