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!

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.

I had an interesting conversation this week about whether being involved with the police already, such as a special constable, CSO or support staff member, is an advantage in getting in. This is particularly so since a lot of forces suggest that if you are unsuccessful at the police assessment centre stage, that you join the specials or become a cso to “gain experience”. In one or two forces, they hold special assessment centres for staff, so one can argue there that there is an advantage, but these are few and far between.

In most forces, the reality is that being in the job already gives you no advantage whatsoever. You get no preference when it comes to getting hold of an application for starters. Then when you get to assessment, no one will care about what you work as now, it is all about providing the right competencies. So, you are certainly not going to get some inside form of fast track.

There may be a slight advantage in that you may have some examples of partnership working, but there is no reason why a switched on candidate would not be able to bring in the same from outside.

There is however one potential disadvantage in that police related candidates often bring police type attitudes with them, which is exactly the kind of thin g the job is looking to weed out. Every CSO will have dealt with people who police officers have told to shut up in no uncertain times, or will have been exposed to police culture which is often a bit cynical and dismissive of minor problems.  This is the biggest hurdle that police staff have to overcome, the fact that if they have taken on board these values, and let them slip out in the assessment, then they are likely to fail.

Overall then, it is certainly not an advantage to be working in the police now in terms of applying, and can actually set you up in some ways to fail.

For those of you that would argue this is not true, consider this. If being a  CSO/Special/Support staff member is such a big advantage, why do you know loads of people from those groups who have tried and failed to join the police? Shouldn’t they al have passed?

Just a thought!

We have had a few emails over the last few weeks from people who have just failed their paper sift on the application form, and want us to have a look at it. We tend to be reluctant to examine forms on that basis for a number of reasons. Firstly, it must be appreciated that forms will fail for three main reasons:

1. It was not good enough (which is fair enough)
2. It was good enough really, but was harshly marked by inconsistent marking (a huge problem for forces)
3. It was easily god enough, but the force wanted minority recruits, so was effectively ignored (the worst case scenario).

From our perspective, forms in category 1 are easy to deal with. We can just correct them as normal. The ones under points two and three however are more difficult. This is because they were never really failures to begin with. Our problem is that clients send us a form, which we look at and say is perfectly acceptable. Who does the candidate believe? Well, we will have given an unbiased opinion, as that is what they re paying us to do, but it does present applicants with a issue. Talking Blues say the form is fine, but the candidate also knows that the police have failed it. It calls for a real leap of faith to resubmit it next year, and there is no guarantee of course that the same thing will not happen.

This is why we advise anyone in this position to start afresh with a new set of examples, or at least replace the one that they have failed on. Our view is that there is no percentage for you in us checking a form that you know has failed. Submit a fresh set of answers to us, and let us work on a blank canvas, so to speak.

If the form was on the other hand just not good enough, you have to be honest with yourself. Many people say to us that a fellow police officer checked it for them, but unless that person is in recruiting, what is the point? How do they know what should go into the form? Police officers are taught parts of the law, but  if I was selling my house, then I would use a solicitor, not a police officer. They use different knowledge. Being a police officer does not mean they are an automatic expert on the police application process.