Assessment Centres: Compressing recruitment timelines while improving candidate selection for Railcar Drivers

Summary/overview 

Public Transport Authority (PTA) wanted to completely overhaul their recruitment process for railcar drivers, a process that was time and labour intensive, from six months to three, while ensuring an ongoing cycle to fulfill talent pools, growth requirements, and quality of candidate selection. People Solutions were tasked with creating a more streamlined and efficient process that was better for candidates and the hiring organisation. We helped them design a new assessment centre process that provided robust results, increased efficiency, and a better candidate experience.  

Situation & Challenges 

People Solutions initially met with PTA in March 2023 to discuss our assessment centre methodology and how it may be beneficial for their talent pool and selection process for railcar drivers. At the time, individual panel interviews with all shortlisted applicants took several months for recruitment and operational staff to complete. Since they frequently received over 800 applications, which had to be reduced to around 80 for the final pool, they were looking to streamline and optimise the selection process to reduce the number of staff hours, while maintaining a high level of transparency, fairness, reliability, and validity in the process.  

PTA also wanted to modernise their assessment process and create a better candidate experience, as they had received some feedback that this was an area causing applicant dropout and dissatisfaction. The talent team also recognised that it was important that the railcar team remained as involved as possible in making recruitment decisions, as their buy-in, expertise, and support were critical for success. 

People Solutions invited representatives from PTA to experience assessment centres in action for other roles (with the host company’s permission and invitation). This allowed them to see how they work in practice and how they may be applied to railcar drivers. This was well-received and, in early January 2024, they committed to running a pilot process.  

Our Solution 

People Solutions began designing a tailored assessment process. First, we reviewed role-relevant documentation and met with subject matter experts to identify, define, and refine key competencies for the role.  

We then designed new bespoke activities that would draw out the behaviours necessary to assess the competencies. One of the considerations here was keeping the activities as role- and industry-relevant as possible, without relying on technical knowledge to perform well or complete the activities. We also designed a new interview guide made up of behavioural questions aligned to the competencies that would be assessed.  

Once the assessment model had been agreed, we designed and facilitated five half-day assessor training sessions wherein we trained a panel of 45 assessors from the hiring organisation. This ensured the client’s representatives were equipped to make effective hiring decisions on the day and further enhance candidate experience. 

Result 

We ran two pilot campaigns in 2024, the first of which ran for four days and the second for three days, with 140 candidates participating across all sessions.  

Feedback from candidates returned 100% positive ratings about their overall experience of the day, and nearly all said that it positively influenced their perceptions of the hiring organisation and helped them decide if this was the right career path and organisation for them. Assessors who were involved on the days all agreed that the activities effectively elicited behaviours aligned with the values and competencies being assessed.  

Overall, feedback from PTA indicated that the assessment centres provided a more streamlined process with improved reliability and validity, as well as an elevated candidate experience. They have committed to move beyond the pilot program to incorporate the assessment centres process into their recruitment process moving forward, as well as expanding it to other bulk recruitment processes across the organisation.