Jobs
Employer Details
Transport for London
Description
What is Transport for London?
Transport for London is one of the most diverse, complex and high-profile organisations currently operating in the UK business environment.
TfL manages, develops and integrates the capital’s transport network. That’s everything from buses, roads and the Tube to taxis, trains, cycle paths, trams and the river.
We are a unique organisation. No other UK body has the responsibilities we have. No other business has such a visible and far-reaching affect on the quality of life in London. We touch the lives of everyone who lives in, works in, or visits the capital.
The challenges we face are as demanding and diverse as the city itself. How do we make transport more efficient? More joined up? Safer? How do we plan for the future? For London’s continuing expansion? For the Olympics? How do we make transport cleaner? More sustainable? More accessible? And how do we do all this while maintaining a real-time service to seven million people a day?
So in addition to all the usual benefits you’d expect from a graduate scheme, there is one on offer here that is perhaps more difficult to quantify: the pride and satisfaction you will experience in providing an essential service. One that London and her visitors enjoy using, and the rest of the world admires.
Graduate Opportunities with Transport for London
11 different methods of transport, or modes, make up the transport network. Each has its own infrastructure, specialists, leadership and support systems. Then there is TfL Corporate, our HQ and mission control, where service directors, strategists, advisors and analysts provide group support and direction.
Our 17 separate schemes, covering 14 disciplines span the entire organization, the majority of which have a technical bias. They range from disciplines such as transport planning and project management, to service delivery and IM, to electrical, mechanical and civil engineering.
Each scheme provides a combination of formal and informal training, practical hands-on experience, and structured professional development, nearly always leading to further qualifications and, where available, chartered status within your chosen profession. Each scheme ensures you will develop the skills, knowledge and experience required to move into your first permanent role at TfL.
Placements and practical experience
Placements are the key building blocks of your development path. They are your opportunity to engage in real work, and build an understanding of how the organisation and your business area deliver their objectives. Typically they will last from three to six months but they may be longer.
Initially your placements and learning will provide you with the core skills to understand your business area. But over the life of the scheme you will begin to move into placements that help meet your own particular career aspirations.
Your objectives will be progressive, specific and challenging. Your progress will be reviewed by your placement managers and sponsor, who will also give you career advice and guidance, and identify what training you need.
Learning, development and professional qualifications
An important part of every TfL graduate scheme is the formal learning and training you will undertake, and the opportunities you will have for gaining further academic and professional qualifications. Your development is supported by a structured programme of learning covering both generic business skills and your specialist discipline. Training is nearly always linked to the requirements for membership of a professional body – for example, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants or the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, to name a few.
Benefits and rewards
As a graduate you will receive: a salary of £23,000 in the first year with the possibility that this may rise in the second year, based on your performance and meeting the requirements of the scheme; free travel for you and one other on the transport network, which includes the Tube, buses, Docklands Light Railway and some mainline rail services; an interest free loan for the purchase of annual tickets for travel outside of the TfL network; 75 per cent taxable reimbursement for the purchase of annual travel tickets; 30 days' annual leave (plus eight days for public and bank holidays); membership of TfL's final-salary pension scheme; health club and gym discounts; and optional private medical insurance.
The Olympics and beyond
Right now is a particularly exciting time to join us. Record levels of investment are fuelling the transformation of large parts of the network. London Underground is undergoing one the most exciting periods of renewal in its history. The demands of planning for a city that is predicted to keep on growing require foresight, innovation and imagination. And the 2012 Olympics will, we hope, be a showcase not just for the best athletes in the world, but the best urban transport system too.
So whichever of our graduate schemes you join, you will be contributing to our vision of a twenty-first century, state of the art transport network. A network that Londoners can be proud of and everyone who visits impressed by. A network that will, we hope, set the standards others follow.