If you are looking to become a police officer, but you don’t want to take the police civil service exam, then this article is for you. In this article I’m going to discuss two ways this can can be done. I want to warn you though; there is no guarantee that you will get the position and you’ll still have to sit through the oral board interview .
Here’s what happened, I checked my website’s visitors log a while back and noticed that a lot people wanted to know “how to become a cop without having to take the written exam.” So I’ve decided to do a little research and the findings were not that great.
Here’s what I’ve found out:
If you want to bypass the police officer exam altogether, your options are pretty limited but not impossible. The departments who don’t require an applicant to take the civil service entrance exam are very low risk, small town agencies.
Those towns usually have around 1-2 officers working per shift and normally you are on call 24/7. Don’t worry though. You won’t get called out since nothing really happens. Another thing about small departments like that are they don’t pay as well as bigger agencies. You will be more connected to the community since you’ll know everybody there, but the pay is not nearly as high as that of a big town officers.
I’m not trying to deter you from applying because these towns need police officer too, but I simply want to bring awareness to the negative side of the matter. Some of the pros are it’s a great stepping stone for bigger opportunities later on. Now if you are already certified, you can work for a private university that doesn’t require an entrance exam; they normally pay a lot more. Sometimes private instiutions pay more than large agencies simply because they are a private institution not funded by tax payers.
I know I mentioned you must be certified, but that’s not always the case. Those are the only two options I know of that will allow you to skip the civil service exam and still become a police officer. Let me make sure you understand you’re not out of the woods yet because you’ll still have to do well on your Oral Board interview. The oral exam is designed to measure your communication, judgement, and reasoning skills.
If you do well on the police interview, you’ll likely either get the job or be placed on the eligibility list for future hiring. I hope this article has helped in some way. Thank you.
