Police Structured Interview Package (SIP)

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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.

FPSI developed a new version of the SIP (3rd 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 30 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. Everything needed to ensure a professional, valid, oral board system in the police officer recruitment process.

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:

  • 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 validated with incumbent police officers, sergeants, and lieutenants from a large metropolitan police department in 2026.
  • Completeness: The SIP contains all the information and materials necessary to conduct a professional interview. This includes rater and administrator instructions, domain definitions, rating guidelines and scales, and 30 unique scenario-based questions that measure the critical competencies that matter the most in a police officer.
  • Economy: The SIP is priced to be cost-effective even for small agencies and support multiple recruitment cycles while protecting interview integrity. Agencies with multiple recruitments will have plenty of questions to choose from to ensure unique oral boards for years to come.

Testimonials

Suzi Washo

Human Resources Manager Central Pierce Fire & Rescue, WA
Everyone at FPSI absolutely ROCKS!!!  Thank you so much…I cannot begin to explain how much time, energy and focus this process has taken off of me, and how much better results we have gotten.  I am so thrilled at the results.  I already took the survey to make sure everyone knows.  The report with the demographics with the adverse impact review as part of it has made my life so much easier.  Thank you, again!

Julie Walker

Human Resources Manager West Pierce Fire & Rescue, WA
FPSI is extremely convenient to work with and staff members are extremely responsive. Use of the online test saved my agency a significant amount of time and resources on the testing process. The products and services I received from FPSI were extremely professional.

Barry Cheyne

Chairman Quincy Fire & Police Commission, IL
The service provided by FPSI was outstanding and provided a comprehensive police officer test for our applicants!

Dave Cook

Fire Chief Albany International Airport Fire Department, NY
I have been dealing with FPSI for a number of years and have found them very easy to deal with and they respond quickly to any questions that I have. I’m most impressed with their turn around time with the exams whether we do in person exams or online.  We did our own testing for a number of years which seemed to be working fine, but we felt that we were missing out in the interview process on the real personality and work ethic of the candidates. We did website searches for firefighter tests and found that FPSI was offering the WSI and realized that would be a real benefit to us when we interview candidates. We also talked to several other agencies that use FPSI and found that they were pleased with the product and results. We were looking for credibility in our test process and FPSI fit the bill!