Nah, it was the same generic email that you received. I was just guessing that the distance might have been the first thing to be rejected for, as I was relocating for the job. For me it was Bradford saying no, probably Sunderland will follow soon.
Yeah, it sucks. The thing is, once you know what part of the application didn't meet the requirements you can then improve on them. If they don't tell you, then there's not much you can do.
Chances are it’s just not feasible to offer feedback, which, in all honesty will probably only tell you that you didn’t score highly enough in the online assessments. I doubt whether at this stage anyone’s application would have even been seen by a human. It’s easy to give interview feedback because there’s a lot fewer candidates to get through, and this can be done by the interviewing manager via HR.
Were there online assessments for this application? I though it was just cover letter and CV?
No, there were not.
Apologies, I thought there were. I must be thinking of another thread.
Probably, as you are everywhere, haha
Like a rash.Probably, as you are everywhere, haha
The LNER application has the online assessments. That's what puzzles me about the Grand Central rejections. Surely they can't have read through all the CVs and covering letters, so is there another factor at play? I seem to remember that there was very little to the actual application form, so what are these rejections based on? I suppose we'll never know
I could be entirely wrong but perhaps they look at say 100 applications and when they’ve found enough to fulfil their quota, they just disregard any others.
I don't think that's likely. They will expect hundreds, possibly thousands of applications, so if you pick the first 100 you probably miss out some amazing candidates that are further down the line. There'll be some sort of automatic filter that rejects a whole wave of applications, possibly based on your postcode and distance. For instance, you can probably drive the 45 miles from Sheffield or Manchester to Bradford in an hour, but probably not at rush hour. So, for all you may think you live within 60 mins of your chosen location, they may not agree with you. This is, of course, just speculation.
Never seen a man comment on as much stuff lol, must be his full time jobProbably, as you are everywhere, haha
They are read and marked by a computer as far as I know.
Word has it he’s a Russian bot
Arriva recruitment always seemed a little bit random - I know someone who applied for the same position at the same Arriva TOC 6 months apart with an identical CV and cover letter. Filtered out the first time and got the job the second time. I'm sure there's some logic with the initial sift though (once things like location are taken into account)
LNER was assessments
Makes sense, the computer reads the cover letter and scores it, all that means is that others scored higher the first time around.
The advertisement for XC said nothing about relocation but also it did not mention the 1 hour travel time so I thought that means they are open to the idea of relocating. LNER on the other hand, had this written as a requirement and also, if you wanted to apply, the first two questions were about age and distance and if you said no to any of those two, you would immediately get a reply saying that you are not able to go ahead with the application.
No, I applied for Sunderland. I got the give us a couple of weeks reply. If you think you might have missed it, the sender was "system administrator", so maybe it's in your spam
I applied for Sunderland and haven't heard anything since the email to say my application had been received.
How is a covering letter scored ?
The only way that a computer can score a letter is if its programmed to pick out certain words. Punctuality, service and safety will gain points. The problem with that is you could write "I hate punctuality, can't be bothered with customer service and I treat safety as a joke", and you'd still score well
Well if that’s true it just goes to show what a joke the system potentially could be
Indeed, but people are unlikely to do so (I’d imagine....why would they? Lol), which means that potentially it’s not a bad way of sifting applications. I reckon if they detect “NTS” it’ll flash up on a manager’s laptop somewhere
Me too. Such is life
If you’re a business with several thousand applications to sift through, it’s just not feasible for all of them to be dealt with by a human from the outset, until a lot (majority?) have been sifted.