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Which kind of agency should you apply to?

88 questions about the work you actually want to do, not the job description. About six minutes. Nothing is asked about you — no name, no email, no account.

City police, a sheriff's office and a state agency share a lot of duties and almost none of the daily life. One walks into houses every shift. One covers a county and may start you in the jail. One can be a long way from backup and can move you across the state. The badge is the small difference; the week is the big one.

Answer honestly rather than heroically. There are no right answers here and nobody sees them — the point is to find the job you would still want in year five.

88 questions · about six minutes · nothing saved, nothing sent about you

1 A call comes in about a fight inside a house. Are you walking in?
2 Someone is in crisis, no crime has been committed, and it is on you for the next two hours.
3 How much of your shift do you want to spend inside other people's homes?
4 A child is involved and the situation is ugly. How often can you carry that?
5 Backup is twenty minutes away. You are first and you are on your own.
6 Do you want to work with the same crew every shift?
7 Nobody is watching. No supervisor within fifty miles. How does that sit?
8 On call from home, at any hour, because you are the only one covering the area.
9 A K9 unit is something you could work toward — not a job you are hired into, but a place to aim.
10 Livestock loose on a road, a dog bite complaint, a cruelty case in a barn.
11 An injured deer on the shoulder, and the decision is yours.
12 Everyone you deal with all day is legally armed, because they are hunting.
13 Mounted patrol, years down the line, with the animal's care as part of your week.
14 Crawling under a truck to check brakes and pushrods, in the wet.
15 Boats. Engines, weather, a wake at two in the morning.
16 Weather. Out in it, or in out of it?
17 Someone is lost in the dark and cold and you are part of finding them.
18 How fit do you want the job to keep you?
19 Could you move across the state for the job?
20 Could you be posted somewhere you have never been, with no say in where?
21 How far from home do you want to be at the end of a shift?
22 City, suburb, or open country?
23 Your patrol area is measured in track miles, river miles or acres, not blocks.
24 One case for eight months, or eight calls a shift?
25 Paperwork decides whether a case survives. How do you feel about that?
26 Most of your enforcement is a citation rather than an arrest.
27 Traffic enforcement: the core of the job, or a means to an end?
28 Years from now: weeks undercover, or in plain clothes. Which agencies would you want that door open at?
29 Cargo, freight and what happens to things in transit.
30 Standing in front of a class teaching hunter safety, or a room of freshmen.
31 Trespassers, and people living where they should not be.
32 A derailment, a crash scene, or a wreck that has to be reconstructed.
33 Your employer would be a company, not a government.
34 Your first two years could be jail, court and transport before you see patrol.
35 A year of hiring: background, polygraph, clearance, waiting.
36 An elected sheriff, an appointed chief, or a state commissioner. Does it matter to you?
37 Supervising people who are locked up, every shift, by name.
38 A caseload of people you are responsible for over months and years.
39 Nights.
40 Rotating shifts, or the same hours every week?
41 Monday to Friday, at the same building, most weeks.
42 Weekends and holidays.
43 The busy season is fixed and everyone knows when it is — opening weekend, term start, the holidays.
44 How much does off-duty work matter to your plans?
45 Driving. How many miles a shift are you happy to cover?
46 Most agencies that hire for this want a bachelor's degree before you apply.
47 Standing at an emergency department door, running a metal detector, all shift.
48 Taking a mental health patient into custody, and restraining someone who is not a criminal.
49 Knocking on a door at seven in the morning to drug test somebody, in a neighbourhood you would not choose.
50 The same person, month after month — job referrals, treatment, and then the report that sends them back.
51 Booking and intake: property, searches, medical screening, and the same faces coming back.
52 A posting you do not choose, decided after you finish the academy.
53 How the work reaches you: a radio dispatching you, or a list of your own to get through.
54 Do you want to start your shift at a station, or in your own driveway?
55 Roll call: a sergeant, a briefing and an inspection before every shift.
56 A beat you may not leave without asking, or a territory the size of three counties.
57 Nobody tells you what to do for eight hours. You decide where to sit and what to look at.
58 A queue of calls waiting for you, or an empty screen you have to fill yourself.
59 Two officers in one car, or one officer alone?
60 The patrol car goes home with you and sits outside your house.
61 How often do you want to see a supervisor in person?
62 Where do you want to live — and are you willing to let the job decide?
63 A formal outfit: inspections, uniform standards, a residential academy, a chain of command you feel every day.
64 Would you rather know your posting before you accept, or go where they send you?
65 On duty the moment you leave your own front door, in your own vehicle.
66 Extra pay for a speciality — K9, motors, dive, crash reconstruction — stacked on top of your salary.
67 Pay that changes with the county you live and work in.
68 Tuition paid, and extra salary for a degree you already have.
69 Twenty-eight weeks living at an academy, home most weekends.
70 ATVs, snowmobiles, vessels, drones — the machinery is half the job.
71 A bear in a garden, an alligator in a pool, a deer through a windscreen. Yours to resolve.
72 The assignment changes with the season and the county — the water one week, a hunting area the next.
73 Retiring at fifty-five, or after twenty-five years, and a pension you can name today.
74 Drunk people. Not occasionally — most Friday and Saturday nights, for years.
75 Somebody urinates in the back of your car. Or is sick in it. You still have four hours left.
76 Being sworn at, insulted, and told what you are — by people you are trying to help.
77 A phone in your face, filming, waiting for you to lose your temper.
78 Someone spits at you, or fights you, and you still have to keep your hands where the law says.
79 A drunk driver at two in the morning: the stop, the tests, the arrest, then an hour of forms.
80 A body that has been there a while, and the smell that goes with it.
81 People who know what you do for a living, and think less of you for it.
82 Do you want to know the same people over years?
83 The same faces, in trouble again, week after week.
84 A second language, and people who do not speak yours.
85 A fixed post — a terminal, a hospital, a campus — for a whole shift.
86 Once you are through probation, which of these would you want to be trained in?
87 Five years in, what does good look like?
88 Who do you most want to be useful to?

What this is, and what it is not

It is a preference assessment, not an aptitude test and not a personality test. It cannot tell you whether you will be a good officer. It can tell you which kind of agency the life you say you want most resembles — which is the question most applicants never get a straight answer to.

Whatever comes out on top, read the page behind it. Then read the one that came second, because the two are usually closer than the percentages make them look.

And one thing worth saying plainly. Some of these questions are about the parts of the job nobody puts in a recruiting video — the drunks, the back seat that needs cleaning, being filmed, being sworn at by someone whose worst day you turned up to. If most of those made you recoil, that is worth knowing now rather than in year two. No result on this page is a job you can do while avoiding all of it. Some agencies get less of it than others; none of them get none.