RCMP Right Fit Interview (RFI) – Are You Ready?

RCMP Right Fit Interview (RFI) – Are you Ready?

So you’ve decided that you would like to become an RCMP Officer.  Such an exciting and challenging time, with so much to prepare for.

You’ve been to an RCMP Information Session so you have a pretty good understanding of what steps you will be going through to be successful during the applicant process.  You have carefully reviewed the minimum requirements, i.e. you are a Canadian Citizen, or permanent resident for 10 consecutive years, have a valid driver’s license, meet the minimum education standard, etc. and are ready to begin the process.

So should you take one step at a time or should you look ahead at what stages you will be facing and start getting ready now?  What are some of the phases of this process?  Well, you will have to meet the minimum level of physical fitness, so should you start getting ready for that now or wait until you have to demonstrate that you meet the RCMP standards?  What about the RCMP Entrance Exam?  Is there a way you should prepare for that ahead of time or just wait and see what happens when you get invited to write the exam?  And what about the Pre-Employment Polygraph?  Is there anything you can do to prepare for that?

Of course there is.

You should prepare for every stage of the process as much as you can to ensure that you are at your best level to succeed.

Does that include the RCMP Right Fit Interview (RFI), formerly the Regular Member Selection Interview (RMSI)?  Yes!!  That definitely includes this phase of the process.  I have been hearing from clients that they are receiving 3-4 days notice to participate in this telephone interview.  That’s not a lot of time to get ready for one of the biggest and, quite frankly, most challenging steps in the process.  Don’t wait until you get invited to the interview to start preparing.   Start preparing as soon as you have decided that you would like to become an RCMP Officer.

So, what can you do to prepare?

• Research

  • Learn as much as you can about what is being assessed during this interview.  Check the RCMP website and see what information they can provide about the interview.

• Learn more about Competency Based Interviews

  • Read up on Competency Based Interviews and find out what types of questions are asked.  Understand the two different types of questions that are asked, i.e. Behavioural and Situational, and how to formulate your answers.

• Find out what Competencies are Being Assessed

  • There are eight competencies that the RCMP is assessing during the RFI.  Do you know what they are?  Do you understand their meanings? Learn and understand the competencies being assessed so you can target your answers to those questions.

• Start Getting your Behavioural Examples Ready

  • Once you know what the competencies are, and fully understand their meanings, you can start to gather your stories that can demonstrate that you meet those competencies.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  It takes time to think of just the right story that will demonstrate that you meet a specific competency, so start looking for them now.  And if you can’t think of a story that is recent and significant, start looking at things that you have coming up.  You  never know what might turn into a good story to tell!

• Practice, Practice, Practice

  • Once you have gathered your stories, it’s time to start practicing them, using the RCMP preferred method of S*T*A*R (Situation, Task, Action, Result).  The more you practice telling your story using the S*T*A*R format, the more your story will be concise and easy to follow.

As you can see, there are lots of things you can be doing now to help you get ready for the RCMP Right Fit Interview (RFI).  Don’t wait until you get invited, because you might only get 3 days notice.  And that’s not very much time to do all of the above. If you’re not sure how to go about preparing yourself for these next steps, don’t  be afraid to reach out to a Certified Professional Career Coach who has extensive experience preparing clients for this type of interview.  Take the guess work out of it and make sure you know how to proceed.

Do you know someone who is faced with this challenge?  Feel free to share this post by using the share links at the top of this page.  Also, if you’d like more interview tips, feel free to check out the interview resource page.