The Assessment Centre
If successful at the application stage you will be invited to an assessment centre which includes:
- A multi-skill exercise
- Two roleplay telephone calls
- Interview
Multi-skill exercise
The invigilator will brief you on the requirements for this and this part of the assessment day will take approximately 20 minutes. All necessary equipment will be provided on the day for you to undertake the tests.
This exercise will assess your typing skills, comprehension and ability to move quickly between tasks.
Roleplay telephone calls - Two calls, each one five minutes long
As a Force Contact Officer you will receive many calls from members of the public. This assessment will test your ability to respond to different scenarios that would often be answered within the Cleveland Police Control Room.
Before this element of the assessment day commences the assessor will brief you on what is expected. A role actor will call you for a duration of 5 minutes. In this time, as
well as speaking to the role actor caller, you will be expected to record details of the call on a computer.
For the telephone calls, we find that better scoring candidates ensure they remain calm, speak clearly and ask relevant questions, ensuring that the information obtained is recorded accurately. Their demeanour is professional, supportive and caring and they seek to find all information possible.
Competency-based interview
You will be interiewed by a panel - this will last for approximately 20 minutes. In this time, you will be asked questions focused on your past experience dealing with specific situations. There may also be some future focused questions.
Each question will be focused on a competency or value taken from the Competency and Values Framework (CVF). Not all areas will be covered from the CVF but please familiarise yourself with all elements.
Each question and subsequent prompts will be asked by the panel. For each question, you will then be expected to provide a response which details your previous experience.
There are different ways you can structure your answer to an interview question, however one of the most popular methods is the STARR approach.
This approach lets you structure your answers in a way that is clear and concise to the panel.
Always structure your answers and think about using the STARR approach as detailed below:
SITUATION
What was the situation you found yourself in?
TASK
What was the task that need to be carried out?
ACTION
What action did you take in order to achieve the task? Also, what
action did other people take too?
RESULT
What was the end result following your actions and the actions of
other people?
REFLECTION
What could be done differently next time? What went well?