Police Scotland
Interview Questions

Police Scotland describes the afternoon of its assessment day as "a 20-minute competency-based interview consisting of four questions". It adds: "All questions align to a competency within the Police Scotland CVF, the competency assessed will be outlined to you with the delivery of the question." Its adjustments page says the interview is conducted face to face in an interview room on Police Scotland premises.

• When: the afternoon of the assessment day, only if you pass the morning group task and situational judgement exercise.
• How long: 20 minutes for four questions, so about five minutes per question including any follow-up.
• What kind of questions: competency-based. These typically ask you to describe a real situation you were in and what you did.
• A helpful detail: you are told which competency each question is assessing, so you can choose the example that fits it best.

Police Scotland's Competency and Values Framework is "modified with permission" from the College of Policing's. It has six competencies in three clusters, each with three levels. Level 1 applies to constables (and police staff grades 1 to 3), so that is the level you are assessed against. Our summary of the level 1 behaviours:

Read the full framework before your interview. Each competency also explains why it matters, which helps you pick examples. For instance, the framework says empathy is "particularly important" when dealing with vulnerable people who may not be able to express themselves fully and that taking ownership includes learning from mistakes.

Police Scotland's framework is underpinned by its values and the Code of Ethics for Policing in Scotland. Each value has a definition and behaviours. In brief:

• Integrity: balancing competing principles and delivering a service that builds trust; thinking about options before acting so decisions withstand scrutiny; taking personal responsibility; challenging colleagues whose conduct falls below standard.
• Fairness: understanding the cultural and social needs of individuals and communities and approaching situations calmly and tolerantly; acting with self-control and impartiality.
• Respect: taking pride in policing and being considerate of others' needs while acting politely and professionally; treating all people, including people in custody, humanely and with dignity.
• Human rights: the framework calls Police Scotland a rights-based organisation and links its behaviours to specific Convention rights protected by the Human Rights Act 1998, such as using force only where strictly necessary, never tolerating inhuman or degrading treatment and treating everyone under investigation as innocent until found guilty by a court.

You will have already written about these values on the application form, which asks for your personal values and how you practise them, in up to 400 words. Your interview examples should be consistent with what you wrote. Our guide to the values question has a free builder with a live word count.

Police Scotland does not publish a required answer structure. What a competency-based question needs is evidence: a real situation, what you personally did and why and what happened. A simple structure keeps you on track:

1. Situation (brief): where you were and what was going on, in two or three sentences.
2. Task: what needed to happen and what your responsibility was.
3. Action (most of the answer): what you did, step by step and why. Say "I", not "we".
4. Result: what happened and ideally what you learned or would do differently.

With about five minutes per question, aim for an answer of around two to three minutes and leave time for follow-up questions. Our general guide to STAR interview answers goes into technique in more depth; it is written for England and Wales, but the structure is the same.

Situation. "I work as a shift supervisor in a supermarket. Last spring I was responsible for the weekly rota and I accidentally scheduled a colleague on a day she had booked as annual leave for a family wedding. I realised on the Thursday, two days before."

Task. "It was my error, so it was my job to put it right without leaving the store short-staffed or putting the problem on her."

Action. "I went to her straight away, told her what I had done and apologised, and told her she would not be expected to work. Then I checked who was available and asked two part-time colleagues if they could split the shift, explaining why. One could do the morning and I covered the afternoon myself after my own shift. I told my manager what had happened rather than letting him find out. Afterwards I changed how I build the rota: I now check the leave system before publishing and ask a colleague to cross-check it."

Result. "My colleague went to the wedding, the shift was covered and there have been no clashes since. My manager asked me to show the other supervisors the checking step. I learned that owning a mistake early makes it much easier to fix."

Before the assessment day, write a list of eight to twelve real situations from your life and map each one to the competencies it could show. One good example can often cover two competencies from different angles. Good sources:

• Work: difficult customers, mistakes, covering for colleagues, changes you suggested.
• Volunteering or community work, which Police Scotland explicitly says counts.
• Education or training: group projects, setbacks, learning something hard.
• Caring for someone, sport, or other parts of everyday life where you dealt with people under pressure.

Keep each example honest. The information you give across the process is checked at vetting and Police Scotland's AI guidance warns against using answers and experiences that are not your own.

You only reach the interview if you pass the morning: a group task (10 minutes' reading, a 30-minute group discussion and briefing, a 10-minute assessor Q&A) and a 60-minute spoken situational judgement exercise where assessors describe unfolding scenarios and ask each of you what you would consider and do. Police Scotland says no policing, legal or procedural knowledge is needed for these. Practise them on our SJE practice page (three free spoken scenarios). Our hub guide's assessment day section covers both, with an original worked scenario.

Serving officers transferring in from England, Wales, Northern Ireland or the British Transport Police have a different process, but Police Scotland says it also includes a competency-based interview based on the same framework.