Royal Mail commissions largest ever online applicant testing programme

Royal Mail Applicant testing

I can assure you that such testing is a complete and utter waste of money. In fact I think it's laughable. People try and dream up more and more complex answers to simple problems, when the answer is staring them in the face, but they cannot see it.

I worked for the Royal Mail over Xmas, the busiest time of the year, after I was made redundant , and of the ten applicants I was with on interview testing day, two couldn't add up 2 and 2, nor speak good English, one applied and had an unexpired drink drive conviction (the post applied for was a postman who could drive) three walked out half way through, and there were four left. Only two of us passed the maths and sorting test..

I wrote to the chairman of Royal Mail after my nine weeks there and not surprisingly received no response.

It's not the staff that's the problem , it's the complete and utter lack of training and support once you start, and the indifference of management to it and to you as a person.

As a postman, you start with 2 days training about basics, you then go on a route for a week with a regular postman, then you do a complete " walk" or should I say 3/4 of the route for a week and then you are on your own.

The whole structure of Royal Mail is "mushroom management", and based on a "blame" culture i.e the **** spreads downwards from the top and is based on complaints from the public. I did get 4 or 5 complaints for delivery to the wrong house over a 9 week period, but it's so easy to do. ( I was delivering 1,200 to 2,000 letters and packets a day.)

Anyone who complains to the Royal Mail should have to do a day as a postman, then they would be less quick to judge, as it's more complicated than you think. It is incredibly easy to mis-deliver, the concentration required not to make a mistake is huge, both in the original sorting and at the front door.

Do you reckon you could deliver 100,000 letters and packets over 9 weeks and only make 5 mistakes out of it?

The only good thing about my experience is I lost two stone in 9 weeks, and I'm back to cycle riding after a 30 year break, and loving it!

If Royal Mail took more care of their staff in breaking them in to the job over a much longer period , taking pressure off new applicants and treating them as a valuable resource instead of basically chucking them in at the deep end, they would have more chance of retaining their staff. Its that simple. My immediate manager was better than most (in fact he was a good guy), and I still left.

Forget all the psychometric testing (which is in my opinion a load of old tosh,) look after your most valuable resource once in post. It's not rocket science!

PS , Before I was made redundant and started with the Royal Mail, I was a senior manager, so I feel qualified to give an opinion on my experience.

If you would like to do a little test, do a straw poll at any sorting office entrance, they will all say the same about Management within the Royal Mail, but they may be less diplomatic than me!

PPS
An interesting fact, 90% of what I delivered to houses was junk mail. Only 3% of delivered mail is what you and I would know as personal letters.