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!

Here is another thank you we had today.

I attended your seminar in Leeds at the Holiday Inn recently. There I asked you how you determined the number of your students that were successful at the assessment centre.  I am pleased to let you know that I passed my assessment centre for XX Constabulary with a pass mark of 74%! Preparation and attendance of your seminar no doubt played a massive part in this achievement and I would like to thank you once again.

Regards,”

These courses are now proving very popular, and the venues have been booked. However, there is only so much space at these Holiday Inns in terms of people that we can fit into the meeting rooms. If you do want a place at either of these, we would advise you to book sooner rather than later. It is very rare for us to say that, as we think it is a bit cheesy, but this time it is true!

I had an interesting conversation this week about whether being involved with the police already, such as a special constable, CSO or support staff member, is an advantage in getting in. This is particularly so since a lot of forces suggest that if you are unsuccessful at the police assessment centre stage, that you join the specials or become a cso to “gain experience”. In one or two forces, they hold special assessment centres for staff, so one can argue there that there is an advantage, but these are few and far between.

In most forces, the reality is that being in the job already gives you no advantage whatsoever. You get no preference when it comes to getting hold of an application for starters. Then when you get to assessment, no one will care about what you work as now, it is all about providing the right competencies. So, you are certainly not going to get some inside form of fast track.

There may be a slight advantage in that you may have some examples of partnership working, but there is no reason why a switched on candidate would not be able to bring in the same from outside.

There is however one potential disadvantage in that police related candidates often bring police type attitudes with them, which is exactly the kind of thin g the job is looking to weed out. Every CSO will have dealt with people who police officers have told to shut up in no uncertain times, or will have been exposed to police culture which is often a bit cynical and dismissive of minor problems.  This is the biggest hurdle that police staff have to overcome, the fact that if they have taken on board these values, and let them slip out in the assessment, then they are likely to fail.

Overall then, it is certainly not an advantage to be working in the police now in terms of applying, and can actually set you up in some ways to fail.

For those of you that would argue this is not true, consider this. If being a  CSO/Special/Support staff member is such a big advantage, why do you know loads of people from those groups who have tried and failed to join the police? Shouldn’t they al have passed?

Just a thought!

Just a few comments recieved this week. Three of them are from the same force, so we hopefully will not be getting any speeding tickets from their probationers for a while!:

Just to let you know I came to your course in Exeter in January, I have just had my results and scored 72% so passed and have a conditional offer with XX Police, Thank you for the course I’m sure it would have been a different outcome if I hadnt attended your course.