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!

Just heard this interesting peice of news. Norfolk Police have decided that for candidates who have passed the national police assessment system, they want them to do a presentation on how they will put into effect the force values and objectives. What  a complete load of rubbish. Lets just think about this for a minute. Lets ignore the fact that these candidates have just passed a national system, which, weak and flawed though it is, has been adopted by all English and Welsh forces, as well as BTP etc. This is the system which means in most forces, you will have been classed as having proved yourself as having the skills to be a police officer. But let us ignore it. Norfold clearly feel that this does not evidence clearly enough these skills, otherwise they would not feel the need to do something else QED. But why  a presentation? Why on that topic? This is the kind of presentation topic that would form part of an Inspectors board, not a poor bloody PC. How many average people give presentations? Especially if they are young, or from a disadvantaged background and are in the process of clawing themselves up? This presentation merely gives a big advantage to Specials and CSO’s (whihc may be no bad thing), while being exclusionary. Unless you hapen to be  asales rep, most people will not have  a clue how to start this. And before Norfolk police recruitment say this is the point, why don’t any other forces use presentations? Is it harder to police Norfolk than Merseyside or Manchester? Do Norfolk officers need to be better communicators than those working Brixton or Toxteth? No of course not. This is just someones bright idea to cut down numbers of successful aplicants, and has not been though through fully. I bet you this daft idea disappears within a year, and is never used again. Any takers?

Just got this email today.

Hi John just thought i would let you know i have passed got 60%.I had been waiting ages for my results so i finally rang them today. The guy said that 60% is quite good……. not sure about that but its a pass so i am over the moon. Not got the break down of my score but obviously the role plays must have gone my way to a degree. Still not sure what, if anything i did wrong in the role play, your thoughts are always welcome. (i sent you a mail regarding this a few weeks ago)

My response is that what you did write or wrong does not matter, what DOES matter is the fact that you passed. The police assessment centre pass mark varies from either 50 or 60%, but provided you pass it who cares? One point worth making though is the value of doing a course. If the course gets you just a bare pass, what would you have go without it?

The key message whether it be the police interviews, police assessment centre or the police application form, is that you have got to work at it and prepare.

For those of you who have doen the police recruit assessment already, have a read of an earlier blog entry talkin about not having an autopsy on your performance before you get your result!

Had to write this quickly. Had three example forms this week where people had used examples of challenging behaviour that was bullying or discrimnatory (Q1 in the competency application section of the application form) without thinking about what they are saying. All involved situations where the applicant saw a series of actions, e.g. leting a colleague be sexist to a member of staff over several days/weeks, then they went to speak to their colleague, checked they were unhappy, then finally did something about it! THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG! Think about what they are really saying. 1. They saw a series of events they knew were wrong, but did nothing initially. Therefore they are allowing this to carry on. Not good. 2. They are saying that if their mate had not anted them to do anything, they would not have, otherwise why ask them? We want to hear examples where as soon as you notice the behaviour, you challenge it there and then, to set an example to others. Anything else is ducking your responsibiity!