"I have really enjoyed the Police Recruitment Home Study Course. Thanks for all your help."

Anita P, London.

What are these skills, abilities, and competencies?

Your assessment actually begins with your application form where you are asked to demonstrate evidence of your professional and ethical standards, communication skills, self-motivation, the ability to make decisions, be creative and innovative, have excellent leadership qualities, and the ability to plan ahead.

Only when you can precisely demonstrate these skills, abilities and competencies on the application form should you send it to the force of your choice where it will be closely scrutinised by specially trained assessors.

If your application form satisfies all the criteria you will be invited to an assessment centre to take part in a series of role-plays, psychometric tests, interviews and written exercises, where you’ll be given the opportunity to demonstrate your respect for diversity, team working ability, show that you understand the importance of the community and that you can focus on people as customers. Then there’s your sense of personal responsibility, resilience, ability to communicate effectively and your problem solving ability to demonstrate.

Should I send for the police application form now?

You could, but the failure rate is very high and if you make the slightest error or demonstrate the wrong competence in the wrong place on the application form, you will fail and you won’t be able to re-apply for at least six months. Neither can you blitz forces with multiple applications, so if you make one small error or omission you’ll have to wait quite a while before you can try again. The police recruitment process is very expensive to administer and they don’t want time-wasters who haven’t bothered to thoroughly prepare for the recruitment process.