An alternative to an assessment centre on six pieces of paper?

The application form currently used in police officer recruitment neither m easures competencies necessary 'on the job', nor screens out inappropriate applicants. To improve this situation, a competency-based application form was developed and trialled in three police forces. Results were compared wi th those obtained via the assessment centre acting as the first competency screening stage of the current selection process. A high level of correspondence was found between the two sets of results ra ising a query as to whether the application form could be a valid replaceme nt for the assessment centre. A future validation study, in which the perfo rmance of recruited police officers is compared with application form resul ts, will better answer this question. In the meantime, it is proposed that the competency-based application form questions are incorporated into the c urrent form to reduce the number of inappropriate applicants reaching expen sive, labour-intensive stages of the selection process.