TALKINGBLUES BLOG

I have had  a few issues this week with the types of example that people are using for both police interviews and indeed the police assessment interview. Two questions that always crop up in one format or another are challenging innappropiate behaviour (on the form) and working as part of a team (on the interview). Candidates pick some really weak examples for these. In terms of challenging  behaviour, we are constantly getting forms where someone has been at a bus stop, some yob has made a racist/sexist/homophobiccomment, and the candidate has told them off, so the offender walks away. This is a very weak example. What you need to do is find some example where there has been a chain of behaviour, you have challenged it immediately it comes to your attention,  you have a long explanation to the offender about why what they are doing is wrong, they eventually see this, and apologise to all concerned. (Make sure you challenge it as soon as you know about it though. Otherwise, if you let it go for a bit, it can be argued you are allowing it to get worse!) If this takes place somewhere like work, all the better, as it is morally harder to challenge your mates, than someone you do not know. Against this background, you may be able to see where the bus stop example falls down.

Second bugbear this week was on the interview question on teamwork. People always want to tell us about when they were in the street/at work etc and someone else got hurt. They then try to say that a group of passersby/staff/friends worked a s a team on the casualty. This is just too superficial, and in reality probably you handed over to the ambulance crew as soon as they got there. We want to see evidence that you ideally volunteered fo a big event, maybe like a charity fair, or a stock take at work. You realised that the task was too big for you alone, so you got  a team involved, who had different skills to you that were also needed. You planned how the task was going to be done, allocating resources by experience and priority. You completed the task on time/budget, and got a thank you letter. Hurrah! Again, against this context, the drunk in the swimming pool will not score highly.

You need to apply this logic to every exercise. Being average when thousands of people are applying for every place just does not do it!

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.

Just a quickie, answered this recruitment question for the millionth time today. When you go for your assessment day interview, you can indeed use your examples from your application form. The assessors will not have seen the form, and in fact this is stated explicitly in the FAQ section of the Westshire welcome pack documents. Remember though, that by the time you get to assessment, the form is history, as you have passed that section. read the rest of this entry… »

Dfydd Powys pulled a sly trick this week on potential recruits. Their recruiting campaign has just finished its paper sift selection, and invited people to assessment centre. However, letters sent out to candidate’s sates that only 30% of candidates succeeded in passing the paper sift. This made a total of 235. However, only 96 were being invited to assessment. The lucky 96 were chosen on the basis of “being either the highest scorers at CBQ (Competency Based Questions) or being randomly selected”. I do not quite follow this. Either you pick people on the basis of highest scores, which is fair enough, or else you define a pass mark, and then randomly pick from the pool of people who have achieved that score or higher. Why do both? I would be interested to know what the breakdown of people who were invited to attend was by gender, sexuality and ethnic background. I would hope that the force did not cherry pick from minority groups, then have a raffle for the remaining slots. There would be a precedent for this. A few years back Avon and Somerset were taken to court by an applicant after all the white male applicants were sifted out. GMP went through a phase of not inviting males to the next stage of the process (a fitness test) whilst inviting females. This is how they managed to have the first all female intake (how did they get away with that!). The Met meanwhile have phases where they only hand out application forms to those attending open evenings, which seems fair enough. Anyone can go, in terms of gender, sexuality etc. Only thing was, they do not tell anyone who does not come from an under represented group the assessment evenings are on! I would look forward to Dyfdd Powys sending me the figures or explanation of their decision anyway.