I am 15 weeks in to my training as a trainee driver and at first had similar thoughts and frustrations trying to get through the application process and wondered why drivers, guards......anyone on the railway get paid so much. Since then I have learnt the answers to all these questions.
Regarding the application process, there are three to four thousand people applying for every trainee vacancy that comes up, I was one of four out of 4,500 applicants. I have been told I'm lucky, which in some respects is quite true, but I worked damn hard for 12 months to land the job, failing your first application and then ****ing and moaning about it isn't the way to go, you need to keep at it they're looking for driven people who meet their criteria, not people who just give up.
To add to this someone mentioned above about it being about the type of person you are and not your qualifications or experience and to an extent this is true, there's a reason those psychometric tests are in place as you could bull**** your way through the first few stages but if you're not the right type of person don't be disheartened, it's just because you wouldn't enjoy the job and you are suited to other things, staring at naff all for hours and still being switched on is a pretty rubbish skill to have in everyday life but perfect for drivers.
The pay, well I'd be lying if I said it wasn't more than similar graded jobs in other industries but that's only because the unions have fought for pay increases to keep up with inflation. People shouldn't be slating TOC's because they pay their staff a good rate of pay, they should be angry with other industries who pay their staff jack, I came from the fitness industry and nearly all of their jobs are teetering on minimum wage and I had more bits of paper saying how qualified I was than bits of paper with the queens head on.
For me drivers wages are justified, just it's not wide spread knowledge, the rule book is a minefield and is not written in any English I've ever seen, the variations in railway signage, some dating from the 1800's, speed restrictions with no signage, routes that you have to know inside out and at night you can see bugger all, learning rules like 15 reasons for passing signals at danger, 9 situations where you can do a wrong direction move, 19 failures/faults to report to the signaller immediately and 16 to report at first convenience. These are all things you have to know, not be able to read later. A DTM the other day compared the driver training content now to that of a 3 year university degree but compacted in to 9 months. So it's pretty intense. As I say I'm on week 15 and I bet I've driven a train for a total of around 15 minutes, the rest of the hours have been theory in the class room or underneath a unit.
Sorry for the length of this but I wanted to try give an insight and some answers for everyone that gets frustrated and annoyed with the application stage, but the answer isn't to then slate drivers and guards and try and make out that they do nothing, yes driving a train in normal conditions when nothing goes wrong is relatively easy, but it's the knowledge you need to learn and the potential scenario where you'll be standing in front of the man with the curly white wig if there's an accident that earns train men and women their money.
If you fail first time, keep going, to be one out of maybe a thousand isn't great odds, so realistically if you get through first time your application must have stood out but if not you don't get penalised for trying again apply as many times as you can, if you get put in a talent pool ignore it apply for every position that comes up, shows that you're keen and hungry for it. If you fail the psychometrics then it's because of the type of person you are nothing you can do about that and that's why you can only do it twice but everything else you can try as many times as it takes to land you that job!!!!
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