Career change

[Drsatan]

Good evening

I used to work in the regional newspaper industry, but following a sudden change in employment circumstances, I am looking for a new career on the railways. Ideally, I don't want to return to local newspapers considering they're going the way of the dodo.

Keeping an open mind, I am applying for operational jobs with local TOCs and graduate schemes with organisations such as TfL (I have a 2:1 in history from a Russell Group uni). I am willing to study for additional qualifications if necessary.

I'd be grateful for tips/advice on succeeding with this career change.

 

[Bromley boy]

Good evening

I used to work in the regional newspaper industry, but following a sudden change in employment circumstances, I am looking for a new career on the railways. Ideally, I don't want to return to local newspapers considering they're going the way of the dodo.

Keeping an open mind, I am applying for operational jobs with local TOCs and graduate schemes with organisations such as TfL (I have a 2:1 in history from a Russell Group uni). I am willing to study for additional qualifications if necessary.

I'd be grateful for tips/advice on succeeding with this career change.

It depends purely on what you want to do. Do you want to do a TOC specific job (ie driver, train planning) or do a job in a TOC you could do anywhere else (HR, finance). From what I've seen of the TFL grad scheme, an engineering/quantitative type background was generally helpful? So, depending on your other qualifications, numeracy may be something you need to demonstrate.

On the operational side, speaking from personal experience of the trainee driver application process, a RG degree is not a major advantage. They key things you need to do are: a. pass the aptitude tests; and b. pass the multi-modal interview. You may find, as I did, that prior work experience is imore useful for this process than your academic background for giving you examples of achievements/challenges to talk about at interview.

That said, having an academic background and being used to studying was a definite help when it came to the drivers' rules course. It wasn't particularly difficult, but people who had never studied or taken exams made heavier weather of it.