FIREFIGHTER RECRUITMENT GUIDE
The Behavioural Styles Questionnaire
What it actually is
The Behavioural Styles Questionnaire is a personality questionnaire, not a test. There are no right answers in the way an aptitude test has right answers, and no score in that sense. It asks how you typically behave at work and looks at the pattern across your answers.
It sits early in most recruitment processes, usually straight after the application, and for a lot of candidates it is the first thing they face. It is also the stage people over-prepare for, because nobody tells them what it is for. In practice it is a sift to reduce numbers, not a deep assessment of who you are.
ABOUT THIS FORMAT
The format described here comes from a published PSI participant briefing for the Police Constable Behavioural Styles Questionnaire — the same publisher and the same question format, but a different item set. No fire service item set is public, and the practice questionnaire on this site uses statements written from scratch.
The format
Statements come in blocks of four, all on one screen. Each is rated on a seven-point scale:
- Completely Disagree
- Strongly Disagree
- Somewhat Disagree
- Neither Agree nor Disagree
- Somewhat Agree
- Strongly Agree
- Completely Agree
There is no time limit. The real thing takes fifteen to twenty minutes.
If you rate two or more statements in a block the same, you will be asked to rank those against each other by how well they describe you. That is not a fault or a penalty — it is part of the design, and it is how the questionnaire separates statements you have not separated yourself.
Two things that catch people out
Answer about work, not the rest of your life.The instructions say this explicitly and people still answer as themselves generally. “I prefer to be told exactly how a job should be done” is a question about how you work, not how you are on a Saturday.
Read the negatives.Some statements are worded the other way round — “I don't leave tasks unfinished.” Agreeing with that means you finish things. Under time pressure people misread the negation and answer the opposite of what they mean.
There is a third thing worth knowing rather than worrying about: the same trait comes round more than once, worded differently each time. That is deliberate. Answer consistently and it looks after itself.
Practise the BSQ before you sit it
Sixty statements on the same seven-point scale, in blocks of four, with the same ranking step described above. No score — a trait profile and a consistency check, so you can see exactly where you're hedging or misreading before it costs you.
Start the practice questionnaireSo how do you approach it?
Answer positively, and read the wording.
There are no wrong answers in the sense of a marked test, but there is a pattern the questionnaire is looking for, and hedging towards the middle is what costs people. This is a role that wants someone who finishes things, owns mistakes, works with the people around them and speaks up when something isn't right. If a statement describes that, agree with it — clearly, not cautiously.
The two things that actually cost candidates are overthinking and misreading. Overthinking pulls you towards the middle of the scale, where nothing stands out. Misreading catches you on the statements worded as negatives, where a quick read has you saying the opposite of what you mean.
Go with your first instinct, read each statement properly, and don't agonise over any single one.