Why people fail police assessment centres

There are two main types of candidates who fail assessments. The first of these are those who for one reason or another are in fact completely unsuited to a career as a police officer. Hopefully, anyone who is racist, sexist or homophobic will fall immediately into this category. Nobody wants these types of people to join the police service, and a police assessment system should be able to screen them out. Less harmful, but equally undesirable in other ways, are those who are simply not suited in terms of character to be police officers or PCSO’s. This may be either in terms of their mental capacity, personal standards, or simply the natural make-up of their character. For example, on my candidate training course, the first half-hour consists of an outline of the techniques involved in role-plays. On one particular course in Newcastle, we told the students that after a short break we intended to give them a role-play to do. We then had a coffee break, and upon resuming class found one student had just left without saying a word to anyone. They had been unable to mentally face the prospect of being involved in a role play with the rest of the class. The student would no doubt consider that they were just highly nervous on the day of the course, and that it was no big deal. However, looking at their inability to face a role-play, it provides a bigger insight into their character. From an assessor’s perspective, if somebody cannot face the prospect of doing a role-play – (whilst no doubt putting the candidate under some pressure, it is a controlled environment) – how on earth can the assessor then consider that such an individual would be able to deal with a fight outside a nightclub on a Saturday night as a police officer? Whilst assessment centres have their faults, it is very difficult to fault this particular piece of logic.

So, the first type of people who fail assessments are those completely unsuited to being a police officer or PCSO. Our police assessment courses are not designed or intended to help these people get into the police. Not having the kind of personality required to be a police officer does not make you a bad person of course but if somebody was of a nervous disposition or not very decisive or self confident, and managed somehow to get through the recruitment system, they would discover that being a police officer can be very miserable occupation. Not everyone can deal with physical confrontation for example. I’m not suggesting here that everyone needs to be able to go five rounds with some knife-wielding skinhead (that is what radios, batons, CS incapacitant, your colleagues and police dogs are for!) but inevitably, a part of the job is becoming involved in situations which at their best involve having to assert yourself, and at the highest level involve you in activity which represents real physical risk to yourself. Not everyone has the character traits to do this – thankfully, or what a world we would live in!

This brings us neatly onto the second group of people who fail. This is by far the bigger group. This band of people would probably make excellent police officers. However, they have failed to display the skills required to the correct level. This in itself can be for a number of reasons. Some candidates simply do not understand the mechanics or rules of the police assessment centre. Consider this analogy. Imagine a good rugby union player attempting to play rugby league without being told there was a difference in the rules. Without taking anything away from their playing abilities, they would still lose because they did not understand the differences in what the rules allowed them to do.

Those candidates whose background, skills or education has simply not allowed them to develop the sort of skills that are tested at assessment centre are at a real disadvantage. Additionally, those who perhaps doubt have their own ability, either in terms of them being able to do the job, or in terms of confidence levels will also struggle.

With the right kind of coaching and preparation, these people are able to perform much better throughout the assessment. So, the moral of the story really is that most of those who fail simply have not put enough preparation in, or more to the point, they have not done enough to understand what the service is looking for.

This is why so many PCSO’s and Specials fail. They react to the assessment situations as they know would happen in real life. This is totally against the pretend world of the police assessment centre, and so they fail.

You have to understand what the job is looking for.

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