We have had a few people this week asking us whether our courses are simply telling people what the official police open evenings do. Notts police for example are running open evenings. Whilst we would encourage going to one of these to show willing, they are pretty worthless. The suggestion our courses are just like the official police ones is so far from the truth that we actually cover it under the “Five reasons not to use us” button on the Talking Blues website. However, I have reproduced the text below:

“My force recruitment team/a bobby I know has told me I do not need to do a private course. A private company will not tell me any more than I would find out on the force recruitment evening I did when I got my application form. They are just charging me for something I can find out for free.”

If it is a police  recruiting officer telling you not to bother with us, consider this. The recruiters do not want prepped up candidates, they want to see you as you are. Prepped up candidates mean more people pass, which makes the assessors job harder. It is not in the recruiter’s interest for you to do a course as there is a much greater chance of you passing, and they will not care about your interest.

Interestingly though, police recruiters sometimes say that you will get told the same information at a free force recruitment seminar than you will at one of our courses. We always smile at this. To begin with, we guarantee that the person saying it will not have been on a Talking Blues course, so how do they know this to be true? We are also unaware of any police force using a specially written 160 page manual like ours. But think about this logically.

The job of the police recruitment department is to select the best candidates, NOT to help YOU as an individual pass. If the recruiters hold an open evening, then EVERYONE gets the same information (and it is usually generic rubbish anyway.) This means that by definition, YOU are no better off then everyone else. Talking Blues job is to make YOU the best candidate. As a commercial organisation, Talking Blues stands or falls by its ability to develop YOU so YOU PASS.

The average police recruitment evening will have at least  fifty people there and last 2 hours. There will be almost NO interaction between YOU and the recruiters. Our police recruitment courses are designed to develop YOU as an individual, and for example during the role play session, will focus on YOU doing individual role-plays, with feedback specific to YOU. Our courses therefore have a trainer ratio on average of 1:7, and last ten hours. We have our money back on the day guarantee if you are not happy that you have benefited. It is nonsense for police recruiters to say that a recruitment open evening is the same as our course. As regards the fact we charge for helping you, the same argument could be applied to driving instructors. We have knowledge that you desire in order to gain a great career, and meeting that need is our business. Search the web for our company and you will see how well we meet that need.

Bottom line: of course our course is totally different from open evenings. Open evenings simply inform EVERYONE what the process involves. So there is no advataneg to be gained from them as an individual, as everyone is told what you are. Our professionally written course takes YOU as an individual and explains to you what YOU need to pass. The two things are categorically not the same!

Readers will have gathered that I do not have much time for NPIA, the National policing Improvement Agency. These are the people who write the exams that recruits (and others) have to sit. I referred a few months ago to the announcement from them that instead of changing the assessment exercises every 12 months, they were going to change them every six months. To understand the importance of this, you need to realise that the exercises stay teh same word for word for a 12 month period nationally. So, if you do your assessment in Cornwall on one date, and your mate does their 11 months later in Newcastle, you do exactly the same exercises,word for word, the role plays, the written exercises, and the interview questions. Word for word. A little while ago, these appeared on YouTube, hence after a bit of a panic, NPIA announced it would be changing the exercises after six months. We have been saying this needed to happen for years. Inevitably, they have now gone back on this decision and the exercises have remained unchanged.This is why at lunchtime on a recent course of ours, i heard the current exercises being discussed in detail by someone whose boyfriend had just done his assessment. Great for applicants, not so good for NPIA!

My opinion of NPIA remains suitably low!

We have just filled up our Bristol date on this coming Saturday, and you will now see this is showing as no places left on the site. We have put a mop up date on the following weekend at the same venue, but this will only run if we have enough people who confirm thier bookings. So, if you are thinking of coming on that, book it asap. It is likley to have a maximum of nine people on it so places could be scarce.

The course on this Sat is a big one, and we guarantee that those attending will feel they have a huge advantage over other candidates by the end of the day. We stand by our promise as well, that we ask for nothing by way of fee until the end of the day. So, if you do not feel you are MUCH MUCH better prepared than you were before the course, tell us by lunchtime, we will refund your deposit, and you will owe us nothing. We can then shake hands and part as friends. Never happened yet in nine years, and the first time is unlikley to be in Bristol!

We have had a good number of bookings this week for our Bristol course, but also two people cancelled who have just found out that they faield the paper sift for Avon and Somerset police.

This just goes to show the importance of being prepared. We have done quite literally hundreds of application form checks this year, and the vast majority by far have gotten through. However, others fail to appreciate that no matter how good you think you are, if you do not put 100% into the paper sift, then you will never see an assessment centre.

It astounds me when I speak to those who have failed and they tel me that they spent at least a full evening on their police application form. Unless you are very good at competency based forms (and most people are not), I would expect the competency section to take up to a week to complete. When I was applying for jobs, I would take a whole night composing a 200 word entry for a single competency. Ane remember, I have written a book on passing police application forms.

Most people who find the police application forms easy have underestimated them, and will probably fail. There are those who will knock out an answer in a night who will get through, but they are in the minority. As many people have discovered in Avon and Somerset this week, assuming you will pass the paper sift is not necessarily a good idea.

But, the most important moral is about preparing for everything. There are always a number of people on every course that we do who have failed the police assessment centre process itself, and the following year have come to us to prepare properly. I constantly here the comment (If I had done this last year I would have passed………”. And it is true, had they come to us originally, they would now be a year in the service. I am not necessarily saying come on a Talking Blues police assessment centre preparation course, but simply make sure that you prepare properly for it in some way. The police have a word for those that do not prepare. We call them civilians.

Just a quick note that the venues for our poliuce recruitment courses are booked now, and due to space limitations at each there are only five places left for Cardiff, and six for Newcastle. We still have plenty of room at Bristol for those thinking of that venue.