Assessing Candidates

Transit Agency Practices for Operator Candidate Assessment

In the bus operator hiring process, transit agencies want to collect information that helps them decide whether an applicant would be a good fit for the job. In this fact sheet, we present four ways for collecting information about applicants, as well as common practices and best practices for each, based on our research with transit agencies. 

Screening

Before scheduling candidates for interviews or assessments, many agencies screen applications to narrow down the pool advancing in the hiring process. Here are some practices we heard agencies using in the screening process: 

• Some agencies merely verify that candidates meet minimum requirements and advance all who do, while others are more selective and advance, for example, only those with customer service experience on their resume. Those that have high volumes of applicants may find it helpful to be more selective early in the process, so they do not have to pass high volumes of candidates through the more labor-intensive stages of the hiring process. 
• While some agencies simply review the candidate’s application and/or resume, a few agencies that participated in our research reported conducting short phone calls with each candidate as part of the screening process. These agencies found the screening phone call to be helpful in gauging seriousness about the position and the candidate’s understanding of the realities of the job (nontraditional schedules, interactions with passengers, etc.). 
• Some agencies use automated features of the initial application form to confirm whether candidates meet the required minimum qualifications. If the applicant does not meet a criterion (e.g., selects “no” on whether they have 3 years of driving experience), when they submit the form they will receive a message explaining that they did not meet the minimum qualifications and thus cannot advance in the process. This process saves time on manual verifications. 
• At least one large agency and one small agency that participated in our research, both of whom hire operators only on certain cycles, advance candidates in phases. For example, in the screening process they may select their top 20% and invite those to an interview, only contacting the second-tier candidates if the first tier did not yield sufficient numbers. 

Percent of Survey Respondents Requiring Each Step

Interviews

Many transit agencies have found interviews to be a good way of gauging candidates’ aptitude for operator jobs, allowing for a “human touch” in the hiring process. Here are takeaways about tests from our research with transit agencies: 

• How are interviews scheduled? Booking links that sync with staff calendars and allow candidates to self-schedule an interview help reduce inefficiencies in the hiring process, cutting out phone calls or emails back and forth with candidates to choose a time. 
• How long do the interviews last? Most research participants said bus operator candidate interviews lasted between 15 and 30 minutes. 
• What questions are asked? Many research participants felt that questions asking about prior behaviors in relevant situations were effective at assessing a candidate’s fit for the job. Here are a few real examples of behavioral interview questions used by transit agencies: 

• How frequently do interviews occur? 

• Who conducts the interviews? How many interviewers are there? At some transit agencies, human resources (HR) staff conduct interviews; at others, operations staff do. In many cases, a combo of HR and operations representatives are present in every interview. Some used a single interviewer with any given candidate, while others used a panel of several. It was notable that while most agency representatives we talked to expressed confidence in the necessity and effectiveness of their respective approaches, the actual methods described for conducting interviews varied significantly across these agencies. For the sake of efficiency, agencies can experiment with other approaches and using fewer interviewers, assessing changes along the way to make sure candidate quality and fairness of the process are not sacrificed. 
• Virtual vs. in-person: Agencies varied on whether interviews were conducted virtually or in-person. Virtual interviews were successful when candidates had been clearly instructed beforehand to dress professionally, arrive on-time, and otherwise behave as though it were an in-person interview. 

Tests/Assessments

Some transit agencies swear by their pre-employment assessments; others do not find tests helpful in predicting candidate success. Here are takeaways about tests from our conversations with transit agencies: 

• If considering a test to alleviate a bottleneck in the hiring process, do not allow a test to become the bottleneck. A test the applicant can take virtually at any time, for instance, may be preferable to a test that needs to be taken in person at a specific time and requires someone from the agency to schedule test-taking appointments. 
• Choose a test with an evidence base; make sure the provider has robust data from industries comparable to transit on whether that test is good at predicting good job performance. Once you implement the test, collect your own data (before and after implementation) on job performance in a new hire’s first year to make sure the test is working the way you want it to. The test should target the competencies and qualities operators need—for example, customer service skills and capacity for emotional regulation. 
• Consider tests that have relevance to the job at hand. For example, one transit agency reported that they asked some of their most successful and long-tenured bus operators to take the test before any candidates did so. The agency then used the range of their top operators’ scores on each question to determine the score range they would look for candidates’ answers to mirror. 

Reference Checks

About 40% of respondents to our survey indicated they do not require any personal or professional references from bus operator candidates. The agencies that have tried collecting references generally found them not to be very helpful in gauging fit for the job in relation to other activities like interviews or assessments.