What Is TfL?
Transport for London (TfL) is the government organization responsible for running many of London’s rail networks, including the London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and London Overground. It also is responsible for the capital’s busses, taxis, road routes, congestion charge scheme and many more.
TfL’s primary goal is to keep London working and moving and to make people’s everyday lives easier. With a workforce of around 30,000 employees, each person is responsible for delivering the mayor’s transport strategy.
TfL has fantastic job opportunities, including experienced hires, apprenticeships and graduate schemes.
What Is TfL’s Hiring Process?
The variety of jobs available means that the pre-employment process varies slightly for each. However, overall, the assessments and assessment centres are similar.
Online Application
When applying for an opportunity at TfL, you must go to their careers site, fill out an application form, and submit your cover letter and CV. The form is simple and requires you to fill in your work and education experience. The application also includes a few competency-based questions to allow you to highlight your skills and show the recruitment team how you meet the job’s requirements.
Situational Strengths Test
In addition to submitting your application form, you must complete a situational strengths test, also known as an SJT test. The situational strengths test has been designed to understand how job seekers respond to certain situations in relation to the job they are applying for. Applicants will be given several scenarios and multiple-choice responses and asked to select the best response. This test is not timed, so you can sit back and think about your answer before submitting it.
TfL’s Aptitude Tests
If your application and situational strengths test has been successful, you will be sent a link to participate in three online psychometric assessments. SHL supplies TfL’s assessments.
->Numerical Aptitude Test – The first aptitude test you will take will be the numerical reasoning test. In this test, you are assessed on your capability to understand numerical and statistical information in everyday situations. Applicants are given 1 minute to read the question and select a multiple-choice answer. The test takes approximately 20 minutes in total. The test has been designed to see how accurately you can work under pressure rather than how good your mathematical skills are.
Inductive Reasoning Assessment Test – The second test you will sit is the Inductive reasoning test. This test requires applicants to look at a set of patterns and matrices and decide which should come next. The test is multiple-choice, and you will be given 20 minutes to answer 36 questions.
Verbal Reasoning Aptitude Test – The final test will assess your understanding of language and linguistics. You will be presented with a paragraph of text before being asked to answer whether a statement is true, false, or if you cannot say. Like the previous two tests, this test is timed, and you will be given 20 minutes to answer 20 questions, so accuracy is crucial.
Telephone Interview
If you pass the difficult psychometric tests, you will be contacted to schedule a telephone interview with a representative from the recruitment team. The interview will have two stages, one focusing on you as well as your work history and relevant experience to date and the other is more competency-based to allow the recruiter to understand how you work.
TfL’s Assessment Centre
Once you have passed the telephone interview, you will be invited to the TfL assessment centre in London. The day is broken up into five sections. You will attend the assessment centre with up to 15 other applicants.
->Group Activity (Group Exercises) – The group activity will see you and your team solve a challenge. You will be given some information about an everyday problem for TfL, and you will then discuss with your group how best to solve this problem. You will have 45 minutes for your discussion and 15 minutes to present to the interview panel. The group activity has been designed to assess how well you work in a team. Show your strengths here without being too overbearing. Try to ensure that you have the key competencies that TfL look for in its employees.
->Written Exercise – Immediately after your group exercise, you will be given half an hour to write a report on your findings. This exercise is designed to see how well you can communicate your points to higher managers in a way that is easy to understand and free of jargon.
->Presentation (Case Study) – When you are invited to the assessment day, you will receive a question concerning the role you are applying for and asked to prepare a presentation about it. Your presentation will last for 15 minutes, after which the interview panel will ask follow-up questions.
->Written Aptitude Tests – Because anyone can cheat in the online psychometric tests, you will be asked to repeat them on paper.
->Face-to-Face Interview – The last part of the TfL assessment centre is the face-to-face interview. In this interview, you will be joined by an interview panel which usually consists of the hiring manager, HR representative and senior manager of the department you are applying to. The interview will be competency-based and allow the panel to understand how you work and approach real-life situations.
TfL’s Interview Questions
Common TfL questions include:
->Tell me about a time when you have had to think on your feet.
->Tell me about a time when you faced a problem at work. How did you solve it?
->What is your biggest achievement and why?
->You have multiple deadlines looming; how do you decide which tasks to tackle first?
It would be best if you structured your answers to interview questions using the STAR approach –
->Situation – describe what happened.
->Task – describe what you did.
->Action – explain how you achieved the outcome.
->Result – tell us what the outcome was.
The interview panel is interested in the results that came about because of your actions, so make sure you are as specific as possible and try to put in measurable results.
How to prepare for TfL’s assessments?
TfL’s psychometric tests are difficult, so it’s important that you take the time to prepare if you want to be successful. A great way that you can begin to work quickly and efficiently under pressure is by taking practice psychometric tests.
The more tests you practise under exam conditions, the better you will get at them and the less stressed you will feel when you sit down to take them. When you are confident in your abilities, you stand a better chance of performing well on the day and succeeding in the hiring process.
