Exactly TfL don’t even email you in fact they even have a candidate charter which they fail to meet every single year
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London Underground - Operations Control Operator
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Oh dear. This isn't the first time I've heard of a situation like this from tfl. I do remember when they had a campaign for train operators around the mid 2010s for the night tube and that was crazy. People were coming in on a weekend to do assessments only to not pass and have no feedback.
I do get yours and other people's frustration as you fully took the time off to prepare for this interview and took a day off that you won't get back with the hopes of this working out for you. I would say keep doing what you're doing and something great will come to you and don't worry about the negative vibes on here as some have no idea what it feels like to be squeezed in the middle especially if you have a family to consider as well. Please don't let this get you down.
Larger companies tend to:
A) have fewer applicants (TfL is a very sought after employer) per position
B) Better resourced recruitment teams
C) Fewer application stages.
This overall leads to longer recruitment phases and generally not the best comms. Browse through these forums and you’ll find this is a daily occurrence, not just for TfL.
secretquartz
New Member
Thanks for your reply. I can tell you that the organisations I'm referring to have more applicants and are more sought after, with more application stages than this role has. I can see you said they "tend to" however that does not mean that organisations should take almost 2 months to respond with zero communication. If TfL is a sought after employer, there needs to be a better resourced recruitment team like you mentioned - they have a department called "high volume recruitment" but did not treat it as such. A blanket email with an apologies for the delay would suffice. The advert also said they could add more stages, which they decided against despite clearly having lots of applicants.
I applied to the Metropolitan Police and they managed to respond more often with more detailed updates. They had more stages and were dealing with approximately a few thousands applicants at the off. They undoubtedly had a lot more recruitment teams but they didnt have a "high recruitment team" yet managed to do a better job. It took about 8 months to go from application date to first day, and about 80 people started.
I think TFL need to do better.
Totally agree. To be waiting around for over 2 months when you have passed the assessment only to be told you haven’t made the interview stage is disheartening. I get not everyone will go through to the next stage. This isn’t my main issue. My main gripe is the fact i had to wait around 9 weeks after doing everything my end to then be told “sorry you haven’t been selected for an interview”. Quick communication and sufficient timelines is just about respect.
Hear hear
I’m not stating that some of the communications and progress updates are subpar, and no doubt you can find many people employed in the industry who will talk about how excruciating the recruitment side of things were. In this recent thread, I said how it should be improved.
Even internally most staff know how bad it is. But it provides some context and I do know that recruitment teams are tiny at most TOCs and they simply cannot process the volume of applicants in a time that most applicants consider “acceptable”. I can’t comment on how large the recruitment teams are at comparatively sized organisations.
I’ve said as much time and time again to try and temper expectations to eager and strong candidates.
Tunnelmann
Member
Data point for people waiting. Just received an email stating I have been successful in the CV/Cover letter stage, AC2 booked for this Friday.
Hello Flower, I have an interview coming up, any tip or guidance will much appreciated, just to know what to expect .
Thanks alot
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I see that you are well knowledgeable with TFL recruitment any tips on the AC2 face to face experience Interview
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Tunnelmann
Member
I got that last week then got an Interview (AC2) invite today.
Hear hear.
It’s also true that railway (in the broad sense of both national rail and TfL) roles tend to be heavily oversubscribed. Therefore it’s very much a buyer’s market; people can complain and ask that TfL do better, but if they’re able to source the candidates they need via their existing process there’s really no incentive for them to change anything.
The best advice to anyone involved in any recruitment process is simply to not assume anything until you have a contract and start date. Getting irritated by a slow process isn’t going to help, and may be counterproductive if frustration leads people to send abrupt emails to recruitment teams etc.
Hi, well done for getting to interview stage, there’s not really much advice I can give only stay calm and try to be as accurate as possible with your responses, I tend to waffle on and get nervous and that’s my downfall in interviews which is a shame, but just stay focused on the question asked, they were both really nice and the interview didn’t take too long, good luck and please update me
Good to know, thanks. Guessing I may be a week behind you
Bad luck pal
Me too. Hard luck mate. I did think that a couple of the questions did not accurately reflect the CBI criteria they sent out. They threw me a bit and needed clarity. Oh well, onward and upwards.
When was your interview mate?
Yes I completely agree regarding the questions, I was thrown off also but never mind
21st May. Best of luck!
tyrextrain
Member
I received an email saying I have put the wrong job in my CV. They took it from an application I did for Bus. They did a mistake and they rejected me for that. TFL is a joke. I will put a review on Glassdoor. It seems full of incompetent people there.
What do you mean by this?
Did you apply for 2 different roles? Did you use different CVs?
tyrextrain
Member
Yes I applied in 2 different jobs one was operation central operator and the other was operation in bus. In my profile for operation I see my cv and letter for operation control operator (the word file I put there) and in the anonymised one they took the one for operation in bus and not the one for operation control operator. Now they are rejecting me because its not the right cover letter. But they did the mistake. Not me. Its really frustrating because I cannot talk with anyone.
Good luck for Friday
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Were you able to book a slot ?
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Thank for your advice much appreciated
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Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that. Keep ur chin up and on to the next one
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Still waiting on a slot to become available
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Oh shoot, sorry to hear that , best attitude to have onwards to next one , can you please give example of the question
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What you should have done is removed the bus CV and changed it to the one tailored to this job. So in effect there should have been one CV for bus and then in this application, just the CV for the control job. (If that makes sense)
Any chance sharing an example of the question please
tyrextrain
Member
I didnt realised documents was mixed between all application. It's insane that they don't read which document are related to which application. I feel frustrated because Iam losing my chance because someone didn't read the titles on documents.
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