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.

Just heard this interesting peice of news. Norfolk Police have decided that for candidates who have passed the national police assessment system, they want them to do a presentation on how they will put into effect the force values and objectives. What  a complete load of rubbish. Lets just think about this for a minute. Lets ignore the fact that these candidates have just passed a national system, which, weak and flawed though it is, has been adopted by all English and Welsh forces, as well as BTP etc. This is the system which means in most forces, you will have been classed as having proved yourself as having the skills to be a police officer. But let us ignore it. Norfold clearly feel that this does not evidence clearly enough these skills, otherwise they would not feel the need to do something else QED. But why  a presentation? Why on that topic? This is the kind of presentation topic that would form part of an Inspectors board, not a poor bloody PC. How many average people give presentations? Especially if they are young, or from a disadvantaged background and are in the process of clawing themselves up? This presentation merely gives a big advantage to Specials and CSO’s (whihc may be no bad thing), while being exclusionary. Unless you hapen to be  asales rep, most people will not have  a clue how to start this. And before Norfolk police recruitment say this is the point, why don’t any other forces use presentations? Is it harder to police Norfolk than Merseyside or Manchester? Do Norfolk officers need to be better communicators than those working Brixton or Toxteth? No of course not. This is just someones bright idea to cut down numbers of successful aplicants, and has not been though through fully. I bet you this daft idea disappears within a year, and is never used again. Any takers?

I have had two people this week sending me their own analysis of how they think they have done after leaving the police assessment centre, and asking me basically for a bit of comfort. I never make a comment until they have actually got their marks, and the reason for this is shown in the below exchange. Have a read, and it may make you feel better when you walk out of your assessment. As it is an email exchange, the most recent email is at the top. Any typos were i the original exchange!

Hiya John,
You were right not to do an autopsy as I got my results and I passed!!!!
I only just scraped through with xx% (I think if I had not messed up I would have done a lot better), but who cares, a pass is a pass so I’m happy!!
I know for sure that if I had not attended Talking Blues I would definitely not have passed so thank you so much for everything.

Thanks again John

From: john.mctaggart@talkingblues.co.uk

I never hold autopsies until the body is dead!

Let me know what the results are and we can talk then,

John

To:john.mctaggart@talkingblues.co.uk
Subject: Day 1 today
Hiya John,
I hope you don’t mind me mailing you, I came to the Hatfield briefing on 1st of Feb and I had my day 1 toady. Unfortunately I am pretty sure that I have messed things right up and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind giving me your thoughts on whether you feel I could still pass as I have got a long three week wait for the results.

The morning session went really really well, I did the written reports really well, set out the issues and my proposals and recommendations. The numerical and logical reasoning tests also went really well and I was full of confidence going into the afternoon, sadly then everything went a bit wrong.

I completed three of the roleplays fine, but the one where I had to challenge the security guard for being over the top I feel I did not challenge her enough, She said that ………..and that threw me a bit as it did not say that in the prep, I said I thought she was being a bit harsh on the youths and that I felt it was inappropriate when she said something but that was it. I didn’t realize that I had used so much time questioning and the buzzer sounded before I came to any conclusion. Would I have failed that one??

Unfortunately the interview was even worse, I got so nervous I could hardly speak, In the question about XX I went off on a tangent and I don’t think that I really made much sense. Then I said ‘I’m not really answering the question you’ve asked’, which I probably should have kept to myself!! Also the time ended before I had finished 2 of the questions so I didn’t get the conclusion or what I had learnt in. I also kept going errr, will that go against me because we were being assessed on our oral communication?? My mouth has never been so dry and I had to keep drinking water, I must have looked so nervous and the assessment centre is all about staying cool ubder pressure so I thought that might go against me as well??

I just wondered if these muck-ups will be enough for me to fail, I don’t want to carry on running and doing fitness every day if I’m gonna find out in three weeks that I failed anyway.

I hope you don’t mind me mailing you, it’s just that I thought if anyone will know if that would cause me to fail it will be you.

I do want to say though that Talking Blies was brilliant preperation and I know I would have messed things up a lot more if it wasn’t for you guys so thank you for that.

Just a note to let people know our Swindon course is now full, sorry.