Preparing For Your Online Assessment Centre

We interview candidates to assess spoken English skills and to allow you to demonstrate your strengths and behaviours. Communication and your ability to engage with people is a key component of being a prison officer.

The interview is a blended interview that will cover strengths-based and behaviour-based questions. It will last up to 30 minutes. There will be three strengths assessed during the interview and you will be asked up to two questions on each strength. There will be two behaviours assessed during the interview and you may be asked follow-up questions so the assessor can gather enough evidence.

When responding to each question, you should focus on a specific example and go into as much detail as possible. You can use either personal, educational, or professional examples.

Preparing for strength questions

Strengths are the things we do regularly, do well and that motivate us. Before your interview, you may find it helpful to consider why you would like to become a prison officer and reflect upon your strengths and those that align with the prison officer role. Some people find it difficult to identify their own strengths. If you feel this way, you could consider talking to family or friends about what strengths they feel you have.

Strengths-based questions may seem different to questions you have had in the past (e.g., behavioural, or competency-based questions). They are designed to assess your natural preferences, so the specific strengths you will be asked about during the interview are not disclosed. The questions are designed to be as clear as possible and can be interpreted exactly as they are said (there are no hidden meanings). To help familiarise yourself with the style of these questions, a couple of examples have been outlined below. These examples do not represent the strengths that will be included in your interview. Examples of strength questions:

• Do you think it’s important to be able to explain things so that others can understand? Why is that?
• Imagine you have several urgent tasks on your to-do list for tomorrow. How would you plan your day?
• You can access the full range of strengths and their definitions here: Success Profiles: Civil Service Strengths Dictionary

Preparing for behaviour questions

Behaviours are the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job. Before your interview, you should familiarise yourself with the behaviours you will be asked to demonstrate during the interview, so you can prepare your most relevant and best examples. These are:

• Communicating and Influencing: You have excellent interpersonal skills, communicating clearly and respectfully, showing good listening skills. You collaborate with others and challenge and influence others with confidence.
• Managing a Quality Service: You demonstrate a strong work ethic and take personal responsibility for your actions. You manage your own time, quickly adapting to changing circumstances and assessing risks, whilst adhering to processes and rules.

You should plan the structure of your responses for the behaviours assessed. A common approach that you might consider using is the ‘STAR method’:

• Situation - the situation you had to deal with
• Task - the task you needed to complete
• Action - the action you took to complete the task
• Result - what happened as a result of your action and what you learned from the experience

Once the assessor has asked you a behaviour question, you will be provided with some time to think about how you want to respond. This is so you can think of your most relevant and best example for each question without the pressure of needing to respond straight away.

Spoken English

As spoken English is assessed in this interview, please make sure that other people can understand what you are saying to them. If spoken English is something you struggle with, you could try having a conversation with others and asking for feedback.

As a prison officer you will have to use your communication skills in challenging and stressful situations. The role play asks you to review background information about a prisoner and demonstrate how you communicate and interact with them to deal with the situation.

During the 10-minute role play, you will interact with a role actor and take on the role of a prison officer who is interacting with a prisoner. The role play has been designed to closely replicate the kind of interaction you may have with a prisoner.

We’re looking for you to respond to the issues that arise in a way that seems most natural and appropriate to you. You are not expected to understand all the processes and activities involved in being a prison officer or respond in the same way that an experienced prison officer would.

We will assess your responses against the following behaviours:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service
• Making Effective Decisions
• Caring

It is important for you to familiarise yourself with the four assessed behaviours by reading the definitions and watching the associated videos under the Assessment Criteria section of this page.

During the assessment, treat the role play exactly as you would a real-life situation. Be yourself; we want to measure your natural responses and not what you think we’re looking for.

We test your written English skills as you will be required to write reports within your role, these need to be clear and concise. Reports written by prison officers could be used in a court of law and must be of a professional standard.

The purpose of the written assessment is for you to consider an incident you could encounter when working with prisoners and provide your response in an incident form. The form consists of tick-boxes, incident detail boxes and a response box to explain what actions you would take to address the situation.

You will be given 25 minutes to complete the form and type your responses. You are advised to spend approximately 2 minutes reading the overview information and 23 minutes completing the form, with the majority of your time focussed on explaining the actions you would take.

We will assess your written responses against the following behaviours:

• Making Effective Decisions
• Caring

We will also assess your written responses for:

• Ability to write in sentences that show a reasonable understanding of grammar
• Ability to write clearly using easily understood English language

It is important for you to familiarise yourself with the four assessed behaviours by reading the definitions and watching the associated videos under the Assessment Criteria section of this page.

Review our interactive online activity to get more of an insight into different situations you could encounter when working as a prison officer. Practice reviewing each scenario and writing down in a short timeframe how you would respond, providing as much detail as possible within your answer.

There are also useful resources on the BBC Skillswise English website which you may find helpful.

You have excellent interpersonal skills, communicating clearly and respectfully, showing good listening skills. You collaborate with others and challenge and influence others with confidence.

You demonstrate a strong work ethic and take personal responsibility for your actions. You manage your own time, quickly adapting to changing circumstances and assessing risks, whilst adhering to processes and rules.

You show good judgement and problem-solving ability, using a wide range of information and evidence to build a full picture of a situation to guide your decisions. You have the confidence to make and stand by your decisions, whilst recognising when to defer to others.

You are open-minded and non-judgemental, treating others with decency and respect. You develop meaningful relationships, empowering and supporting others, whilst maintaining clear boundaries. You manage others’ expectations and deliver on your promises and commitments.

We’re looking to find out what motivates and energises you. We want to see what your natural strengths are and what interests you.

Spoken and Written English

You write in sentences that show a reasonable understanding of grammar. You can take information from various sources and summarise it in an understandable format. You speak and understand fluent English.

As a youth justice worker you will have to use your communication skills in challenging and stressful situations. The role play asks you to review background information about a young person in custody and demonstrate how you communicate and interact with them to deal with the situation.

During the 10-minute role play, you will take on the role of a youth justice worker who is interacting with a young person in custody. The role play has been designed to closely replicate the kind of interaction you may have with a young person in custody.

We’re looking for you to respond to the issues that arise in a way that seems most natural and appropriate to you. You are not expected to understand all the processes and activities involved in being a youth justice worker or respond in the same way that an experienced youth justice worker would.

We will assess your responses against the following behaviours:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service
• Making Effective Decisions
• Caring

It is important for you to familiarise yourself with the four assessed behaviours by reading the definitions and watching the associated videos under the Assessment Criteria section of this page.

During the assessment, treat the role play exactly as you would a real-life situation. Be yourself; we want to measure your natural responses and not what you think we’re looking for.