TALKINGBLUES BLOG

Interesting bit of news. Since the police assessment system started, the scenarios have changed on 1^st November, and remained the same throughout the year. As we have always said, this leaves the system with a huge flaw in it. As the scenarios are the same for all English and welsh forces (including BTP etc), this meant that some 14000 people every year would do the SAME exercises, word for word. For the avoidance of doubt, the role plays, written exercises and interviews are all identical for a 12 month time period.

This of course completely undermines the assessment. In a closed community like the police, people who are for example, Special Constables or CSO’s naturally talk about the exercises. Our sources for example mean we always find out the new exercises within days of them being released, as students seek feedback from us on their performance. (And why shouldn’t they?)

Sure, the assessment centre staff make you sign a disclaimer saying you will not tell anyone, but once you have passed, how likely is that to happen? Even more bizarrely, some candidates who had their assessment on say Nov 1^st and failed it, would reapply again six months later and find they were doing the SAME assessment.

So, three years and 42000 candidates later, the National Policing Improvement Agency has finally decided to switch the assessments to………six month changes. This stops candidates doing the same assessment again, but still leaves 7000 people free to blab about the exercises by the time the changeover happens. We find this nonsense.

But the best part is WHY they have done this. Some candidates were putting the scenarios up on youtube!!! Hello NPIA, and you are surprised by this why exactly?

The whole system is undermined by this lazy approach to new scenarios. My tip? If you want to have a look at what exercises are coming up, do a good search on youtube.

reading this about one students visit to his police assessment story, i felt it worth while posting this. had a great course yesterdy In liverpool as well, although we had a cracking discussion about ethics in policing, which I will tell you about soon. Switched venue to the jurys inn at the Liverpool Kings Dock, which was a good venue to.

recieved this week:

”

Hi John & Co,

I just wanted to thank you for the course last month. After the course I felt a hundred times more confident about the Assessment Centre than I had done before. The training was absolutely brilliant. Both trainers were very knowledgeable, approachable and friendly.

I went to the A/C and I have never felt so nervous in my life. We started off with the role plays, however after doing the first one I felt I did so well that the fear just vanished and I felt confident about the rest of the day, in fact you could even say that I enjoyed it!

I received my results last week and was so happy to read that I’d passed! I scored 75% in Respect for Race and Diversity, 100% in Oral Communication, 100% in Written Communication and 66% Overall. I scored mostly A’s and B’s, a few C’s and D’s over the entire day!

Your course is invaluable and you should charge more for it! Without it I honestly do not feel that I could have passed the A/C. If ever anybody asks how they can prepare for the A/C (and the Application form, where I used your checking service) I will always tell them to do the TalkingBlues course.”

Thank you very much.

Bit of an ego trop for me this really, but cannot resist putting it on the blog!

“Hi John
 
 I just wanted to say thanks again for the course yesterday. It was excellent and certainly exceeded my expectations.
 
I found the whole day extremely useful and informative, in particular the role play sessions which really brought the process alive. This is in no small part due to your knowing the scenarios inside out and being able to jump straight into what ever character was necessary. I was also extremely impressed by your ability to maintain the high standard during the whole of what was quite a long day. Likewise, your knowledge of the process was first rate.  Having the benefit of this experience for the whole day was worth every penny.
 
The competancy based session was also very good and got me thinking about other potential examples I could use.
 
I would recommend this course to anyone thinking of joining the police and will do so when opportunities arise.  I now feel more confident in my ability to get through the assesment. 
 
Many thanks again, I’ll let you know how I get on.
 
Kind regards”

Talking Blues is the market leading police recruitment training company, running on average about 45 courses a year. Operating since 2001 in England and Wales, we now wish to meet officers, former officers or police recruitment support staff, from Ireland and Scotland who would be interested in starting a Talking Blues franchise in that area. Following the established and proven Talking Blues model, you will need the following skills;

An excellent knowledge of the police recruitment system (obviously!)

The ability to coach and develop people in an interesting way appropriate to their needs.

The ability to get your point across ina  humorous and informative fashion.

The strength of character to give development advice to students in an open and honest way, whether it is good or bad!

The Talking Blues philosophy is not to mollycoddle people, our role is to get them through the process. If they need a shove to wake them up to something they are doing, then we provide it if it will make them pass. If you can do all this in an informative manner, and keep peoples attention for ten hours, whilst ideally making them laugh every now and then, you could be our type of guy or girl.  

These abilities are more important than your background. Many police trainers can be lazy, relying on patronising material from NPIA, and just working for the money.  That will not be you. You will want not just the financial rewards but also the satisfaction when at the end of a course, all the students want to shake your hand and say thanks. Incidentally, We have no interest in political correctness, all of our students are equal, our role is to make their aspirations become reality.

This is a great opportunity to stay involved with the police, yet run effectively your own business and have all the benefits of being responsible for your own success.

If this may be you, please email our managing Director, John McTaggart, at john.mctaggart@talkingblues.co.uk

The issue of consistency has come up a few times in the past few weeks. For any answer that the candidate provides, how can anyone be sure that the answer will be marked in the same way by different assessors? Imagine a candidate is asked a question in relation to when they have experienced inappropriate behaviour. One assessor may listen to the answer, and think what a fantastic example of assertive behaviour the candidate has provided. Conversely, another assessor could be thinking the candidate did not go far enough in their actions, and should have taken the matter further. The police service would argue that these variations are all but eliminated by an intensive training course which explains to assessors how they should evaluate answers. The reality of this is that the actual training course for assessors consists of ten working days, during which they cover the principles of the entire assessment process. It is therefore foolish to suggest that every assessor marks every single answer in the same way. In short, the personality and personal outlook of your assessor will directly affect your mark. People have always liked people that fit in with their own ideas, and always will do.

Of course, to attain consistency is very, very difficult. The police service doesn’t help itself by the fact that many of the people involved in the assessment centre process are not human resource professionals. The background of the assessors is described in a separate section, but their work and life experiences will be completely different. Even if the entire ten day assessor training course was devoted to eliminating these differences, it would still be an impossible task. The reality of the situation is that only a few hours of that ten-day course will be devoted to marking students equally. To try and ensure consistency of marking, individual assessment centres, along with individual assessors are compared in some cases. Realistically however, this will not show up individual assessors making value judgments based on their own perceptions which may be to the candidate’s detriment.

Several years ago for example, there was a noticeable trend in the national sergeant and inspector promotion examinations – it was noted that where male assessors were concerned, attractive female candidates were marked more highly than would be expected. It was also noted that where role actors were supposed to be playing an aggressive part, they too tended to be less aggressive with attractive female candidates than male candidates taking the examination.

The police service of course will deny this. However, I would put forward the argument that such objectivity is not as easily obtainable as the service would suggest. If the service were completely confident that the marking of candidates for examinations and assessment both internally and externally, was as fair as it could be, they would allow candidates to be filmed during their performance. Therefore, if anyone felt they had been discriminated against, the matter could be easily resolved by having an independent panel of assessors view their performance. There would not be a huge cost implication either – all that would be needed is a video camera in each room and each candidate to bring a videotape. The service will not do this. I suggest this is because if a tribunal somewhere started comparing the videotapes of successful candidates in one location with videos from disputed performances by other candidates, huge discrepancies would be shown. In the absence of such videotape evidence, it is very hard for candidates to prove that their performance was in fact to the required standard.
One area in which this lack of consistency shows up is in the application form. The application form has not changed for a number of years, and is the same nationally. I have come across a number of examples where applicants have passed the paper sift once, then failed the assessment. they then reapply, naturally using the same form answers (as it has passed once before), and fail. the police would say that standards may have changed, but if so, in what way? is it not more likely that assessment standards for each assessor are different?

I ws speaking to one candidate recently who this happened to. he has submitted his form to force A, passed the paper sift with all grade B’s, then failed the assessment. he then reapplied six months latter to force B, using EXACTLY the same form. This time he got three C’ and a D, and so was rejected at papersift. he queried this, and for the first tie that i have ever heard off, force B remarked it and he was given an assessment. I know that my old crowd in cheshire would have just said tough, you have failed.

Welcome to the police!