Customer Reviews

Police Assessment Center Preparation

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Find this first on the used market if you can and this should not be your first pick for police assessment center preparation. It is very generic and spends too much time on the overview of the process. Candidates for promotion do not always need to know the legality of an assessment center nor the reasons some agencies select them as a testing process. Law enforcement professionals competing for promotion have little choice in the agencies decision to use this process and normally little time to prepare. When compared to even an ARCO Sergeants test prep book, the three chapters on assessment center exercises were more concise and informative. It does include good exercises to familiarize yourself with the process and the author's advice is consistent with others.

I agree with Michael Troyanski's review. This book is way too basic and, at least to me, seemed very repetitive. The author spends too much time promoting the assessment center process rather than giving the candidate needed ideas and strategies. The pages are double spaced and the book has the appearance of being made on a copy machine. I was let down, given the astronomical price of the book. If you are new to the assessment center process it will give you a basic overview. I felt better prepared with materials and conversations I obtained from other folks in my agency that have already been through the process.

I bought this book to prepare for an assesment center for promotion to police captain. The book is pretty much useless. Poorly written and overly redundant. It really doesn't help prepare you for the assesment center as much as it gives you an overview of how and why assesment centers are used. SAVE your time and money and stay away from this book!

Purchased this book in preparation for a Captains assessment center. There were places in the book where the author says "the memo below says ...." The problem is there is no memo below. Very poorly edited and too expensive for what it provides. Another page had a paragraph that started in the middle of a sentence and did not even belong on the page itself?? Looks like an effort to make a quick $. I would not purchase it again for even a quarter of the price listed. For a Ph.D it is a poor writing example. Also , The sample assessment center exercise was for a SGT test not upper level. Choose a different author! Also the 2 positive reviews came after I posted this one and I bought the book only 10 days ago. I am trying to figure out how someone made Captain at a mid-western city in the last ten days and didn't post earlier unless it is the author trying to salvage a sale or two. stay away from this one. The Rowe book is excellent compared to this one.

When our Police Department announced that the testing process for the two open captain positions would be changed to an assessment center, everyone began a search for the best approach to prepare for the process. Dr. O'Leary's book is the one I chose. The guidelines and sugestions were excellent. I finished first on the oral board component and second in the overall scoring. Today I am a Captain with a major mid-western police department. Without the PROPER guide for understanding and preparation of assessment center testing, I would have been lost! This book is written in simple text and is easy to follow.

This is one of the most poorly written books I have ever had the misfortune to purchase. Beyond the frequent misspellings and/or misuse of words, there were sentences that were cutoff, and references to diagrams that either did not exist or were mislabeled so as to make the reference pointless. While the topic does lend itself to referring back to previous points, the "author" shamelessly used the copy & paste method, to avoid taking a swing at it from another perspective. Fortunately, Amazon recommended a "bundle" that included three books, and so far, at least one of the others appears to have had a professional publisher (or at least an editor).

Needed some guides for promotion preparation. This is one of several that I purchased, and I think all helped a little in different areas.

If you have a lot of time to prepare and study (and you always should be preparing for promotion in ANY job) then get as many books & guides as you can. They will help you do better now, and get recognized now. When promotion time comes - you will be ready!

I felt very prepared after going through this process. It was worth the time to do each of the exercizes. I would definitely recommend the workbook and the process to others.