Guide

Task-based assessments in firefighter recruitment

Several UK fire and rescue services now sit candidates in front of a set of short interactive tasks before physical testing — flashing numbers, moving targets, faces to read. Here is what they measure, how the scoring actually works, and why nobody selling you an answer key has one.

Where they sit in the process

A service running one of these will usually put it immediately after eligibility screening. Applications come in — often well over a thousand for a few dozen posts — and the assessment does the heavy sift before anyone is invited to a physical test. Some services publish figures suggesting the great majority of applicants are removed at this stage.

That matters for how you treat it. It is one component of a much longer process — physical testing, interview, practical and team assessment, medical, pre-employment checks all follow — but it is the one standing between you and everything else. Check your own service's recruitment page for what applies to your campaign; stages and providers change between campaigns and between services.

Who supplies these assessments

In UK fire and rescue recruitment these are most commonly supplied by Arctic Shores, whose task-based assessment appears across a number of services. Other providers exist and some services build or buy differently, so this is a statement about what is common rather than about what your service uses.

If you are searching for “Arctic Shores practice” or an Arctic Shores practice test, it is worth knowing what you will and will not find. There is no published bank of real items, no official practice version outside the assessment itself, and no legitimate source for the scoring model. What genuinely exists is the untimed practice round built into each task of the real assessment, and familiarisation with the general format — which is what this guide and our own drill are for.

Provider landscape last reviewed August 2026. Firefighter Mentor is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Arctic Shores or any other assessment provider, and our drill is an original build rather than a reproduction of anyone's assessment.

What the tasks actually are

Older versions of these products were marketed as games, with names and cartoon settings — Arctic Shores' earlier product generation was known as Skyrise City, and walkthroughs of it are still circulating. Current versions have moved away from that and describe themselves as interactive tasks rather than games. If you find a walkthrough of a game-styled interface online, treat it as history rather than as a preview of what you will sit.

There are six task families in general circulation. Crucially, your service chooses which ones you get. You may meet all six, or three, or a set nobody has written about. Each task typically runs five to fifteen minutes, and each starts with its own tutorial.

One warning about that second column. Providers deliberately do not publish a one-task-to-one-trait key, partly so that candidates respond naturally rather than performing. The interpretations above are what the mechanics support, not a leaked scoring specification — and a task can feed more than one trait.

How the scoring really works

This is where most guidance goes wrong, so it is worth walking through properly. Your result is not a mark out of ten. It is built in stages:

1. Behaviour is captured. Every tap, choice and the timing of each one. Thousands of data points across an assessment.
2. Behaviour becomes measurements. Psychologists select which features of your behaviour relate to the quality being assessed — not just whether you were right, but how fast, how consistently, how you changed after feedback.
3. Measurements become a score through a scoring model.
4. Your score is compared to a norm group — thousands of people who sat the same tasks. This is the step that makes a raw number mean anything.
5. You get feedback on a short banded scale. Your service gets the underlying score and decides its own benchmark separately.

Two consequences follow, and both are worth sitting with. First, the feedback band you see is not the number your service is looking at. Second, and less obvious: scoring high is not automatically what is wanted. A role profile can call for a particular position on a trait rather than the maximum of it. Considered risk judgement is not the same as maximum caution. Adaptability is not the same as abandoning a procedure at the first setback.

It is not a situational judgement test

Worth being clear, because candidates lose preparation time here. An SJT gives you a workplace scenario and asks which response is most appropriate. These assessments do not do that. Providers of task-based assessment state plainly that they do not offer an SJT.

Decision-making and adaptation can be inferred from how you behave in an abstract task, but the mechanism is completely different. SJT practice is genuinely useful for fire service recruitment — many services run one, and the interview rewards the same thinking — but it is not preparation for this. The SJT guide covers that separately.

Reasonable adjustments

This is the most practically important section on the page and the one most often skipped.

Providers make task-specific adjustments available — additional time, or adjustments to how a task is scored — for a range of conditions including dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD, autism, some mental health conditions, epilepsy, ME and chronic fatigue, MS and physical disability. Fire services state that they welcome neurodivergent applicants and will make suitable adjustments.

Adjustments generally cannot be applied after you have started. If you need one, contact your service before you open the assessment link. Not after the first task goes badly, and not at the end. Recruitment is covered by the Equality Act, and this is a duty on the service, not a favour — but it is a duty that has to be triggered in time to be met.

How to prepare

There is genuinely less here than for other stages, and that is the honest answer rather than a disappointing one.

This guide describes the format generally. Recruitment stages, providers and task configurations differ between services and between campaigns — always check your own service's recruitment pages for what applies to you.