to command. Then you have to complete a detailed application, demonstrating your track record, experience and evidencing your "readiness for command". Then, if lucky (only a third get through the paper sift), you are invited to attend the Police National Assessment Centre (PNAC) where you will be subject to a battery of tests and interviews. One chief officer told me he was "running on empty" at the end of the exhausting PNAC day. About half of those who go to PNAC get through to the next stage, which is attendance on a modular programme called the Strategic Command Course (SCC); a series of linked learning sessions during which eminent police chiefs, politicians, business people and top officials in government talk to the aspirant police leaders. These are regarded as unique networking events. After a year of study, and in possession of a diploma in a police-related subject, student chiefs start applying for jobs in open competition. Most become assistant chief constables (or commanders in the Met), where they are expected to learn the command job from the bottom up. Thereafter, it's a matter of doing the "right jobs" and coming to notice. Bernard Hogan-Howe, for example, impressed while chief constable at Merseyside, and later as an Inspector of Constabulary.