Professional preparation for Sydney Trains psychometric tests, recorded interview and panel interview 2024

As a train driver with Sydney Trains, you’ll be responsible for driving passenger trains in a variety of conditions. You’ll be responsible for the safety of the entire train and passengers. As this is a job that has tremendous amount of responsibility and risk, Sydney Trains conduct several types of psychometric tests and psychomotor tests to ensure candidates who apply to work as trainee train drivers have the right set of skills to become train drivers. You must pass the psychometric tests for train drivers to move to the next step of your recruitment.

The recruitment process with Sydney Trains includes the following 5 steps:

Step 1: You will be asked to submit your resume.

Step 2: You will be asked to complete an online interview. In this interview you will be asked 4 - 5 questions and you will need to do a video recording of your answers.

Step 3: You will be asked to come in to the career centre in Burwood to complete a supervised assessment which includes psychometric and psychomotor tests.

Step 4: You will be asked to participate in a panel interview, which typically includes two interviewers - one from talent management and the other is from business.

Step 5: Medical and reference checking. 

Preparation for your Online Initial Sydney Trains Interview (recorded interview)

This is conducted via a special app that allows you to see several written questions and to record your answers to each question. The questions are firly generic and can include questions such as how do you cope with stress? or how do you solve problems? 

You must remember to answer these questions in a STAR structure and focus mainly on what you did.

You can book a 1 hour one-on-one session with one of our Psychometric test experts to fully prepare for your online interview. We will give you interview questions and prepare with you how to answer them so you present yourself in the best way possible.

Preparation for your Job-related Assessments with Sydney Trains

Once you successfully passed the initial online interview, you will be invited to take Sydney Trains' job-related assessments, which is a supervised setting to complete a combination of Psychometric and Psychomotor tests. The standard tests are:

• Verbal comprehension
• Abstract reasoning
• Visual search exercise (this is a psychomotor test that measures your hand-eye coordination)

There are typically 5 people in each group and after each test you are either sent home or advanced to the next test.  

The Visual search exercise

The first test you will be asked to complete in the centre in Burwood is the visual search exercise and this is also broken down into 3 sections for a total of 40 mins.

The first part of the visual test has a train loop full of orange dots.  You have to follow your train which was a blue dot around the track.  It stops at every stop in a clockwise direction.  Every time there is an error such as the train skipped a stop, or the blue circle changed colours, or two trains are on the same track etc.  Every time you spot an error you must click on the "'error'' button.

The 2nd part of this test has two vertical columns with 5 or 6 different shapes in each  and you have to click YES for an error or NO for not an error. For example, 1, 2 or 3 shapes on each side would be shaded blue, if the exact shapes in the 2nd column were also shaded blue then that was not an error.  If the shaded shapes were different then that was an error. You only have 1-1.5 seconds to answer.

The 3rd part of this test is both of the above exercises combined, so you have your train loop on the left looking for errors and you have your two columns on the right and you have to keep and eye on both sides and answer in 1-1.5 seconds.

Verbal comprehension test with Sydney Trains

This is a timed paper based test which includes several short passages or instructions and some questions about each passage. The verbal test includes 39 questions and you have 20 mins to complete.

An example verbal comprehension test question:

Please read the following passage and answer the question at the end of the passage:

Dear Employee:

You have completed another year with the company, and you have continued to do a very good job overall. Your punctuality, professional demeanour, and attention to detail all continue to be at a very high level.

There are, however, a few aspects of your job performance that need improvement. First, as a regular daily occurrence at practices, you often fail to gather the balls and put them back on their racks in a timely enough fashion; our players want those balls back on the racks as soon as possible so that they can continue practicing without delays and without losing their rhythm. Second, water needs to be available to any player at any time and, occasionally, you have been slow to get water to the players as soon as they come off the court. Be sure to have the water ready for a player as soon as it is needed. Finally, you should always be available to immediately retrieve balls that bounce away from the court. Recently, after one player shot an air-ball, you didn’t retrieve the ball until after free-throw shooting drills had begun. Please make a point to retrieve balls as quickly as possible.

Question:

The employee has done a great job in the past year in terms of making water available.

Based on the passage, is this statement:

True

False

or Can't say?

To answer this question, we need to read the passage. The report’s second point states that the employee needs to do a better job in water availability. Therefore, the correct answer is 'False'.

Abstract reasoning test with Sydney Trains

Sydney Trains uses an abstract reasoning test to measure your problem-solving skills, your ability to make decisions with partial information and your strategic thinking. The abstract reasoning test for Sydney Trains typically includes a series of test questions that you need to complete under time constraints. This style of test questions was designed to measure you ability to understand logical processes. Each question has a set of input and output figures and a number of operators/effects. The operations/effects' function is described in text and in illustrations. In each question there is one element missing - either the input figures or output figures or the operations. 

Sydney Trains abstract test is broken down into several groups of 4 questions and has 2 mins to answer each group of 4. The benchmark is 30%. This means that you must score above 30%.

Let's review the following example:

The question is:

This question requires you to identify the correct sequence of ‘input’ shapes based on the provided sequence of ‘output’ shapes. For this style of question, you are not provided the input sequence, rather, only the output sequence and an “Effect Operator”. These operators modify the input shapes in different ways to transform them into the output result. To solve this task, you must work backwards starting with the output sequence with reference to the operator and applying the effect in reverse to identify the correct input sequence.

In this question there is only one operator or effect. Based on the illustrated instruction panel, effect * changes the shapes and sizes of all white figures (from squares to circles or from circles to squares and from big to small or small to big). To reverse this effect, we need to change back all the white figures’ shapes and sizes.  This means changing the first small, white square into a big, white circle and changing the second figure, which is a big, white circle into a small, white square. The sequence of figures after reversing this effect is: a big, white circle, followed by a small, white square and a small, black circle.

Preparing for your Panel Interview with Sydney Trains

The panel interview is also conducted online. You will be asked questions by two interviewers - one from talent management and one from business. It can takes up to 30 min and typically includes between 4 - 5 questions. It is very important that you use the STAR structure to answer your questions. Be carful as every word you say will be analysed against what they are looking to find.

Our professional preparation for your psychometric test and interviews with Sydeny Trains:

The Institute of Psychometric Coaching has developed a variety of tailored preparations to ensure you are ready for your tests and interviews with Sydney Trains.

Our professional preparations include:

Practice Sydney Trains verbal and abstract tests for trainee train drivers:

• A large pool of timed Abstract Reasoning, and Verbal Comprehension tests.
• Based on real test questions.
• Timer mimics the pressure of taking the real test.
• Step by step solutions at the end of each test.
• Test scores in comparison to others.
• Feedback on how to improve.
• Immediate Access.

Verbal comprehension and Abstract reasoning test courses online for Sydney Trains:

• Special Cognitive tests' courses online with all the knowledge you need to pass the psychometric tests for a train driver position.
• Abstract Reasoning Test Course online with some example test questions.
• Verbal Reasoning Test Course online with some example test questions.
• Immediate Access.

Personal Tutoring for your Sydney Trains Recorded and/or Panel Interviews and Tests:

• Delivered by experienced Australian psychometric test trainers.
• Face to face or via Skype live.
• Includes an analysis of your weaknesses.
• Working with you to ensure you demonstrate your full potential and capabilities in the tests and interviews

Read about some of our success stories:

Thank you for your preparation for the abstract test for Sydney Trains. It was exactly the same as in my test. The explanations and guidance was very helpful.

Raman (applied for trainee train driver position with Sydney Trains)

---------------------------------------------------------------

I just wanted to let you know how i went with my application with Sydney Trains. Thanks to you I passed my online recorded interview then I completed the job-related assessment which was exactly what you tought me. I was the only one out of 5 that passed all the tests. Then I was invited to the online panel interview which had the same questions that we prepared for. I just received an email saying that I passed this too. Thank you so much as i could not have done this without you.

Andrew (applied for a train driver position with Sydney Trains)

Click to start preparing for Sydney Trains tests