What an MTA Conductor does

The duties the notice lists first are the visible ones. In customer service, conductors open and close doors, make proper announcements to customers, and set up the automatic announcement system.

They also work as platform conductors in the stations: patrolling platforms, assisting customers to enter and exit trains safely, and assisting in the timely dispatch of trains from key stations. Two of the words in that sentence — safely and timely — are the two competing pressures the job is organised around, and the ability list is calibrated to both.

The information-ordering example on the notice comes straight out of this part of the job: following a step-by-step procedure to open and close the train doors. It is a fair signal of what an ordering question on this paper looks like, which is a sequence with a rule attached rather than a puzzle.

While in road service, conductors interact with the Train Operator, supervision and the Control Center when necessary. The notice gives that duty one line and then illustrates it three times over in the ability examples, which is where the substance is.

Problem sensitivity is illustrated by recognising that an issue with a radio system may interfere with normal operations — a fault noticed in the medium you use to report faults. Inductive reasoning is illustrated by determining the action to take from a combination of personal observations and radio chatter from the Rail Control Center. Short-term memorization is illustrated by remembering information transmitted over a two-way radio.

Three of the nine abilities, in other words, are drawn from the same activity: taking in radio traffic under working conditions and acting on it. A candidate who wants to know what this exam is about could do worse than start there.

Conductors provide flagging protection service duties, such as setting up flags and light signals and taking other required measures for the protection of workers performing work on or near trainways. This is the part of the title most invisible from a platform, and it is safety work for other people rather than for passengers.

In the yards they operate hand-thrown switches. In work train and yard service they are doing the same job as in customer service without any of the customer-facing part of it — which is why the deductive-reasoning example on the notice is about applying rules and regulations to situations to determine the appropriate action, and not about talking to anybody.

The last duty in the description is the one that generates paper: conductors make reports of unusual occurrences. The written-expression example on the ability list is writing incident reports regarding unusual occurrences, and the two are plainly the same activity seen from either end.

The notice's list of physical activities and environmental conditions is unusually concrete for a document that is otherwise all procedure. Three entries carry most of the information: "stepping over rails (including live third rails)", "ascending and descending from trains and catwalks to roadbeds", and "responding to audible signals such as alarm bells, train whistles, horns and radio conversations". The rest of the list is of a piece with them — walking the tracks, telling coloured signal lights apart, handling the manual equipment train operation involves, standing for long stretches, lifting heavy equipment, and working outdoors in all weather.

Two entries on that list are worth pausing on for candidates who picture the job from inside a train. Live third rails appear by name, and so does working outdoors — the subway is not entirely underground, and flagging protection is not done from a cab.

The roster follows from a service that does not stop. Conductors may be required to work various shifts, including nights, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The notice adds that the description is brief and does not include all of the duties of the position, which is the sentence to remember whenever a source elsewhere describes a duty this document does not.