Police Structured Interview Package (SIP)

Whether conducted in-person or through FPSI’s virtual interview option, the SIP gives your department everything needed to run a legally defensible and highly predictive interview process.

Testing

Police Structured Interview Package

The Structured Interview Package (SIP) is FPSI’s proven solution for conducting job-related, defensible interviews that identify the most qualified police officer candidates. Research has shown that the most litigated pre-employment selection device is the unstructured interview—accounting for nearly 60% of litigated selection devices. Worse yet, when challenged in court, unstructured interviews survived only 59% of the time, while structured interviews were among the least challenged devices and successfully withstood 100% of legal challenges.

That’s why FPSI developed the SIP (2nd Edition), a comprehensive, scenario-based interview system designed to assess candidates in the critical areas of oral communication, interpersonal effectiveness, and decision-making. The SIP includes 20 unique, validated, job-related questions directly linked to police officer duties and aligned with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978), ensuring both fairness and legal defensibility.

Would you like to preview the SIP?

Departments may preview the SIP before purchasing. Click here to order your sample today!

FPSI addresses the federal Uniform Guidelines On Employee Selection Procedures.

If you are a representative of an agency interested in upgrading your agency’s recruitment process, promotional exams, or physical ability testing, please visit our FPSI contact page.

The SIP includes:

  • 20 validated structured interview questions for unlimited use
  • Dimension definitions, rating scales, and scoring guidelines
  • Examples of strong and weak responses
  • Rater and administrator instructions, including prohibited questions and common rating errors
  • Optional rater training to ensure consistency and accuracy across panels

Benefits

  • Validity: The SIP was developed and validated in 1978 by a consortium of cities. Since that time it has been revised and re-validated several times, most recently in 2005.
  • Completeness: The SIP contains all the information and materials to conduct the interview. These include rater and administrator instructions, domain definitions, rating guides and scales, and suggested questions.
  • Economy: The SIP is priced to be cost-effective even for small agencies. As a fixed-priced product, agencies with large numbers of candidates find it even more economical.