Border Force tests customer service as well as reasoning, because most of the job is people at a desk

A 2024 Home Office campaign for Border Force Officers listed the Civil Service Verbal Test and Numerical Test among its online stages. Our reasoning test combines passage-based verbal questions with table-based number questions, so it rehearses both of the reasoning tests that campaign named.

The same campaign also listed a Customer Service Test, which our reasoning test does not cover, and prep sites describe a checking test for Assistant Officers. Our test is also timed and the same for everyone, while the Civil Service versions are described as adaptive. Nothing here rehearses the interview or the assessment centre.

Border Force recruits at more than one grade, and the online tests reported for each are not the same. Prep sites describe Assistant Officer candidates sitting a verbal test and a checking test, and Officer candidates sitting verbal and numerical tests. The Home Office's own 2024 Officer campaign named the Civil Service Verbal Test, the Numerical Test and a Customer Service Test.

Before you prepare anything, check which grade your advert is for and copy the list of tests from it word for word. Two candidates applying in the same month, one for each grade, may face different screens.

A Border Force Officer's day at a port or airport is mostly conversations: tired passengers, nervous travellers, people who do not speak English well, and occasionally someone who is lying. The Customer Service Test listed in the 2024 campaign makes sense in that light. It sits alongside the reasoning tests because the role needs both a sharp reading of documents and a calm manner at the desk.

We could not find a published description of the Customer Service Test's format, so we will not describe its question types. The safe preparation is to think through how you would treat someone fairly and politely while still applying the rules firmly, because that tension is the job.

Prep sites report a checking test for Assistant Officer applicants. Checking tests in general ask you to compare two versions of a record, such as a name, a date of birth and a document number, and spot whether they match. That mirrors comparing a passport against a booking or a landing card.

If your invitation names a checking test, practise reading character by character rather than word by word. Our brains autocorrect familiar names, so the errors that slip through are transposed digits and single swapped letters. Slow, even pacing beats bursts of speed.

• Compare numbers in small chunks of three or four digits.
• Check dates in a fixed order: day, month, then year.
• Read names letter by letter, especially common names with variant spellings.

The Civil Service Verbal Test asks whether a statement follows from a short passage, and the Numerical Test asks you to work from tables or charts. For Border Force, imagine passages about travel rules or procedures and tables of passenger numbers or seizures by port. The skills are the same as in any Civil Service test: read only what is there and pick the right row before calculating.

Our Civil Service tests page explains how those two tests behave in more detail, and the verbal reasoning questions page works through the Cannot say answer that catches most people.

Commercial guides say selection for Border Force includes an assessment centre where candidates are tested on judgement, conflict management, communication skills and awareness of equal opportunities, and that a list of six competencies is sent before you attend. They disagree on whether the centre is online or in person and on whether it comes before the interview.

Whatever the order, the exercises point at one situation: a disagreement with a member of the public that you have to settle without losing your temper or bending the law. Prepare one example of calming a conflict, one of treating someone fairly when it would have been easier not to, and one of following a rule you did not personally agree with.

These come from anonymous reviews, university careers pages and prep guides. They often disagree, and Border Force has not confirmed them. Read them as leads, not rules.

• Prep sites report that Assistant Officer candidates sit a verbal test and a checking test, while Officer candidates sit verbal and numerical tests.
• A candidate guide describes a strengths-based interview for those who pass the online tests; another says candidates are assessed against competencies at interview.
• Commercial guides say the assessment centre tests judgement, conflict management, communication and equal opportunities awareness, and that six competencies are sent in advance.
• A practice site describes a campaign at Holyhead that used a verbal test and a customer service skills test.