Four role-play exercises, each role-play lasting five minutes, but with a five minute unmarked preparation phase before each one. The candidate takes the role of a Customer service Officer in a fictional leisure complex. A typical exercise may require them to meet an angry customer who feels that they have received a poor response when they have complained about, for example, abusive comments from someone else.
A 20 minute long structured interview, where you will be expected to answer each question for up to five minutes without prompting. The four main questions change slightly each year, but always ask for specific examples covering four of the six "skill" areas.
The written proposal exercise tests your ability to absorb, collate and transfer information. It is designed to check many skills, of which spelling and grammar form only a small (but important) part. There are two types of written exercise involved in the assessment. You will learn the basic principles involved in dealing with observing an interview (on electronic media), making notes of that interview, and then using those notes to complete an incident report. The second written exercise involves collating a number of pieces of information in order to complete an incident report form. Our course explains what these tests are looking for, techniques to use, gives practice exercises, and explains common errors.
You will normally get the results of the assessment after about two weeks or so.
After passing the assessment centre, some forces may call you back for what we term an "in force" interview. We cover this on our day long preparation course as well.