Hiring a delivery driver
The most gate-heavy role on this list. Licence category, points, and often an insurance age minimum are absolute — and none of them are reliably legible on a CV, so a large share of the pile is decided by facts nobody has asked for yet.
Three hard facts decide most of it, and a CV states none of them clearly. Licence category, penalty points and insurance eligibility are pass-or-fail, and applicants describe them inconsistently or not at all — "clean licence" appears on CVs with six points behind it. So the reading time goes into people who were never eligible. And the ad usually understates the job: multi-drop is a customer-facing role that happens to involve driving, but almost every advert for it leads with the vehicle.
The licence questions come first, then the guide
Selene establishes the vehicle and the licence first, because those decide eligibility — then asks what the round actually involves.
Vehicle, licence, points, and what the round involves
The eligibility conversation comes first here, unlike most roles — there is no point discussing temperament with someone who cannot legally drive the van. Then Selene asks what the round involves, which is where the surprise usually is.
One sentence changes the guide
It is the answer that most changes a driving guide, because the obvious criteria — clean licence, years driving, vehicle types — are all about the vehicle, and the actual differentiator is about the round. A driver who notices things and tells someone is worth several who simply complete the drops.
Exceptional, not just good —
“Honestly? The one who rings in to say the gate code changed, instead of leaving it for whoever has the round tomorrow.”
→ Customer contact and initiative outranked driving history; years behind the wheel stopped being scored.
What the guide ends up measuring
Seven criteria, and unusually the first three are pure facts. What is scored sits almost entirely on the customer-facing half of the job — which is not what the job title suggests.
Three facts, asked outright
This is the role where eligibility questions earn the most. Licence category, points and age are not judgments, and "clean licence" on a CV is unreliable enough that reading for it wastes time in both directions — you chase people who don't qualify and you second-guess people who do. Asked directly on the application page, they arrive as answers rather than inferences, and typically resolve a very large share of a 180-applicant pile before any scoring runs.
Scored on the round, not the vehicle
Selene never receives the candidate’s name or the raw CV. She scores a blind, structured profile, with any stated age, sex, nationality and religion stripped out before scoring runs.
By the time anything is scored the licence facts are settled, so what she reads is the customer-facing half of the job — the half the job title hides.
How the blind scoring works →What stays with you
Selene's half
- Turning the licence and insurance rules into application-page questions, so they're settled up front
- Reading everyone who clears them against the same guide, blind, with the evidence attached
- A ranked shortlist once the licence facts are settled
- Drafting the declines, so people who don't qualify hear back quickly
Yours
- Advertising the role — Selene doesn't post to job boards or sourcing sites
- Licence checks and insurance verification before anyone drives; she records what candidates state, she doesn't verify it
- The driving assessment and the interview, with her brief in hand
- Every hiring decision, and any override — stored with your reason
Describe the routes, see the gates
Multi-drop or trunking, vans or 7.5 tonners, own insurance or yours — the eligibility questions change with every one of those.