theres also alternate route (applying to the academy directly and paying for the tuition yourself). Which makes u qualified for job postings that require an academy certification. It also makes u a more attractive candidate

Take the civil service test, state police test, NJ transit PD test. For civil service if you're approaching 35 years old and need the job soon, then I'd recommend moving to a large city like Newark/Patterson. Or at least somewhere in Essex county that is a civil service municipality so you also have...

I don't see a reason why the prosecutors office would make things "harder". The curriculum is still from the PTC. As far as how hard PT is and how strict everything will be, I think that depends on the individual instructors. Don't worry about how "hard" the academy is anyway.... it's meant to prepa...

From what I've known, the county academies are run by the county agencies. Mine was run by the sheriffs dept and prosecutors office. With APs teaching the a bulk of the legal courses. We had three main instructors that were there everyday, two were sheriffs one was from the prosecutors office.

Current contract that runs through 2019 is on nj perc


https://www.perc.state.nj.us/publicsectorcontracts.nsf

... don't be surprised to hear 2-3 days before the academy... i got my phone call on a Friday with the academy starting that Monday. Especially if your being hired through the civil service

For me, a panel interview was the last step. I received a 6am phone call about 2 days later from my background investigator advising me of the job offer.

Again, all departments are different

If your selected to continue, they give u dates and times for psych tests and medical physicals.
Every department is different with how they conduct interviews and how many of them they conduct.
Depending on the department, this entire process can take 2-3 weeks or several months

In my experiences... -You turn in your letter of interest -if your number on the list is within reaching distance, they contact you to come in and go over preliminary details. Before giving you a lengthy background packet/application and a list of required documents -you have a week or so to gather ...

Also, If ur being appointed to the sheriffs department as a non civil service employee, or as a sheriffs "investigator", I'm pretty sure u can't advance in the rank structure. You'll only be able to make detective