On police recruitment applications, there are usually four main competency questions on the application form. Broadly speaking, these cover the areas of:

• Diversity and respect
• Team working
• Working under pressure
• Communication

Each of these police competencies is broken down on the form into a number of specific segments. Each segment asks the candidate for certain specific parts of the example. Photocopying the pages and practising your answers will pay huge dividends before you write anything onto the real form. The best way to go about completing these questions is to consider each one separately. Without worrying too much about the specifics of the example, compile a list of potential examples for each question. Once you have some examples in mind for a given competency, you can then start comparing each one to the specific parts of the question.

Your examples must be about you, in terms of showing “you” in the best possible light as being the one who has contributed to the scenario. They should not be instances where you merely observed something happening, or were just a minor player. Anyone can watch a film – the police service are looking for people to work in front of the camera!

Use “I” not “we”

This is a common failing by candidates both on application form and interview. Most of us play down our involvement in situations due to modesty. In this recruitment process though, the form is looking for specifically what you did. Therefore, your answers must always refer to the word “I”. It is you being assessed and your actions, not the person you happened to be with at the time the incident occurred. Using the word “we” often suggests that in the reality of the situation you’re describing, you simply happened to be there and the other person who you are speaking about actually did all the work. This is a particular problem with special constables and police support staff applicants. The application form is no place for modesty.

What if you can’t think of any examples?

This is a common cry from police assessment candidates. However it is unacceptable. If you have no evidence of a certain skill area, then quite simply you will fail. One student on a course lived in a small village in rural South Wales. There were only thirty or so residents, all from the same ethnic background and religion as the student. She was only 19 and had never lived or gone to school outside the village. She therefore made the point, and it is not an unreasonable one, that she had had no opportunity to gain experience of diverse communities. However, from a police recruitment perspective, this would be unacceptable. Quite simply, the police assessors would consider that this candidate has no evidence to convince an assessor that she would be able to deal with a diverse policing environment. No one is saying that she could not do it, just that she’s not evidenced it. There are 60,000 other applicants to choose from. There will be more than enough of those people who do evidence such qualities. If you were the police service, would you choose the candidate who cannot produce any evidence, or the one that can?

Consider this when you are filling out your police application. The same skills of course need to be displayed throughout the police recruitment process.

Any candidate for the police service must be aware of the emphasis placed by the service on weeding out any behaviour whatsoever that can be termed as racist, sexist or homophobic. No right-thinking person would disagree with this.

What most people find difficult to believe is the very wide-ranging definition of “inappropriate behaviour” and “respect for diversity” that the police service professes to believe him. Clearly, any candidate who uses insulting words, phrases or behaviour at assessment centre should be failed. The difficulty arises for many candidates because they do not realise what the police define as inappropriate conduct. For example, the use of a phrase such as “these foreigners” when dealing with an issue in a role-play could well be considered as displaying a racist attitude and therefore result in an automatic fail.

Candidates may find for example that in some of the documents they are given to read before a role-play, that a senior manager is referred to by the name of “Jay”. It the candidate then enters the role play where they meet someone other than “Jay” and constantly refers to this manager’s gender as being male, they will be marked down. This is because of course the name can also be used by a female. It will be argued therefore that by assuming that the manager is male, the candidate is biased towards sexist behaviour. It is not the purpose of this book to debate whether this is going too far or not but such issues need to be borne in mind by candidates.

There are numerous other examples. In the North of England it is normal for people to address others as “love” or “duck”. Visit Liverpool or Manchester for example and chances are you will be addressed by one of these two terms several times within the space of an hour. Using them in an assessment centre however will be seen as patronising and potentially sexist. Therefore they could be the cause of a failure. To be fair of course, I know a lot of females who really resent a complete stranger calling them “love”. I can completely accept that they view the term as being patronising. This is the reasoning behind it being deemed sexist.

When I speak about these issues on a course, I can see the looks of disbelief on candidates’ faces. I have a theory that the average candidate still believes that the last thing the police want is people who will challenge such “minor” issues. There are those who still believe the police service “looks after its own” and would not wish anyone to join who was going to start criticising people for using such phrases as the ones above. I can assure you after 15 years in the police, that these beliefs are completely false. Candidates need to accept that any comments that can in any way be construed as being sexist, racist or homophobic, will result in failure. If you do not subscribe to this belief, and actively follow it at the assessment centre, then you will fail.

As far as the police service is concerned, respect for diversity is the single most important core competency being assessed. Consider this. There are seven areas of core competency, which will be described shortly. In six of them, candidate’s marks are averaged out and if the average mark is above the required level, then the candidate will pass. In the competency area of diversity, a single grade D will result in an automatic fail even if every other grade achieved on the day by the candidate is a Grade A.

I cannot stress strongly enough that if you are not prepared to act on this essential piece of information, you have dramatically reduced your chances of passing the assessment centre.

JUST HAD A CANCELLATION FOR THIS COURSE, SO IF YOU ARE GOING TO CHESHIRE ASSESSMENT IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, WE CAN FIT YOU ONTO THIS ONE. JUST CALL OUR OUT OF HOURS NUMBER ON 07754673540. NO NEED FOR A DEPOSIT, JUST TURN UP AT THE VENUE. AS EVER, IF IT IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED IT TO BE THEN DO NOT PAY US! SIMPLE!

JOHN

I can’t resist adding these comments to the blog. We had a few results notifications through this week, so have put a few here, just to make me feel better!

John.

Thankyou so very very much, today i found a large envelope on my floor. The assessment centre results had arrived, ive passed. I still have a final interview to pass (XX Constabulary).

I would have certainly struggled without attending your course, the day was presented in a very professional and constructive manner, any questions asked were answered in a very understandable way. Although the assessment day was very tough, your course prepared me.

The day started off with the role plays, i found these quite fun, again your course prepared me well.

Next was the interview, i thought this couldnt have gone better, although i didnt score as highly as i thought.

The written assessment kicked off the afternoon, my presentation was poor but the content was good.

Finally we got the numeracy this was fine although i couldnt finish all the questions, the verbal reasoning for some reason i just didnt do very well on this but hey i passed. So thankyou very much and i will be recommending talkingblues to everyone.

Regards

Hello!
I attended your course on Sunday 3rd May in Hatfield. I just thought i’d let you know that i passed the Day 1 with 68% I was awarded two A’s in two of the role plays and 100% in written and oral communication! I did however fail to resolve one which brought my percentage down!
I managed to tone down the confidence on the day and am extremely happy with my results! I have my day 2 on the xx and things appear to be moving quickly! I owe you many thanks as i believe the course enabled to to pass the day 1 assessment center. I would throughly recommend it to anyone going through the recruitment process and will do in the future!
Once again, thank you so much!

Just wanted to say thank you so much for the training course held in Southampton in May this year, although I was applying to become a PCSO, I have to say your course for training to become a Police Officer definately helped me. I have just completed the assessment centre and I have passed! I would recommend your course to anyone looking at becoming a Police Officer or a PCSO. Thanks again!”

Makes me feel good!

There are two main types of candidates who fail assessments. The first of these are those who for one reason or another are in fact completely unsuited to a career as a police officer. Hopefully, anyone who is racist, sexist or homophobic will fall immediately into this category. Nobody wants these types of people to join the police service, and a police assessment system should be able to screen them out. Less harmful, but equally undesirable in other ways, are those who are simply not suited in terms of character to be police officers or PCSO’s. This may be either in terms of their mental capacity, personal standards, or simply the natural make-up of their character. For example, on my candidate training course, the first half-hour consists of an outline of the techniques involved in role-plays. On one particular course in Newcastle, we told the students that after a short break we intended to give them a role-play to do. We then had a coffee break, and upon resuming class found one student had just left without saying a word to anyone. They had been unable to mentally face the prospect of being involved in a role play with the rest of the class. The student would no doubt consider that they were just highly nervous on the day of the course, and that it was no big deal. However, looking at their inability to face a role-play, it provides a bigger insight into their character. From an assessor’s perspective, if somebody cannot face the prospect of doing a role-play – (whilst no doubt putting the candidate under some pressure, it is a controlled environment) – how on earth can the assessor then consider that such an individual would be able to deal with a fight outside a nightclub on a Saturday night as a police officer? Whilst assessment centres have their faults, it is very difficult to fault this particular piece of logic.

So, the first type of people who fail assessments are those completely unsuited to being a police officer or PCSO. Our police assessment courses are not designed or intended to help these people get into the police. Not having the kind of personality required to be a police officer does not make you a bad person of course but if somebody was of a nervous disposition or not very decisive or self confident, and managed somehow to get through the recruitment system, they would discover that being a police officer can be very miserable occupation. Not everyone can deal with physical confrontation for example. I’m not suggesting here that everyone needs to be able to go five rounds with some knife-wielding skinhead (that is what radios, batons, CS incapacitant, your colleagues and police dogs are for!) but inevitably, a part of the job is becoming involved in situations which at their best involve having to assert yourself, and at the highest level involve you in activity which represents real physical risk to yourself. Not everyone has the character traits to do this – thankfully, or what a world we would live in!

This brings us neatly onto the second group of people who fail. This is by far the bigger group. This band of people would probably make excellent police officers. However, they have failed to display the skills required to the correct level. This in itself can be for a number of reasons. Some candidates simply do not understand the mechanics or rules of the police assessment centre. Consider this analogy. Imagine a good rugby union player attempting to play rugby league without being told there was a difference in the rules. Without taking anything away from their playing abilities, they would still lose because they did not understand the differences in what the rules allowed them to do.

Those candidates whose background, skills or education has simply not allowed them to develop the sort of skills that are tested at assessment centre are at a real disadvantage. Additionally, those who perhaps doubt have their own ability, either in terms of them being able to do the job, or in terms of confidence levels will also struggle.

With the right kind of coaching and preparation, these people are able to perform much better throughout the assessment. So, the moral of the story really is that most of those who fail simply have not put enough preparation in, or more to the point, they have not done enough to understand what the service is looking for.

This is why so many PCSO’s and Specials fail. They react to the assessment situations as they know would happen in real life. This is totally against the pretend world of the police assessment centre, and so they fail.

You have to understand what the job is looking for.