Network Rail Case Study

Recruiting High Calibre Grads and Apprentices with Network Rail

The Background

Network Rail are the leading rail company in the UK, existing to help people and goods get where they need to go. With over 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels, and viaducts, and thousands of signals, as well as tunning 20 of the country’s largest stations, significant labour is required to keep the country up and running. A future-proof workforce is needed to deliver this for years to come.

Our Objective

Amberjack and Network Rail have worked in partnership for many years. Throughout the partnership, Network Rail have prioritised an efficient, effective process, which delivers the best candidates and maintains candidate experience, while ensuring the fairness and inclusion they champion. With the demand for engineering outweighing awareness and interest, promotion, realistic job previews, and the ever-crucial good candidate experience was required.

Our Solution

Amberjack work with Network Rail by providing an extensive array of recruitment solutions. From Assessment to Onboarding, Amberjack are present across the Network Rail process, delivering Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) to help achieve their objectives.

Starting with the reimagining of their recruitment process across each individual role, to ensure the benchmarking and screening was just right, while providing candidates with realistic role information, both engaging and informative, each Network Rail stream needed focused attention. This is the same across their graduate and apprentice pipelines.

Amberjack partner with Network Rail to provide:

• Provision of dedicated inbox, phone line, and webchat for candidates.

• Streamlined registration and application process, with clear signposting.

• Requirement screening, based on location, travel times to desired job destination, and more.

• Bespoke assessments and Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs) for crossing keepers and corporate roles, introducing candidates to realistic scenarios. With blended assessments for engineers.

• A new bespoke assessment SJT for engineering apprentices

• Numerical and verbal reasoning for required roles such as engineering, finance, etc.

• Video interviews to gain an understanding of their motivation, and their understanding of the role. With bespoke video interviews for apprentices.

• Pre-assessment coaching calls to prepare candidates for assessment centre exercises while ensuring candidates are enthusiastic about their upcoming opportunity!

• Mixed assessment centres (some virtual, some face-to-face, some two-stage) comprising of group exercises, interviews, and individual exercises.

The Impact

The Network Rail and Amberjack partnership has had significant success. Network Rail are receiving a high calibre of candidates with which to build their future-proofed workforce.

• A seamless relationship between Network Rail and Amberjack teams, allowing for easy communication and collaborative work.
• Apprentice pipelines are dynamically and efficiently managed, with outcome stages occurring at speed.
• 12,500 graduate applications processed, with 660 through to Assessment Centre and 245 offers made. 12,328 apprentice applications processed to fill 350 apprentice roles.