Career progression within GTR

[awaitingmagic]

Hi everyone, I recently joined GTR as a platform assistant and would like to move on to procurement/legal/compliance and governance roles in the future. For context: I have a master's in law. I know I can only apply for internal roles after 6 months. But is there anything I can do in the meanwhile to upskill? Any courses, events, networking, anything that would improve my chances in the future?

PS: Apologies if it's too early to ask this but I'm a bit worried since I'm on a time limited visa.

Thanks in advance.

 

[transportphoto]

Short answer, no. You’ll likely be applying just the same as external candidates for those roles. It’s unlikely that such departments will host a new to the business platform assistant.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Hi everyone, I recently joined GTR as a platform assistant and would like to move on to procurement/legal/compliance and governance roles in the future. For context: I have a master's in law. I know I can only apply for internal roles after 6 months. But is there anything I can do in the meanwhile to upskill? Any courses, events, networking, anything that would improve my chances in the future?

I mean this sincerely and not patronisingly/disparagingly to anyone, get as much experience about frontline ops knowledge and dealing with passengers as you can.

A platform assistant role is ideal for this as you’re at the sharp end, dealing with passengers and staff day in day out. Study, listen and learn. When you go into procurement/compliance/legal, any back room function like that, you’ll be so much better at it, and more comfortable to deal with its challenges, with frontline knowledge

 

[awaitingmagic]

I mean this sincerely and not patronisingly/disparagingly to anyone, get as much experience about frontline ops knowledge and dealing with passengers as you can.

A platform assistant role is ideal for this as you’re at the sharp end, dealing with passengers and staff day in day out. Study, listen and learn. When you go into procurement/compliance/legal, any back room function like that, you’ll be so much better at it, and more comfortable to deal with its challenges, with frontline knowledge

Thank you so much. Will try my best!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Jun 2025 ==

Short answer, no. You’ll likely be applying just the same as external candidates for those roles. It’s unlikely that such departments will host a new to the business platform assistant.

Thank you!

 

[whoosh]

Hi everyone, I recently joined GTR as a platform assistant and would like to move on to procurement/legal/compliance and governance roles in the future. For context: I have a master's in law. I know I can only apply for internal roles after 6 months. But is there anything I can do in the meanwhile to upskill? Any courses, events, networking, anything that would improve my chances in the future?

PS: Apologies if it's too early to ask this but I'm a bit worried since I'm on a time limited visa.

Thanks in advance.

Chartered Intitute of Railway Operators maybe?

Become a Member | Chartered Institution of Railway Operators

Become a CIRO member and gain professional affiliation and recognition within the railway industry and access exclusive resources.

www.ciro.org

You can join as an Affiliate Member as GTR (along with most TOCs and FOCs) are Corporate members, so there isn't a membership fee until higher levels of membership.

 

[Horizon22]

This sounds like a question for your line manager and/or GTR’s learning and development team who may be able to suggest suitable digital training (which might be available in-house and free) and also shows an interest in progression.

That being said, you are very new into a relatively junior role right now so I would concentrate at excelling at this over the next 6-9 months.

 

[awaitingmagic]

This sounds like a question for your line manager and/or GTR’s learning and development team who may be able to suggest suitable digital training (which might be available in-house and free) and also shows an interest in progression.

That being said, you are very new into a relatively junior role right now so I would concentrate at excelling at this over the next 6-9 months.

That makes sense, thank you!!

 

[43066]

Experience on the operational side probably isn’t going to be particularly relevant for legal/compliance type roles. Wouldn’t you be better off applying for a grad scheme or, assuming you have a qualifying law degree, training as a solicitor either at a law firm or in-house, gaining relevant experience and then moving across?

Another suggestion might be to go into LinkedIn, find profiles of people doing the sort of job you think you might like to end up in and looking at their backgrounds and how they began their careers.

 

[REO Nate]

Hi everyone, I recently joined GTR as a platform assistant and would like to move on to procurement/legal/compliance and governance roles in the future. For context: I have a master's in law. I know I can only apply for internal roles after 6 months. But is there anything I can do in the meanwhile to upskill? Any courses, events, networking, anything that would improve my chances in the future?

PS: Apologies if it's too early to ask this but I'm a bit worried since I'm on a time limited visa.

Thanks in advance.

The weekly email that comes out on a Friday from recruitment has some internal only vacancies on it. Keep an eye on that as well.