A new recruitment drive by train operator GTR is helping university students in Sussex to get a head start in a railway career by giving them work experience while they continue their degree studies. This new recruitment method will provide young people with the chance to gain much-needed work experience at the same time as they are studying towards their degrees. The benefit to GTR will be to improve staff recruitment in vital parts of the network. In the pilot scheme, five students from the University of Brighton and one student from the University of Chichester will go through eight weeks of training before they are authorised to work unsupervised while officially carrying out OBS duties. Other recruitment drives are being conducted by East Midlands Railway for Fleet Engineer apprentices and by Network Rail.