NZ Police Psychometric Test: The Podium GCAT

NZ Police’s online testing page describes an Ability Assessment and a Personality Profile and never names either. The page gives the game away in its links: the practice tests go to Podium’s website, and the preparation booklet is Podium’s own, about Podium’s General Cognitive Ability Test, the GCAT. If you are applying to become a constable in New Zealand, this is the test in your invitation.

The shape of the test

Adaptive means the test is meant to feel hard

NZ Police added one paragraph to its page in 2026 that changes how you should read the whole experience. The questions “adjust to your responses and will become more challenging as you answer correctly”, and reaching difficult questions or making mistakes “is expected and does not mean you are performing poorly”.

In practice that means a good candidate spends much of the test on questions they find difficult, because getting questions right is what brought them there. If the middle of the test feels like it is going badly, the likeliest explanation is that it is going well.

The same paragraph gives the pacing advice. Guessing or rushing through questions at the end is “not helpful”, and the test is “not about finishing quickly or answering as many questions as possible”. Podium’s booklet adds that ability tests are often designed not to be finished. Keep an eye on 30 seconds a question as an average, not a limit.

What the questions look like

Podium’s newer practice platform shows one question at a time under a dark header with the clock: an instruction line, then a word, a number series or a row of dark tiles, then six numbered answer tiles and a Next button.

The abstract questions surprise NZ Police candidates more than anything else. Clock faces are a large share of them: two of the ten questions in Podium’s own current abstract practice, and about half by one 2024 candidate’s account. The fix is to stop reading them as pictures. Turn each hand into a number on the dial and work out the step in hours: a hand on 12, then 2, then 4 moves two hours a step, so the next is 6. For shapes, pick one corner and follow only that, and decide whether the shape has turned or flipped before you look at the options, because the wrong options are usually the other one.

How the result is reported

Podium’s GCAT report gives an overall General Reasoning score and separate Abstract, Numerical and Verbal scores, each as a sten from 1 to 10, a percentile against a norm group, and one of five bands: Below Average, Slightly Below Average, Average, Slightly Above Average and Above Average. Stens of 5 and 6 are average. NZ Police sees the report and tells you whether you passed.

Nobody publishes the pass mark, so there is no number to aim at. What is published is the consequence of missing it: a stand-down of at least six months before you can resit, and a second fail ends your application. NZ Police has also said it no longer allows early resits. That is the strongest argument for preparing properly before you open the link rather than treating the first attempt as a look at the format.

The Personality Profile

The second test is 100 short statements, rated on five points from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree, ten to a page, with no time limit. NZ Police says it takes about 15 minutes and uses it to understand “your likely strengths and weaknesses in specific personality areas relevant to police work”. There are no right or wrong answers and no pass mark.

NZ Police does not name the questionnaire. It runs on Podium’s platform, and Podium’s own questionnaire is the PQ10, which reports ten two-ended scales, two for each of the Big Five: Inquisitiveness and Creativity, Power and Sociability, Compassion and Diplomacy, Drive and Orderliness, Emotionality and Confidence. Podium’s PQ10 page says 90 questions against NZ Police’s 100, so the police version may carry extra items. Podium’s reports also check answering style, including whether answers look too good to be true.

NZ Police’s own instruction is the best advice: answer “how you are now, rather than how you think you’ll be as a Police Officer”. Read every statement to the end, because some are worded in reverse, and use the whole scale rather than sitting on Neutral.

Proctoring, and why it matters more than usual

The Ability Assessment is proctored online. Photos are taken at intervals and anything unusual is checked by trained staff. If outside help or tools are confirmed, NZ Police says your application is declined and you cannot apply again in the future. Sit it alone, in a quiet room, with nothing on the desk. We cover the detail in can you cheat the Podium NZ Police test.

What to do before and on the day

You can practise the full 60-question GCAT, adaptive with no going back, each question type on its own as a 20-question drill, and the 100-statement personality profile on our Podium practice page.