Transport for London Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Mar 2010 in London, England (United Kingdom) (took 4 months)

TfL operate a fairly standard "competency" based process (online application and testing, telephone interview, and an assessment centre (AC)) for their graduate scheme. This is described very well on their website, so I won't go into too much detail here, and I didn't encounter any surprises. Competition is high though: there were twelve candidates at my AC for three positions

The questions are pretty much exclusively competency based. I found it took practice to get good at doing these, but TfL don't really deviate from TfL's published list of competencies - which helps. The AC mixed things up a bit with a technical presentation on a pre-defined subject. Obviously preparation was key for this, I got the feeling they were trying to ascertain the boundaries of my knowledge. I had my reservations about TfL beforehand, but this day sold the organisation to me pretty well.

Overall, TfL was one of the better run graduate selection processes I applied to. The recruitment team was very easy to get in touch with, and the TfL employees present was very professional and seemed to go out of their way to put me at ease. Received an offer via phone the day after the AC. There was also a real emphasis put on making the selection process accessible to all (TfL very big on diversity, from what I can tell this is more than just lipservice).

Before the offer was confirmed I had to undergo a pretty stringent medical and a drugs test. This was a bit of a pain to be frank, and wasn't as well organised as the rest of the process.