Police Staff Application Guidance
Please observe the following advice carefully to help with your online application form; failure to do so may result in your application being withdrawn.
For Police staff applications submitted to South Wales Police, make sure you:
- read all sections of the role profile to ensure you understand all the requirements of the position
- review the essential competency criteria on the role profile that will need to be evidenced against in your application
- re-read your application to check for spelling, grammar and formatting before submitting
- complete your application in plenty of time for the deadline
Application guidance FAQs
Attached to the advert you will find a role profile relating to the job that you are applying for. This profile provides an overview of the role and the criteria that you will need to be able to meet in order to do the job. You should use the Role Profile to complete the assessment part of the application form.
The role profile details the main responsibilities and the criteria required in undertaking the role. When evidencing your skills, knowledge, experience and personal qualities as outlined in the criteria on the role profile, you may also wish to consider the main responsibilities area and what competencies / qualities you possess in meeting these responsibilities.
A competency is a quality used to measure how well you can do something: competencies may include areas such as, ‘upholds professional standards’ or ‘remains calm and professional under pressure’. If you can evidence through your application a time when you have successfully upheld professional standards or remained calm under pressure, you will be demonstrating you are ‘competent’ in these areas. You must provide evidence of the qualities you already have, or may develop, that enable you to carry out the role. Your answers in this section will be used to decide whether your application will proceed to the next stage. It’s important that you think carefully about your responses, which can be from your recent or past experiences.
Each role profile we advertise clearly provides a complete list of competencies that are both required, and desired, from an individual to undertake that role.
The competency criteria on the role profile that you must evidence are included at the end of the document. The competency criteria will be shown in a table format.
When completing your application please ensure you only complete the sections marked in the table as ‘Yes’. Do not complete the criteria marked as ‘no’ as these will not be assessed. You will be allowed 500 words for each criteria - the word count does not override to the next criteria.
To evidence the relevant competency criteria you will need to provide specific examples of work tasks or events which you have undertaken or attended. You can also draw on skills or experience that you have gained as a result of doing voluntary work, work in your own home or at school, college or university, as well as in paid work.
It is not essential to provide evidence for every individual point, one example will often cover a number of key criteria and so it may often be appropriate to provide one scenario detailing a number of skills or personal qualities.
We want to know what YOU said or did on a given occasion to deal with the situation. It’s therefore important that the examples you provide are your own experiences and as detailed as possible. We expect your answers to be relevant and focused. Please refrain from the use of jargon and slang as this is unacceptable.
Before applying for any role we advise:
- Researching South Wales Police. We are looking for candidates that have an awareness of the work we do and can demonstrate knowledge of our vision, values and ethics.
- Researching South Wales. It is important that you not only have an understanding of the work we do, but also the communities we serve.
- Understanding the role that you are applying for. We provide general information on our website, but a full role profile is also supplied in support of every role we advertise. You should read this thoroughly and consider if this is a role suitable for your talents, interests and abilities. The information contained in this document contains core competencies relevant to the role which will be tested through the application, interview and assessment process.
