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Network Rail Competency Interview

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Crash95

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Hi guys, I have been invited to an interview for a customer service based role. What kind of questions can i expect and has anyone done this kind of interview before?

Any feedback would be much appreciated, Cheers .
 
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S1849

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I’ve had stuff like:- Your coworker is always complaining and is taking it out on you. How would you deal with this (this is an old question so don’t expect it to be in the interview).

Also, give an example of when you’ve arranged an event and give the pros and cons of what you did, and how it could’ve gone better.

Look up the STAR model of answering these questions. Have plenty of examples of when you’ve done good work (or even bad, and describe what you learned from it). If you have about 10 examples you can probably adapt them to answer the questions.

They usually start with something like “why do you want this role” (don’t mention money). And end with a question about safety. Think “life saving rules” and what the company does to prevent injury and loss of life. “Everyone home safe every day” is a good thing to quote.

Good luck!
 

ComUtoR

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Look up the STAR model of answering these questions.

Situation, Task, Action, Response

(don’t mention money).

Why not ?

“Everyone home safe every day” is a good thing to quote.

What does it mean in reality ? Quoting something without being able to back it up is a risk and potentially a trap. Can you explain this quote and what it means please
 

S1849

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25 May 2019
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Situation, Task, Action, Response

Yes.

Why not ? I’ve seen old interviewer’s assessor guides that tell them to mark someone down if money is mentioned. They don’t want someone there just because the pay is good, but because they’re genuinely interested in the job.
What does it mean in reality ? Quoting something without being able to back it up is a risk and potentially a trap. Can you explain this quote and what it means please. This is the strap line that underpins NR’s safety vision. That they want to get everyone home safely at the end of each day (staff and members of the public). My reply is to steer the OP in the correct direction, not give them all the answers. It’s all easy enough to find online if anyone is interested.
 

Roger1973

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5 Jul 2020
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Can't speak with anything like recent experience of Network Rail, and others may have more specific suggestions, but competency interviewing is usually questions along the line of 'give me an example of a time you did X'

The 'X' situations are usually things that they have mentioned in the job advert / person specification - can be a specific technical skill, or for a customer service role, it's more likely to be something like 'a time you dealt with a difficult customer' or 'a time you dealt with an emergency' or 'a time you delivered excellent customer service' and the like.

Experience of assisting people with disabilities (which means more than just wheelchair users) may come in to it.

Generally, one good example is better than a lot, or a long pause while you try to think of the best one, so probably worth thinking about examples you can use, but may be inadvisable to rehearse too much, in case there's a different slant to the question to what you're expecting. Sometimes an interviewer will add something like 'and what did you learn from the experience?' or 'and what would you do differently another time?'

There is likely to be some sort of safety question - may be about a time you have worked in an environment with safety rules, or a time you handled or prevented an incident or near miss.

Depending on your background, there can be times when examples from outside paid work (e.g. volunteering, study, caring responsibilities) may be the best answer - they don't always have to be from past jobs.

I've had mixed experiences of competency interviews - sometimes it's felt more like a chat down the pub (although without liquid refreshment) about what you've done in past jobs, and what they do. sometimes it's been someone from HR who knows very little about the job, asking very narrow questions and basically scoring you on whether you come out with the right buzz words that are on their list.

Hope all goes well.
 
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