July of 2008 - Final Phases

In the middle of July, I took a trip to the city where I would hopefully be working for the final phases of the department's hiring process.

I was to take the following tests over a period of two days:

1. Polygraph Examination
2. Psychological Evaluation
3. Physical Examination
4. Stress Test

On a Tuesday, I showed up to the department at 1000 hrs. I was placed in a room with a polygraph machine for about 20 minutes..... staring at "the machine." I think this was all part of the process. The polygrapher came in and we went over all the questions that would be asked. I had nothing to hide or lie about, so I was very confident that all would go well. We chatted for a while about anything that would possibly come up during the test. After being hooked up for what seemed to be about 10 hours (I think it was only about 30 minutes), I was free to go.

After grabbing some lunch, I reported back to the department for my psychological evaluation. This consisted of 3 different written tests (fill-in-the-bubble) totalling about 1,300 questions. It was about 5 hours of reading seemingly pointless questions and filling in the corresponding bubbles on the answer sheet. There is a good reason they use these tests, and that is to get a good idea about the mental stability of the candidates. I hope I didn't come off as crazy! :-) Any type of question that could have possibly have been asked was asked. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they locked me in a room for 5 hours. They told me I was free to come and go (take breaks) as I needed to. By the time I was done, it was past 5:00 PM and the whole building was dark. The psychologist (who I thought had left for the day) had to come in and get me and show me out of the building because I was technically locked in!

That night, I had to fast. I could not eat anything for 12 hours. This was in preparation for my physical the next morning.

The next morning, I reported the medical clinic and was poked and prodded in every way imaginable. My hearing, vision, reflexes, blood, blood pressure.... everything was checked. I also took a drug test.

After all of that, I went and got some lunch and came back for the final test; the stress test.

The stress-test consisted of being hooked up to about 12 "diodes" or whatever those things are called that they stick to your chest. I was then placed on a treadmill and went through a variety of speeds and inclines which got my heart to do different things. They found that my blood pressure was a little high, but other than that, I was good to go.

Now, every agency has a different hiring process. They all do things differently.... so everything you have read may be tweaked in one way or another, but for the most part, you will go through (or have gone through) basically the same process.