More Essential Competencies

For the past two weeks we've been talking about interview competencies, the interviews are somewhat standardized by the Constable Selection System in the competencies you must display through behvaioral questions. This week we will look at Self Control which is a multi-dimensional competency and the final essential competencies.

Self control is the ability to keep your own emotions under control and to restrain negative actions when provoked or when working under stressful situations. I like to really keep those two areas seperate, emotional control and restraint. Emotional control could be as simple as:

"On August 4th 2007 my father died, it was a difficult for me but I was responsible for notifying family and friends. It became even more difficult when I had to begin making funeral arrangements and had the unpleasant duty of being the executor of my fathers will. Through this difficult time I was able to control my emotions and keep a clear head by seeking help and counselling from my friends and family, although it was difficult I kept myself in check and was able to complete all my taks during this time of grieving."

Restraint is more of a confrontational person who is difficult or gives you a hard time, a classic example:

"On December 26th 2006 I was working at the customer service desk at Best Buy. It was boxing and there was a long line of returns, one customer had a microwave in an opened box, I could see on his face as he approached the desk that he was unhappy, he stomped up towards and slammed the box down on the counter "do you know how long I've been waiting?". Even the tone of his voice was very angry so I tried to de-escalate the situation by telling him "Sir, I know the lines are very long today for returns, I'm going to work quickly to get you on your way so you can enjoy the rest of your holiday." I asked what was wrong with the product and was relieved to hear the tone in his voice had changed, he explained that he wanted to return the microwave as he did not like it. I asked for his receipt and began processing the paperwork, I told the customer that unfortunately because the product wasn't defective and the box was opened he would be subjected to a 15% restocking fee. The look on his face changed to a scowl and asked "Are you kidding me?" Again, the tone of his voice sounded agitated I explained that it was the store policy and unfortunately there wasn't anything I could about it. "You know, you're a smug little prick.." I let him finish and allowed the comments to roll off my back, "Sir, I know you're frustrated with the situation but you need to understand that I can't do anything about the restocking fee." He started to curse at me but this time I interrupted him "Sir, that is enough, if you can not treat me with respect than you need to leave the store or I will call the police." I was hurt by his comments but wouldn't let myself blow-up at him, I know that getting angry could only make the situation worse. My stern tone of voice worked, he picked up the microwave and stomped away to the front door. I wish I could have helped him in the situation and atleast did the return for him since he obviously didn't want the microwave but was happy that I was able to atleast defuse the situation and have the angry customer walk away."

Relationship building describes the ability to develop and maintain a network of contacts, both inside and outside work, school, volunteering. The basis of this competency is that you make friends, that you have friends and that in your work place, at school and at volunteer events you are a social person. Policing is based on team work and having a friendly relationship with your co-workers is not only good for the work environment but also good for your professional development. Specifically, the relationship building competency questions are looking for who you met, how you became friends and how you continue to maintain this relationship outside of just seeing eachother at work, at school or at volunteer events.

The final two competencies are achievement orientation which is the desire for continuous improvement in service or accomplishments, this can be reflected via your awards, letter of recommendation, high marks, honor roll, etc.

Medical, physical skills and abilities is a competency that seeks out job related medical and physical skills and abilities including hearing, motor skills, cardiovascular endurance and upper body strength. In my experience these are all tested via your medical exam prior to your offer of employment and the OACP Certificates PREP and hearing/vision testing.

As a final note on competencies, working with them and understanding them, I again recommend the services of John Belisle to help tutor you through example questions and techniques beyond what I have covered here to help you answer the questions. Recruiters at your local service should be of help, mine was fantastic and gave me a lot of material to write about here and a lot of guidance prior to my interviews. Ultimately, understand that if you have your certificate of results, your resume passed the screening process, you really don't want to drop the ball here on interviews, too many people do and are deferred, having to wait a year before they can reapply.

Goodluck with those applications!

Essential Competencies Continued

Communication is the ability to demonstrate effective listening, verbal and written communication. Here is another easy one as you’ve already done a written communication test and your B-PAD also touches on this competency so I think it’s safe to say that you will not be asked to articulate a time where you demonstrated the communication competency during your essential competency interview.

Flexibility is the ability to adapt your approach in a variety of situations. Flexibility makes sense as far as being a Police Constable is concerned however, some people just don't seem capable of compromising or trying things a different way. Flexibility competency questions are usually answered with a simple answer that seems obvious so trust me, you don't need to rack your brain here. When it comes down to it you're just trying to show that just like in self-confidence you can realize your own limitations or maybe the short comings of the method you're using. Here is an example my recruiter used to love for flexibility and was usually his introduction example to understanding behvaioral questions, the hot dog story.

I was at a game with a friend of mine, Paul. Paul asked if I wanted a hot dog while he was going up to the concession and I said "yea, I'd love one." When Paul came back with the hot dog it had mustard, relish, ketchup, onions and all sorts of other dressings on it. I didn't say anything to Paul because I didn't want to offend him so I ate the hot dog. Usually, I'm a mustard and relish guy only. I don't like all the other condiments on my hot dog. To my surprise I really liked onions, I don't think I would get the ketchup again but I'm definetly going to get my hot dog with onions next time.

A very simple answer, I know. Notice though how there is a follow-up and my feelings of aprehension about eating the hot dog are evident.

Valuing diversity is the ability to work effectively with a wide cross section of the community representing diverse backgrounds, cultures and socio-economic circumstances.

This is a really hard competency for some, no one likes to think of themselves as a racist so opening up about such deep feelings let alone during a job interview can be tough. An alternative route to answering this question could be using peoples with handicaps as an example, I know for me personally I was very surprised to learn how independently blind people live. It wasn't until I was in high school when there was a school for the blind across the road that I really saw that blindness barely inhibits anyones life! Another alternative, perhaps you grew up in an upper class neighborhood or away from poverty, what were your predetermined thoughts about the needy, did your ideas ever change? Now, that is the most important part about this competency, perhaps how your perception changed to understand that your preconceived notion of who or how a certain group of people were was wrong.

Goodluck with your interviews, I'll have more for you next week!

Essential Competency Comprehension

I'm fast tracking this article because a lot of you are applying now and will soon be having this interview, I'm literally going to go through every single competency and address each of them to make sure you understand them! Please, email: testreadyhelp@gmail.com if you're having difficult and as always I'm going to recommend contacting myself at (905) 516 4981. The material I'm covering here is very similar to what I talk about during the Test Ready Pro workshop however, in one-on-one mentoring sessions I offer a far more comprehensive look at the competencies and work on the actual questions with you in addition to developing your interview answers with you to prepare you for the interview.

There are eight unique essential competencies which you must know and fully understand. Although the names of each competency seem self explanatory I’m going to break each down and relate how they’re each perceived specific to policing and your potential to fit the skill set necessary for a future career in policing. I also feel that it’s necessary to include a disclaimer here, I will not release the specifics of my own interview questions that I was asked and answered during my Essential Competency and Developmental Competency interviews or any services specific interview questions. I will however guide you through understanding each competency and give you examples of how to go about articulating an answer. Keep in mind my answers may seem goofy at times but they follow our prescribed technique for answering behavioural questions. Also, note that my questions here are often answered with non job, school or volunteer related experiences. During your own interviews with any Police Service you must use examples from work, school or volunteering.

Analytical Thinking is the ability to analyze situations and events in a logical way, and to organize the parts of a problem in a systematic way. Analytical thinking is a competency demonstrated during your OACP Stage One testing, the Police Analytical Thinking Inventory (PATI). I do not suspect you will ever be asked a question on this competency.

Self Confidence is described as a belief in your own abilities and judgement, and recognition of personal limitations and development needs. Lets break this down, a belief in my own abilities: I believe I can do something, recognition of personal limitations: perhaps I bit off more than I could chew. Lastly, development needs: I know I need help here, I’ve recognized what’s wrong and will ask for assistance.

Example: I’ve always to build my own computer from scratch. This past spring it was cold out and I found myself not taking part in as many activities as usual so on May fourth I made the decision to go out and start buying the parts to make my own computer. I had some help researching which components were compatible through a few of my friends and felt confident that the only tools I needed was a single screw-driver. After getting home from collecting everything I needed I was excited and couldn’t wait to start working on my new project. I spent four hours carefully unpacking each part, reading the documentation that came along with it and hooking it all up together. Finally it came time to proudly press the On button. To my dismay when I plugged the computer in and press the power button nothing happened, I waited a few seconds and began to smell something burning, I knew at once it was the computer as it was the obvious scent of burning plastic. I was curious and couldn’t imagine what was going on. I quickly unplugged everything and opened the computer case up to see where I went wrong, I couldn’t figure it out. For fifteen minutes I checked each wire to make sure it was connected properly and in the right place, I checked each screw making sure they weren’t in too tight, cracking the casing… I just couldn’t figure it out. By this time it was well after eleven at night but I had to call my computer savvy friends and get their input on what I could do, I spent a half hour on the phone and no one could give me any idea of what was wrong, I was frustrated but I began to have a sick feeling in my stomach when my friend Matt told me the burning smell could have been the motherboard or power supply frying, I felt like all this money was spent on nothing, just totally wasted. I set my alarm for early the next morning so I could get to a computer repair shop first thing when they opened. I had a hard time sleeping that night. When I finally brought the computer in I found that problem wasn’t with how I connected the wires but that I didn’t use a spacer between the motherboard and the case, this was causing friction amongst the metallic parts which did not allow for the computer to power on. Only a few hours later I was out the door, back at home and set-up with my new that I had practically built all myself. I learnt something new that day and I kept the repair shops number and knew in the future I had one more resource at my fingertips if I needed technical support for my computer.

Behavioral Interview Techniques

Last week I wrote about behavioral interviews and tried to clear up misconceptions. This weeks blog is again on behavioral interviews but specifically techniques for answering questions.

Last week I gave a very vague example of a behavioral interview question, this question was open-ended. That question: "Tell me how you would handle a situation where ______________." Is a perfect example of what you're up against in most behavioral job interviews regardless of whether it is with a Police Service or a corporation.

Be a S.T.A.R. STAR is an example that is most often used for behavioral interview responses. It follows the following formula, S: Situation, describe briefly when and where the incident occurred and who was involved. You are setting the scene. T: Task, what were you trying to achieve, what was the problem or issue to be dealt with. A: Action, what action did you take independently or to assist others to get to a positive outcome. R: Result, what was the outcome of your actions, state your success and any positive feedback received or what you learned if the outcome was different to what was anticipated. Explain what you would do differently in the future. Alternatively you could include information sharing as a competency here for result. For instance, how I shared this experience to better my co-workers.

STAR is a good formula and is an excellent way to get used to answering behavioral questions, if you cover all your STAR basses in the order they appear: Situation, task, action, result. Result is the one most people overlook. Result could be hyphenated as follow-up. The reason for this is because it's very important to articulate what you learnt from the situation you described and how you curbed your approach to similar problems or thought processes after that event.

A good example of Star in action taken from www.ssu.uts.edu.au You are asked: 'Can you tell me about a time when you had to organise a major event?' Using the STAR model, your answer might be something like this:

Situation
'Yes - earlier this year I had to organise the UTS Careers Fair.

Task
'To do this, I was required to market and advertise the Fair to both students and employers. I also had to organise venue hire, catering and booth construction, and exhibition equipment.

Action
'To market the Fair to students, we had a postcard designed and mailed out to our target audience. We also used banners, flyers and posters to advertise. In the week leading up to the Fair, we used a video wall for the first time.... [Describe succinctly each of the other tasks for which you were responsible.

Results
'We had 65 employers at the fair, which was the largest number of employers to attend to date. And there were over 2500 students, which was also a record number.'

The above example is a perfect, smooth example, all it leaves out is sufficent information about the exact time, which is a detail you would input yourself, specifically who was involved and also a really concrete follow-up, "In the future, I did __________ to make sure other volunteers and organizes knew of this successful method to bring more people to the job fair."

Again, simple but very effective, this formla for answering questions will become very natural for you eventually, with practice.

Next week we'll have more on behavioral interview techniques so send in your questions, the forum is down right now but I will answer emails, private messages and feel free to leave questions in the "comments" section of this blog.

Understanding Behvaioral Interviewing.

Behvaioral interviewing became popular fifteen years ago. The basic concept of behvaioral interviews is that requires candidates to draw upon past experiences, think of behvaioral interview questions as practical experience based questions. It is here that the answers are absolutely objective. The interview is about probing and works very differently from traditional job interviews. The basic rule of behavioral interviews is that past actions or behavior are indicative of future actions and behvaiors. Behvaioral Interviewing predicts 55% of on the job behavor which far exceeds traditional interviewing which only predicts 10% of future job behavior.

In knowing this we can see why Police Services are so big on doing these interviews. Policing is a service and very much about how you perform individually, how you will represent that Service infront of the public and professionally amongst your co-workers.

Uniquely though, Police Services right across the board seem not to offer a traditional job interview at all, as in: "Tell me about yourself?" Here, you could get away with telling the interviewer what they want to hear or embarrass yourself by telling them what you think they want to hear: you're a quick learner, motivated, especially if you're lying this is an easy spot to get away with it. Also, understand that these questions are very open ended, they don't contain any specific structure, ideally you could manipulate your answer to go any route you want. Alternatively, imagine you're instead asked "Tell me how you would handle a situation where ______________." This type of question is usually preceeded with a very specific set of ground rules about how you are to answer the question, they aren't complicated ground rules but guidelines on how specific to be, what kind of pace to speak in as the interviewer may be writing everything you say in short hand, which is the case with Police Services for posterity. Your answer is simple until the Interviewer begins to pick apart your answer, perhaps they want specific dates and times, who was there specifically? Furthermore, to get to know your true character you may be asked how you felt when something particular in your story happened, you may be asked to articulate many fine details and your reactions to them, the other parties involved reactions and of course, the outcome. Also, don't think it's as easy as regurgitating an answer, you could be stopped mid-sentence and asked to articulate your previous point more or talk more about the last point you made. This is all pooled against your chances for success in Policing. Luckily for Police Recruits, we know specifically the exact characteristics a Police Candidate should possess (competencies) and we have their definitions! Competencies are listed on every Police Service's website that follow the standardized Constable Selection System (the majority of Police Services). How many other careers give you a study path for your interview??

Let's go back to the original question, ""Tell me how you would handle a situation where ______________." One of the ground rules may be before you're able to fully give your answer, you need to give a quick overview or synopsis of what you're going to say in your answer. This gives interviewers a chance to see if your answer has the potential to give them what they need to draw from your answer. If not, you need try something else. It's wise not to question this and understand it's not a technique for interviewers to psyche you out, really, they know exactly which competency they're looking for and in what context it will work, wouldn't you rather know on the spot that the answer you're giving isn't working, try something else. The alternative like the B-PAD is not knowing right then and there, not knowing you're doing something wrong and being able to change your approach and receiving a letter of your failure to meet standard. This, is the single most endearing part about the behvaioral interview, that, you get to work with the interviewer.

Next week we're going to talk about specific techniques for answering questions, in the mean time if you have any questions I'm always available on the forum! www.testreadypro.com/forums

Local Focus Interviews.

Local focus interview answers will be unique to each service you apply to. Every service you apply to will require that you complete their own Local Focus Interview. If you check, the majority of Ontario Police Service's all say the same thing in their description of the interview. Pre-background questionnaire, suitability, require a knowledge of the region.

The pre-background questionnaire is very standard and covers a surprisingly long length of time into your past, going into this interview prepared with specific dates is essential, think long and hard before you give a date, you need to be accurate and represent yourself effectively, the last thing you want is to pass everything and fail the background investigation because you didn't articulate your past correctly. I think it goes without saying but I'll just say in plain english, don't lie. You'll get yourself kicked out of selection.

Suitability is a little bit of a difficult subject for me to write about. Here it is all up to you and how well you can articulate your skills, experiences, ties to the community, etc. I wouldn't expect to be grilled about why you want the job here so much, save that for your psych!! This portion of the LFI is really to see if professionally you have the skills it will take to become a Police Constable. One section that is well represented here is actually a competency, "Commitment To Learning" although it is more of an attribute this is a good time to articulate how you feel about your commitment to learning.

Finally, requiring a knowledge of the region. If you're applying to the Toronto Police, you should know all there is to know about Toronto. When was Toronto founded, by whom, its geography, population, the diversity of the population, economics, large firms, big employers, attractions, communities, and the official information on the Toronto Police like their history, current Chief, Super Intendents, Inspectors, how the divisions are divided, their borders, crime statistics, specialized units that are in Toronto.

The Local Focus Interview isn't at all complicated if you're prepared for it. Most of the information you need about the service you're applying to can either be found on their own official website, by visiting a local museum, reading the local newspaper/watching local news and using www.wikipedia.com Just type in your city and you may find a plethora of information.

Your Resume and Application Package

I remember when it came time for me to apply, I was so excited, I couldn't wait for my Certificate Of Results, I drove to London and waited for it to be printed so I didn't have to wait for it to come to me in the mail. I already had my whole application package printed and filled out, my resume was ready to go just waiting for the final piece to add to the package, my COR. The picture of me holding up my COR on my first post here on the TestReadyPro blog was a proud day. I had such a great sense of achievement and knew I was taking a big step towards a very serious goal.

Once you fianlly receive your Certificate Of Results it's now time to apply. There are two different strategies here, the first being, apply to as many services as possible and hopefully one of them bites and calls you back. The other strategy is to apply to only one or two services, concentrating on the Police Service you most want to be a member. I'm a fan of the later. Why? Very simple answer, because it's easier for you and for them. I say this because if you have applied to Toronto, Barrie, Halton, O.P.P. etc. they're all going to be curious to know which stage you're at with the other services. I understand that this is mostly to reduce redundancy and to not waste resources. I truly believe that loyalty goes a long way with services, furthermore, it shows that you have a dedication. Lastly, it's a lot easier to study for one services LFI then it is for two or more at once.

So, lets talk about specifically what should be on your resume. EVERYTHING. First though lets talk about cover letters, yes they're necessary and it must be included with your resume. Your cover letter should include your name, the name of the service you're applying to, the position you're applying for and a brief write-up of why you're applying to that service. Instead of putting "Attention Human Relations" or "Attention Recruiting" I put the name of the chief of police for the service I was applying to. Do not forget to sign your name on your cover letter. The body of your resume should again include your objective or the position you're applying to. Also, include every position you've held, listed seperately on your application and resume for work experience. This means that if you've worked for the same company over the past five years, started out as a general labourer, were promoted after a year to machine operator, promoted a few years later to line supervisor, all these positions should be listed seperately. How you word your duties on your resume is also important, describe exactly what you did. Too often do I see people with Customer Service jobs who write just that, "Customer Service" without an adequate description, of course we all know what cashier or customer service representative does but it's a great idea to list that your responsibilities included handeling cash, resolving customer complaints, etc. No matter how mundane your job may seem, your employer trusts you and you have responsibilities, be proud of your experiences and showcase them well. You should also be exact with your dates for your application and also have these same dates on your resume.

You should also include your educational information, certifications and, licenses should be in a seperate section. Don't forget to include your hobbies and interests, what do you do in your spare time to wind down? Sports? Do you play on a team? Music? Do you play an instrument or jam with friends?

Do not forget to put all your volunteer experiences down. It's not necessary to include your references on your resume as you'll provide them later or on your application. It is however handy to keep a list of more references than the bare minimum needed for the background investigation portion as you may find some references are unusable. As a rule you should keep handy three references for friends, three refrences for work (including co-workers), three refrences for school or volunteer experiences. Ask your references before you put them down, make sure they know you're applying to become a Police Constable and feel confident in giving you a good reference. Often times I hear horrific stories of people asking for letters of reference or references only to find those people really weren't the best references they could draw on.

When you submit your application and resume it's a wise idea to photo copy both the front and back of your COR, birth certificate, drivers license, health card, Social Insurance Card and, CPR, Standard First Aid certificates. Being organized and having your application, resume and photocopies neatly together in one package will impress.