Before you Hire cops, What all Rounds of Assessments are Needed?

senter_vina March 18, 2020March 18, 2020

Pre-hiring assessments for cops aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Since the job demands much more physical and mental strength, pre-employment assessments are equally challenging. If you have applied for a job of cop recently, there’s a high chance that your personality test, as well as a medical test, are on the way. While personality tests assess the general intelligence and integrity, mental assessment, brain health assessment, and medical assessment also have a role to play.

Pre-hiring assessments for cops

Personality assessment

In most cases, pre-employment personality assessments help formulate an opinion as to whether a candidate would be a good hiring choice. It also helps to judge the ability to perform boring or tedious tasks. In the case of cops, personality tests help the employer determine the ability to tolerate stressful situations, the ability to deal with supervision, general intelligence, as well as general ethical standards. The main purpose of the police personality test is to measure a variety of job-related behaviors and personality traits. These assessments are often standardized and formatted as either paper & pencil-based or computer-based.

Physical fitness assessment

Evidence suggests that the current police aka cops fitness test is, in fact, relatively difficult to pass. Physically they need to be active while mentally more competent than their competitors. While each cops department runs its own variant of the physical test, all assessments are designed to test body strength endurance, and agility as well as the mental stability of each candidate. One of the toughest challenges during the physical fitness test of cops is to successfully complete a timed 1.5 mile run in 15:54 minutes or less. Push-ups are another part of the police fitness test. Here, no matter what, but the applicant must use proper body form and the chest must briefly touch the floor. Last but most importantly, sit-ups are often the final station of the cops academy fitness test. Sit-ups measure endurance and abdominal muscle strength The test calls for as many sit-ups as possible in just 1 minute.

Other physical fitness tests include deadlifts, jumping on and off a box, hip flexor stretches and jumps squats for explosive movements

Brain health assessment

Mental health assessment assesses the candidate’s ability to perform their work role and recommends reasonable adjustments which can help them further. The brain health assessment is also accompanied by a screening of any other physical or mental needs.

The profession of cops is is a high-stress, people-intensive profession. It requires a healthy and steady brain that analyzes the correct things in a quick time.

In brain health assessment, the activation of the brain for the associated memory is carried out by presenting a list of words to the subjects. This brain mapping test is conducted in three different portions:

A list of neutral words, which have no direct relationship with the case.
A list of probe words directly related to the case and suspects to elicit concealed information. Here, all suspects have had the opportunity to come to know during the course of events related to the case.
A list of the target, which is not part of the first two parts. The words used here are purely based on confidential findings. And this finding is not known by the suspect.

Psych assessment

Did You Know: More than 90% of U.S. Law Enforcement Agencies use psychological testing as a part of the pre-hiring assessment?

In general, the psych assessment determines a candidate’s suitability for this particular job. The psychological exam for hiring cops is perhaps the most important but least understood aspects of pre-employment screening for law enforcement and other criminal justice careers. It’s one of the last steps in the hiring process for cops i.e. police officers. Simply because it can either make or break the candidate’s chances of getting the job. The police psychological tests carry out five-factor analysis, which includes, extroversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness and adaptability to experiences.

Adopting the profession of a cop isn’t that easy, but not even impossible!

There are a number of pre-employment assessments for becoming a professional cop. Passing each of these tests is a huge challenge. However, the key is to start training early for each part of the test. One requires working out and eating a healthy diet to improve their overall physical fitness. The frequency and severity of crimes from district to district are undoubtedly different. Hence, the physical requirements for police officers also differ in each state. Nonetheless, one can pass the assessment if s/he has what it takes to do this job. You can also get in touch with some of the known and reputed employment screening services provider for further information.