Network Rail's eight non-technical skills, and how to prepare an example for each

Network Rail assesses eight non-technical skills. They are not a secret — the company names them — and applicants report that the competency interview at the assessment centre is built almost entirely on them. They are also the natural frame for the recorded video interview's competency questions and for the behaviour questionnaire, although Network Rail does not publish how either of those is scored.

Preparing one example for each is the highest-value hour you can spend on this application. Most candidates arrive with two good stories and try to bend them to fit whatever is asked. Eight prepared examples means you are choosing the best fit rather than the only one you have.

The eight

1. Conscientiousness

Thoroughness, checking, following the method even when you can see a shortcut. In signalling this is close to the definition of the role: the accidents this industry has had were mostly not caused by people who did not know, but by people who were fairly sure.

A strong example involves you doing the careful thing when nobody would have known if you had not — checking something you were already confident about, and either finding something or not finding anything but doing it anyway.

2. Relationships with people

Co-operation and regard for others, including people you deal with only by phone and radio and may never meet. Signalling involves constant contact with drivers, track staff and control, frequently when everybody is under pressure.

A strong example is usually about someone difficult rather than someone easy — keeping a working relationship functional with a person you did not get on with, because the work required it.

3. Communications

Two halves, and candidates almost always prepare only one. The first is clarity — saying the thing precisely, confirming it was received. The second is challenge: saying the uncomfortable thing, across a grade difference, when you think somebody has got it wrong.

A strong example for the second half beats a strong example for the first, because the second is rarer and matters more in a safety role.

4. Willingness and ability to learn

How you take instruction and correction. Relevant to a role with thirteen weeks of training in front of you, eleven of them in a classroom.

A strong example includes a time you were told you had got something wrong and what you did next — not a time you learned a new system easily. Willingness to look inexperienced by asking is the specific behaviour that keeps trainees safe.

5. Planning and decision making

Prioritising, thinking ahead, and deciding when you do not have everything you would like. Note that the role needs both halves: planning ahead and the ability to decide fast when the plan has just been destroyed by a failure.

A strong example shows the reasoning, not just the outcome. Why that order, what you consciously left undone, and what you would have done if the first choice had not worked.

6. Multi-tasking capacity

Handling several concurrent demands and switching between them without losing your place. This is the skill the multi-tasking exercise measures behaviourally, so the interview is asking you to describe the same thing in words.

A strong example is specific about what you deliberately let slip. Everybody claims to juggle well; the credible answer names the trade-off.

7. Controlled under pressure

Staying functional when it goes wrong, and recovering afterwards.

A strong example is not "I stayed completely calm". It is what you actually did — the concrete actions — while it was happening. Panels have heard a great many claims of calmness and comparatively few descriptions of behaviour.

8. Attention management

Sustaining focus, resisting distraction, and — the part people miss — staying alert through low workload. A signaller's hardest hour is often the one where nothing happens, and vigilance in that state is a recognised hazard rather than an easy default.

A strong example can come from anywhere involving monitoring, long shifts, or a job where the important event was rare.

How to build the examples

Use STAR — situation, task, action, result — but weight it properly. Most people spend three quarters of the answer setting the scene. Set it in two sentences and spend the time on what you did and why you chose that, because the reasoning is the thing being assessed.

Pick examples that can be pointed at more than one skill. A single well-chosen incident can serve for communications, controlled under pressure and decision making depending on which part you emphasise. Four flexible examples covering eight headings is more useful than eight rigid ones.

Use real events. Recorded video interviews and competency panels both probe, and an invented example collapses on the second question — the one about what you would do differently.

Where the questionnaire fits

The behaviour questionnaire asks about the same kinds of working behaviour, which is the practical reason not to construct a profile on it. If the questionnaire says you strongly prefer to work to a fixed plan and your interview example is about improvising well when everything changed, the mismatch is visible. Answer the questionnaire as yourself and the two stages agree by default.