They're going through recruitment at the moment, GWR and Southeastern have had processes that closed in the last few weeks. Just check the relevant career pages of operators you're eligible to work for.

You'll need to live within a certain time-distance of a depot, usually it's an hour but other times for the London ones it can be less time.

I'm given to understand that with the backdated pay-rise, they're anticipating losing a lot of drivers soon (also covid disrupted their flow of new drivers), so there may be more processes.

The application process itself is a standard form giving your education and competencies, then they'll start doing situational judgement tests, online. Things like "you work in a medium sized box factory and an employee tells you they hate boxes, rank these 4 responses in terms of helpfulness"

If you're through, they'll do online assessments and if you're successful there'll be assessment centre with, you guessed it, more assessments. The focus is on concentration, reactions, ability to multitask and ignore distractions, precision and speed of work. The also test your ability to learn.

After that, interviews etc and then on a select list, then training.

It's very competitive, Southeastern had 15,000 applicants for 170 places.