TalkingBlues Blog » Assessment centre comments

Bristol course for Avon and Somerset Police

ben — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:56:19 +0000

For those applying to A and S, you may be interested in the above date. We have heard rumours that A and S are really going to be tough in these assessments, as they are looking to cut down on the numbers they are recruiting. Now is a great time to make sure that you do not just pass the assessment, but that you get a high score to lessen the risk of being filtered out.

Gwent Assessments

ben — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:09:30 +0000

Just an update. The St.Mellons course is now confirmed to go ahead, and will be great timing for the assessments in September, with a fair bit of inside information that someone has been sharing with us! As of today, we only now have a couple of places left, so book, or if in doubt call us on the out of hours number on 07754673540.

If you are still undecided about attending, have a look at the below comments:

Afternoon John,

Just thought I would send you an E-mail to thank you and your colleagues so much for the course held at Southampton on Saturday 26/6/10. The information gained on the day proved so valuable at my assessment centre three weeks later!

I have just had my results back and passed with 68%, so am very pleased indeed. I am sure that without taking part in the Talking Blues Course, I would not have passed, even after reading the many books available on the recruitment process.

On the day, I felt much more confident and felt I was much more prepared than many of the other candidates there, who appeared to struggle much more with the role plays and interview.

Thank you once again and I will not hesitate to recommend the course to anyone in the future.

Best Regards

” Afternoon John,

Just thought I would send you an E-mail to thank you and your colleagues so much for the course held at XX on XX. The information gained on the day proved so valuable at my assessment centre three weeks later!

I have just had my results back and passed with 66%, so am very pleased indeed. I am sure that without taking part in the Talking Blues Course, I would not have passed, even after reading the many books available on the recruitment process.

On the day, I felt much more confident and felt I was much more prepared than many of the other candidates there, who appeared to struggle much more with the role plays and interview.

Thank you once again and I will not hesitate to recommend the course to anyone in the future.

Best Regards”

Remember, we do not ask for the course fee balance until the end of the day, and if you do not feel it was worth it, then do not pay us, that is how confident we are that you will be impressed with the course.

How confident are you that you will pass?

Northants Police Recruitment

ben — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:32:42 +0000

If you look back at my blogs from a few months ago, everything that I said about police recruitment is coming true. Most forces have indeed cut back on recruiting, either suspending or cancelling their intakes. Cutting recruitment is the fastest and easiest way to save money, and remember, forces are being asked to cut between 25 and 40 % of their budget. So, recruitment goes out of the window. This means YOUR force as well!

For those lucky few who have an assessment coming up at teh end of July/early August, you need to consider this. Chances are, if you fail, you will not be able to apply for another two years at least, as there will be no applications accepted. You will not be able to apply to other forces, as they will not be recruiting either. That means that you need to pass this assessment, or wait years before trying again. By which time of course, even more people will be trying to get in and the competition will be harder.

What i find curious is that many forces have high numbers of CSO’s and support staff applying, many of whom tell em they would not come on a course. Those that believe this may wish to have a look at the Talking Blues homepage, under reasons to do/not do a course!

Of the few forces that are recruiting, and it is only a handful, they will probably top slice applicants, and take the ones with the highest scores first. Thyat is not so bad, except that there is a good chance that anyone else will not get taken on, pass or not.

In short, now is the time to come on a course. Otherwise, think how sick you will be if you get a rejection letter.

Good luck!

Police Assessment Open evenings

ben — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:11:25 +0000

We have had a few people this week asking us whether our courses are simply telling people what the official police open evenings do. Notts police for example are running open evenings. Whilst we would encourage going to one of these to show willing, they are pretty worthless. The suggestion our courses are just like the official police ones is so far from the truth that we actually cover it under the “Five reasons not to use us” button on the Talking Blues website. However, I have reproduced the text below:

“My force recruitment team/a bobby I know has told me I do not need to do a private course. A private company will not tell me any more than I would find out on the force recruitment evening I did when I got my application form. They are just charging me for something I can find out for free.”

If it is a police recruiting officer telling you not to bother with us, consider this. The recruiters do not want prepped up candidates, they want to see you as you are. Prepped up candidates mean more people pass, which makes the assessors job harder. It is not in the recruiter’s interest for you to do a course as there is a much greater chance of you passing, and they will not care about your interest.

Interestingly though, police recruiters sometimes say that you will get told the same information at a free force recruitment seminar than you will at one of our courses. We always smile at this. To begin with, we guarantee that the person saying it will not have been on a Talking Blues course, so how do they know this to be true? We are also unaware of any police force using a specially written 160 page manual like ours. But think about this logically.

The job of the police recruitment department is to select the best candidates, NOT to help YOU as an individual pass. If the recruiters hold an open evening, then EVERYONE gets the same information (and it is usually generic rubbish anyway.) This means that by definition, YOU are no better off then everyone else. Talking Blues job is to make YOU the best candidate. As a commercial organisation, Talking Blues stands or falls by its ability to develop YOU so YOU PASS.

The average police recruitment evening will have at least fifty people there and last 2 hours. There will be almost NO interaction between YOU and the recruiters. Our police recruitment courses are designed to develop YOU as an individual, and for example during the role play session, will focus on YOU doing individual role-plays, with feedback specific to YOU. Our courses therefore have a trainer ratio on average of 1:7, and last ten hours. We have our money back on the day guarantee if you are not happy that you have benefited. It is nonsense for police recruiters to say that a recruitment open evening is the same as our course. As regards the fact we charge for helping you, the same argument could be applied to driving instructors. We have knowledge that you desire in order to gain a great career, and meeting that need is our business. Search the web for our company and you will see how well we meet that need.

Bottom line: of course our course is totally different from open evenings. Open evenings simply inform EVERYONE what the process involves. So there is no advataneg to be gained from them as an individual, as everyone is told what you are. Our professionally written course takes YOU as an individual and explains to you what YOU need to pass. The two things are categorically not the same!

Police Assessment centre exercises

ben — Fri, 21 May 2010 10:14:46 +0000

Readers will have gathered that I do not have much time for NPIA, the National policing Improvement Agency. These are the people who write the exams that recruits (and others) have to sit. I referred a few months ago to the announcement from them that instead of changing the assessment exercises every 12 months, they were going to change them every six months. To understand the importance of this, you need to realise that the exercises stay teh same word for word for a 12 month period nationally. So, if you do your assessment in Cornwall on one date, and your mate does their 11 months later in Newcastle, you do exactly the same exercises,word for word, the role plays, the written exercises, and the interview questions. Word for word. A little while ago, these appeared on YouTube, hence after a bit of a panic, NPIA announced it would be changing the exercises after six months. We have been saying this needed to happen for years. Inevitably, they have now gone back on this decision and the exercises have remained unchanged.This is why at lunchtime on a recent course of ours, i heard the current exercises being discussed in detail by someone whose boyfriend had just done his assessment. Great for applicants, not so good for NPIA!

My opinion of NPIA remains suitably low!