Testing Day - Academic

THE BIG DAY PART ONE

5 August 2008 0830hrs.

I arrived at the Police District Headquarters in Rotorua to sit the Academic Testing component of the recruiting process. This involves three tests, namely;

1. Verbal Reasoning - Assesses understanding of words and relationship of words
2. Numerical Reasoning - Assesses the ability to understand numbers and the relationship between numbers
3. Abstract Reasoning - Assess the ability to perceive and understand the relationshios between abstract shapes and patterns

Basically the tests are psychometric assessments, the same sort of thing you get in an IQ test. You have to work out the next number in a list of numbers, the odd word out, what pattern is next etc.

I was fairly confident about these but there is a difference between doing some test ones online or out of books and the real thing, when the clock is ticking and you have 8 minutes to do 35 of them....

We are told that you may not have time to complete all questions, and I was a few short when the time was up during the verbal reasoning test, but I couldn't help but wonder if I mucked up when it was all done.

After these tests we completed a 200 question personality profile. All questions had an "agree" "neutral" or "disagree" answer. That was pretty hard going as many questions were repeated and while there are no 'right or wrong' answers, the right answer was generally what you thought of straight away so being given the chance to answer the same question had me wondering each time what I put last time!

The forms are sent to Wellington for marking. The wait begins!

After two and a half hours of filling in forms we were allowed to leave to meet near the running course for part two ... the PAT.