I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Transport for London (London, England) in Jan 2016
Interview
You complete a straight forward multiple choice type application online and passing this you are invited to take a lengthy interview process in an Assessment Centre in West Kensington. At the Assessment Centre, there can be up to 20 candidates invited to take part.
As explained by earlier candidates - the interview is formed of 3 stages:
Test, role play and interview.
The test takes about 75 minutes in classroom exam style setting; has two parts and covers questions about tube map and travel. Please be aware that they are also monitoring your spelling and grammer and you will get 'eliminated' for errors. In this round - a great number of candidates can be eliminated.
If you are successful in the first round - you will be put forward for the role play - which an assessor explains that it will take about 10 minutes. Role play varies and they use very good staff/actors who can play all sorts of parts which imitates real life situations you are likely to encounter whilst working as a CSA. The objective of this part is to assess your customer service skills and confidence. As other candidates have mentioned - this can be a tough round and many are unsuccessful here. It's best to be yourself and read clearly your task before the role play starts. Treat the customer how you would want to be treated.
Final segment is the actual interview itself whereby you are asked questions based on the CV you sent and to give examples of customer service based job of dealing with difficult situations involving the public etc. These can last upto 90 minutes (mine did)!! Put it this way - if you have an interview lasting longer than 20 minutes, you're on the right track.
Once done, you'll get a call depending on how busy they are etc on whether you're successful etc - most likely you are. I took my assessment interview on a Friday and had positive outcome on the Monday.
You then go on to have a full medical with Occupational Health as well as complete your employment verification with Sterling BackCheck (an external referencing company). Once all passed, you wait for training dates to come up. You can be waiting upto and beyond a year depending on how many training slots they have available. It took a year for me but only because I was too laid back in sending referencing information etc. Also you need to provide drug & alcohol test and update on your employment every 6 months prior to commencing training.
Training can be up to 5 weeks full time (9-5) depending on your role.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give an example how you dealt with a difficult situation and how you overcame this?
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Transport for London (London, England) in Oct 2019
Interview
I applied online and was invited to the first assessment centre which involved ticket checking and grammar/spelling tests. I found this to be very basic. The sample tests will help you know what to expect as the real test is very much the same format as the practice paper.
I was then invited 2 weeks later for the role play and interview. Role play was a very basic scenario and all you will need to do is show your customer service skills. They give you a brief to go over before role play, make sure you stick to what it tells you to do and you will be fine.
Interview was quite relaxed, definitely try and think of some examples from your work or study experience beforehand though. I made a list at home of situations which matched up to the competencies they were looking for and I felt much more prepared at the interview than if I just went in having not thought of examples. My interview lasted around 20 mins and I had 4 questions. Don't worry about missing out on anything as the interview will probe you for more details if they need it.
I heard back 2 weeks after interview with the job offer. Overall I'm happy with how easy TFL made the process and their recruitment team are all friendly and do the job well. They are quicker at most other transport companies I have applied for in the past which is great.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I can't remember but all questions related to competencies practice document they send you before interview. And why would want to work for the company.
I applied in April and got the job in December but didnt start training till January, so it's a long process with a lot of steps on the way. I think this is for safety purposes which make application processes very thorough, as there are significant safety risks involved with the tube.
I applied online. I interviewed at Transport for London (West Kensington, England) in Aug 2017
Interview
Where can I start? This wasn't really an interview more of a spelling test and answer questions about valid travel documents, I believe there was to many candidates for one "interview" never even got to sit down and talk to them on a 1-2-1 basis as it would have been nice to actually show my customer service is 100% but I guess they would rather bulk interview and occasionally miss someone good