I had been looking forward to my application for the network rail graduate scheme, as I had been told the company where good to work for. The initial application was standard graduate scheme details (experience, courses, grades, ect). However I was invited to the next stage which was the app test. The app is made by a company called Arctic Shores and being a graduate I am used to having to do psychometric testing (this is nothing new). The app however screams of "trying to relate", as if who ever is in charge of the graduate program has been told "young people love there apps we should do that for our program". The main issue however is the app is in a game format that looks like the style of apps you'd give your small child to do problem solving... A bit of advice when trying to hire graduates is treat them like the adults your employing them to be. Don't belittle them with games that look designed for children and just use standard PC based tests. Using phones also brings up compatibility issues which I can assure you not every student/graduate has access to a phone less than 4 years old and everyone has access to a PC be that a personal laptop from university or even the local library, in a worst case. Having said that I did pass the child styled test. To be invited to the next stage of the recruitment process. Still annoyed about the test I found out that the next step is a recorded interview.... This involves situational questions which you must answer on camera. To be clear this is not a Skype style interview you have no interaction with an actual human-being. I can only assume these are logged and watched an the graduate hiring teams leisure. Again I will say if your looking for graduates you should treat them like humans. As a graduate I've dealt with some companies that ask a lot during the testing phases but with these companies I always felt treated with respect. It's safe to say I did not do this video interview and let my application expire. I will not be applying to network rail in the future unless I see some inclination of change.

Waste of time application and test. Seems like they don't want you to pass the test. Completed a very short situational judgement test and a few numeracy questions to receive a contradictory report that basically told me I might have got the answers correct but my specific combination of answers meant I scored low. Doesn't seem a very constructive or positive way to give feedback. Spent ages preparing my answers for the second video interview part as you get unlimited time to prepare for them, but was rejected just two hours after submitting everything. Presumably I was rejected after the questions and no one even bothered to view my video interview responses which I worked hard on and are a better representation of what I could offer. Waste of time, won't be bothering to apply for this again next year.