TALKINGBLUES BLOG

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

News hot off the press from my buddy in Cheshire is that their police assessment centre dates will be the last two weekends in June. BUT they are only giving people two weeks notice. So, if you are waiting for your assessment date, that is when it will be. I have no idea what justification forces have for not giving people more notice. It takes a lot of organisation to sort out rooms and staff, especially over a weekend as these dates are, so the force knows well in advance when these dates will be. Why they cannot have the common courtesy to notify people earlier is beyond me. To make their own staff work weekends, they will need to give weeks and weeks of notice. They seem to forget that the candidates also have lives, and will have to book time off work (not always easy to do), or make travel arrangements, or arrange childcare or whatever.  In fact, on this subject of preparation for police interviews and recruitment, I could imagine that the lack of notice is a deliberate ploy to limit peoples chances to prepare. Candidates (usually poor candidates) tend not to start preparing until they get an assessment date. So, giving them two weeks notice limits how much advance prep many candidates will do. This of course works in the favour of our students, who we prep up mercilessly, and so perform even beter in comparison to candidates who only started working 2 weeks before the assessment date. That is probably a factor as to why we do so well in getting people into Cheshire.

In any event, the moral of the story is that you need to be aware of the act that a lot of forces whether through inefficiency, incompetence or malice, do not give much notice of assessment centre dates. So, my advice is to work on the basis that you may only ever be a few weeks away from your assessment, and prepare on that presumption.

The same of course goes for the fitness test and final interview (if your force has one. Not all police forces do). I am always amazed when people say to me on courses” I have just been told I have my fitness test, and I only have a week to prepare.” Well, actually , no you haven’t, you lazy bastard, you have had since the day you decided to join the police to prepare, as you always knew you would have to do a fitness test! Same goes for final interview as well. Some forces will call you for final interview within ten days of telling you that you have passed your assessment day. It is no good crying about this, as you should be working on the basis that you may get called at any time anyway. Such is police recruitment, but if you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined!!

Following on from the last blog entry, many of you have emailed me saying you are not entirely convinced by the story about integrity. That’s okay, it is good to be a cynic, but ask most operational officers and they will be aware of similar stories. I had one officer on my shift in Cheshire Police who moved to another shift for career development. Within a week, he and a “colleague” locked up a drunk in the town. In the cells, something happened, and the drunk received a facial injury. The result of this was that the officer (who had an outstanding arrest record, and was a person you wanted next to you in a disorder environment) ended up in crown court on a very serious assault charge. He was cleared. Cheshire however then put him in front of a discipline panel, and sacked him on the basis that he had asked other officers to lie for him. As a crown court jury had found him not guilty of the crime to begin with, I am uncertain how he could have asked others to lie (as he had not done anything wrong to begin with), but such is life at police discipline panels!

This same double think is carried on in police recruitment. Using Cheshire as an example again, a few months ago one candidate got fed up (not unreasonably) with waiting for an assessment date and being fobbed off by recruiting. He expressed this frustration on one of the unofficial police forums, such as www.police-information.co.uk, calling Cheshire recruitment arrogant and unhelpful. When he phoned again a few weeks later to see if there was any update, they informed him that his application had been terminated. When he asked why, it was because of his comment on the forum! Naturally, no one in Cheshire recruiting had the courage or decency to call him and tell him this! Personally, whilst he was unwise to put enough information in his forum entry to identify himself, I think he was another victim of high handed bullying. This is why the same force lost 11 recruits a while back, ten of whom were female. This caused such concern that the Police Federation actually highlighted the issue in their magazine. It is a problem in some small forces, the bigger ones tend to be fairer and even handed. Cheshire never saw the link to this, which is probably why in my time with Cheshire I only ever saw two black officers. A staff survey the same year in Cheshire showed 75% of staff felt they were not valued (this was quietly buried after a big fanfare about how important it was to take part and have a say in the future of the force.)

In my time in the job, I cannot ever recall officers coming in and complaining about the residents in such a place, or the attitude of the criminals. No one minded agro from them, it is after all part of the job. What everyone complains about however is the attitude of bosses sometimes, especially those who have never spent any time on the streets.

Still, one can only be thankful that there are still people willing to do the job, not because of the leadership, but in spite of it!