A police officer test assesses candidates on key skills and competencies to determine if they will be able to successfully carry out their duties as a police officer.
A police officer test helps to identify those with the potential to succeed in this challenging career. Designed to assess key competencies and behaviours, use of the test allows you to determine each candidate’s potential suitability as a serving officer.
Core skills including numerical and verbal reasoning, problem solving, decision making and communication are evaluated via questions and exercises that mirror realistic scenarios. The assessment is also designed to examine behavioural tendencies, personality traits, and situational judgement.
A candidate who achieves a high score in the police officer test shows a natural aptitude for this line of work, and can be considered a promising applicant for further progression.
Police Officer Test
A serving police officer needs to apply a broad range of skills on a daily basis. They must work well as part of a team, understand and follow orders, remain objective in their duties, and record accurate details.
Not everyone that pursues this career holds this diverse skill set. With the police officer test, you can narrow down the candidate pool to those that do.
It takes a very specific type of person to effectively perform the duties of a police officer, making recruitment a challenging and complex task.
In assessing suitability, you need to understand applicants' values, natural behaviours, and personal characteristics. Alongside this, you want assurance they can perform daily tasks to the required standard, such as compiling detailed reports, and making appropriate decisions based on critical analysis.
A police officer test gives you a practical way to measure these skills and qualities, which are notoriously difficult to assess through any other recruitment technique.
You’ll get comprehensive reports for each applicant, so you can clearly see those that meet the required criteria. The test can also be administered at scale with ease, bringing increased efficiency to high-volume recruitment.
When used as part of a stringent application process, Picked’s police officer test helps to ensure the best possible hiring decision, and that appointed officers maintain the standards expected in the policing profession.
The police officer test might also be useful for the following roles:
Results for the Police Officer Test along with other assessments the candidate takes will be compiled to produce a candidate report. The report is automatically generated and available both online and as a downloadable pdf so they can be shared with other team members and employees alike.
Candidates will need to answer a range of questions that measure industry-specific technical skills where applicable, soft skills (e.g. teamwork), aptitude (e.g. verbal reasoning) and relevant personality dimensions (e.g. stress tolerance). The results present a holistic view of how well suited each candidate is for the job at hand, using a data-driven approach.
The format varies by type of question, including multiple-choice for aptitude and technical skills, situational judgement for soft skills and agreement on a Likert scale for the personality dimensions. This approach ensures candidates are being assessed in an accurate and fair manner, and that results reflect the true underlying qualities of each candidate.
The characteristics, abilities and knowledge necessary to be a police officer were identified using the US Department of Labor's comprehensive O*NET database. O*NET is the leading source of occupational information that is constantly updated by collecting data from employees in specific job roles.
During the development process, test questions were rigorously analysed to maximise reliability and validity in line with industry best practices. They were created by our team of I/O psychologists and psychometricians – who collaborated with subject-matter-experts – and field-tested with a representative sample of job applicants who have varying experience, just like you might find in a talent pool.
Each test is reviewed by a panel of individuals representing diverse backgrounds to check for any sensitivity, fairness, face validity and accessibility issues. This ensures each candidate has a fair chance of demonstrating their true level of expertise.
Our police officer test is monitored to ensure it is up-to-date and optimised for performance.
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All our Police Officer tests are written by accredited psychologists and fully validated.
We offer Police Officer tests for all levels so you can assess all roles within your organisation.
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Simple, easy-to-use candidate comparison reports mean you don’t need to be a psychologist to interpret them.
“We used Picked as part of our Finance Graduate Scheme recruitment and it was just what we needed – really simple to send candidates the link to complete and clear to see how they all compared. And great value for money!”
Our team of assessment experts is made up of I/O psychologists and psychometricians who are dedicated to making all of our tests as reliable, valid and fair as possible. They strictly adhere to best practices in the industry and stay on top of the latest innovations to ensure job candidates’ unique profiles of characteristics, abilities and knowledge are being measured accurately while minimising bias. They leverage decades of research and advanced predictive analytics to build assessments that link to outcomes that matter, such as job performance, turnover, engagement, culture fit and more.
“Personality profiling allowed us to perform lookalike modelling of our most successful employees and use this as a blueprint for new hires.”
Our police officer test is designed to be fair yet challenging. Whilst it requires no specific knowledge of policing law, it does require applicants to prove essential skills at a high standard, as well as testing how well they perform under pressure.
The skill set required of a police officer includes everything from teamwork, communication and objectivity, to resilience, communication and empathy. They must be effective decision-makers with keen attention to detail, and sound professional judgement.
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