When you reach this stage, you’ll be asked to complete your online psychometric testing.

You'll receive an email from the recruitment team to let you know when we plan to send you your testing link, and the seven day period in which to complete your testing. 

Police’s psychometric testing consists of an ability assessment and a personality profile. Some applicants will also need to sit an additional literacy assessment. 
 

All applicants complete the following two assessments:

Ability Assessment

This assessment is an indicator of your ability to cope with the intellectual demands of police training and police work.

This information is to give you an initial understanding of the assessment. We strongly encourage you to start preparing for the test early, and use the candidate preparation document, along with practice tests on our provider’s website. Please note that these questions are for practice only and no results will be provided from their completion. 

  • Timed assessment for 30 minutes
  • A 60 question, multiple choice questionnaire. There is one correct answer for each question. 
  • This assessment measures verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning, with questions mixed throughout the test (i.e. not in specific sections)


Personality Profile

This assessment helps us build a picture of your likely strengths and weaknesses in specific personality areas relevant to police work.

  • This assessment does not have a time limit but should only take you 15 minutes to complete.
  • A 100 question, multiple choice questionnaire. Questions are short and there are no right or wrong answers.
  • You should try to answer as quickly, honestly and truthfully as you can - answering how you are now, rather than how you think you'll be as a Police Officer.
  • This isn’t something you need to prepare for, it just gives us a guide to what motivates you, your attitudes and how you work with others.
     

Additional Literacy Assessment

If you don’t have a minimum education level of NCEA Level 2 or 3 literacy (or equivalent), University Entrance literacy (or equivalent) or a University Degree, you'll need to complete an additional literacy assessment (POST) after you’ve passed your online testing. This assesses language literacy, and the content is specifically relevant to Police Officers.

Important Note About Literacy

The NZ Police recruitment and selection process has clearly defined requirements in relation to the minimum NZQA Literacy standards. 

While the standards that meet literacy requirements can be obtained via a wide range of subjects, papers, courses, and pathways - NZ Police Recruitment reserves the right to ask any applicant to complete additional testing where this is deemed necessary to evaluate relevant role specific literacy requirements.

For more information about NZ UE English Literacy standards, please visit the NZQA website.