Sorry for my lack of replies. I was concentrating on getting the job. And guess what? I only f'ing got it!! OMG!!!!!!!!!!! Subject to a medical and references of course. My medical is on Friday.
I applied twice with Southern 8 years and 5 years ago, both times passed all the test but failed the DMI. At the time I felt maybe there was something wrong in my approach, or maybe I wasn't mature or enough, who knows. Went back into the real world for a few years. Continued my job as a call centre agent, moved to support, then technical support, the senior support, 2nd line, all the way up to technical trainer. Strangely, applying whilst i was 'up' rather than 'down' in my career seems to have worked wonders because my confidence and therefore interview skills increased a lot.
I start at New Cross Gate at the start of May.
Sorry for my lack of help on the 2nd assessment day. For that I would suggest playing video games to help your hand eye coordination. DO you remember that game in the 80s called 'Operation', where you had to operate on a plastic body and was a test of a steady hand? Think along those terms. There will be a coordination test where you have an extremely sensitive pair of joysticks, one goes up and down and the other goes left and right. You use those to move a dot around a pattern, and cannot move away from that pattern. Playing video games may help with this.
Other tests are mainly a test of your natural ability so not much I can advise in the way of preparation, other than the standard advice of getting lots of rest, and not too much caffeine. Maybe try patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, as there will be a test where you have to concentrate on 2 tasks at the same time. That could potentially be good help.
Also practice your memory. Maybe try one of those old 3ds games that test your memory, or attempt to read a page of information for 2 mins and write on the next page as much as you can remember about it.
For the memory test, make sure you decide beforehand whether you're going to memorise it all in your head, or write it down and memorise that. This was my weakest part of the test as I wasn't sure which to do. I wrote down important parts of the page of information, hoping to memorise it, but that didn't work well as by the time i started reviewing my notes they were taken away and the test started. I would strongly advise instead trying to remember it all in your head, otherwise you do two things to an adequate level, rather than doing one well.
For the structured interview think of times you've had to follow a process, safety regulation, a time you've provided excellent CS, dealt with an emergency, completed a project etc etc and what you learnt abotu yourself.
This is absolutely paramount for both the structured interview and the DMI, and for any interview you ever do (I Know this from office experience) but ALWAYS follow the STAR method when answering an interview question:
Situation: describe the situation
Task: Your task and what you had to do to resolve or action the situation
Action: action you took
Result: overall result.
Yeah I know, a simple generic annoying crappy office acronym, yet for myself, I always knew I had quite a high IQ and could ace IQ tests etc, but for interviews I would often struggle. As soon as I always followed the star method though then my success rate increased massively. I followed it in the structured interview and DMI too and it worked. I repeat again, this is paramount. Easy to neglect, no matter how obvious it sounds, and helps you structure your answers.
For the DMI, from what I remember they asked:
What I Knew about Arrive
What I knew about being a TD
A time I disagreed with a process at work and what I did
A time I had to follow a process at work with safety in mind
A time I had to communicate a message effectively
An example of outstanding CS.
Remember that the questions will not always be the same, but they will ALWAYS be along those lines, so think about examples along those lines and you won't go wrong, whilst yet again keeping in mind the STAR method.
Finally, I did something extra this time, which I feel gave me the push I needed. I downloaded a video from 'how2become', whcih is a training website which helps you get a job in the relevant field, IE police, fire brigade, armed services etc etc, and last but not least, a TD.
For £23 I got access to a 1 hour video, which helped me a lot. I made notes of what I wanted to say on the day, practiced, made notes about the company and it sunk in. Given how keen we all are to become a TD then spending £23 is next to nothing and well worth the risk.
it also comes with a download of general interview tips, which is quite handy. £23 is quite steep on its merits along (a simple 1 hour video and generic word doc') yet I honestly feel it gave me the push I needed and was the difference between success and failure. Some of the video is bollocks but most of it is on point. Example he suggests that you ask for a meeting with the driver manager before the interview to learn about the company. That seems excessive to me, but 90% of it is good.
I hope this helps someone. For the poster above sorry I did not reply in time. I hope you were successful, but moving forwards I hope that this reply helps someone in the future, as all TOCs have a similar structure and similar questions from what I know (Almost identical to Southern at least).
Happy as Larry I am. Thank fcuk I am now out of an office and without all those politics. Any driver has had to pass those assessments, which are like IQ tests, so one would hope that this now also means that the idiot element you get in offices is also removed. Some qualified people lack intelligence, they just had the drive to get a degree for example,but their IQ is actually quite low. This role however is the other way around whereby solely your intelligence is judged and I absolutely love that concept.
Thank you to every poster on this forum too
