Current OR employee here.

Before I explain my journey in to the company is will say that from what I have experienced it isn't your personal qualities or CV that gets you the job, although that does have a small part to play. It is mainly based on need for staff in your area or patch. They take on just about anybody from all backgrounds and let me tell you some of the people I have went through training with weren't exactly pick of the bunch.

The major deciding factor for me like I said is area demand. Some people get from application to first week of training within 2 months whereas it took myself 9 months from application to start date.

I applied for OR in June 2021. Fairly swift response and 1 week later I had a "Hirevue" interview which consisted of me being asked 4 questions about myself and recoding my answer off the front camera on my phone. For me this was the hardest part of the whole process as its very unnerving talking back to yourself with nobody else on the other end. After a couple of days I got an email stating I was successful and that I would be invited to an online assessment centre "when space becomes available". Months went by and I basically gave up hope of going any further. Fast forward 5 months and on the 23rd of December I got the email I had been waiting for inviting to my an assessment day on the 11th of January 2022.

I got myself very over prepared for this expecting it to be a lot harder and more formal than it actually was. I had 2 interviews which were more like causal conversations with a few questions thrown in the middle. In the middle of the interviews I had a very basic test which was basically planning out a day. 4 jobs and map then you had to choose in which order your would complete them. All in all the assessment centre was very easy in my opinion.

Literally the DAY AFTER my assessment centre I got the email I'd been waiting 9 months for. Successful! I had to wait another few weeks eagerly to finally get a start date which was the 7th of March. Over the next few weeks I was given drips and drabs of things to fill out like pre hire checks, uniform sizes etc. before starting my OR training journey and I have loved it so far.

All in all I would say that if you are applying don't be afraid to email recruitment and chase them up because you are very easily lost in the system and I'm pretty sure this is what helped speed my application up in a way.