Walk me through your CV.

What it tests: Story arc and genuine fit for last-mile dispatch + planning. Interviewers want dispatch-desk evidence - a board owned, a plan built, a peak survived - not a slide-deck strategy CV. Tests whether the candidate has actually owned route build + courier-order matching + exception handling.

Tell me about a dispatch or planning problem you owned end-to-end - on-time, plan compliance, exception handling, or courier utilisation.

What it tests: Depth of dispatch ownership. Tests whether the candidate frames problem -> on-the-board diagnosis -> intervention -> measurable outcome - not 'we ran a process improvement project'.

Why dispatch + planning - versus station operations, courier management, or routing engineering?

What it tests: Authentic alignment to the dispatch craft - daily plan build, board rhythm, real-time exception calls - not the cleaner office-based ops or the upstream platform work.

Why last-mile - versus long-haul trucking dispatch, middle-mile, or warehouse planning?

What it tests: Specificity. Tests whether the candidate is drawn to the last-mile chaos - dense stops, tight windows, customer at the door, dynamic re-plan - rather than the slower-clock world of OTR trucking or static warehouse planning.

What it tests: Whether the candidate has done the homework. Bar: firm-specific evidence from the operating model, dispatch tech, recent operational events, leadership - not generic 'great brand'.

What's your read on this firm's dispatch + planning operation?

What it tests: Dispatch literacy - operating model, dispatch board structure, courier-mix, customer commitments, where the dispatch team likely focuses day-to-day.

Tell me what you understand about how this firm runs its dispatch tooling and routing - platform, dynamic vs static, OCC integration.

What it tests: Tech fluency on this firm's stack - routing platform, telematics, dispatch board UI, OCC integration, automation maturity.

Walk me through how you build a daily route plan for a station running 60 couriers and 2,500 stops, 70% parcel + 30% grocery, with employee + partner-fleet mix.

What it tests: Plan-build craft - density + window-aware route construction, courier-order matching across employee + partner mix, plan validation discipline (no one-stop emergency creep, no missed-window route loading).

Dispatch Planning interview prep.

Trained on dispatcher, dispatch supervisor, load planner, route planner, courier manager, and OCC / control-tower controller interviews across parcel last-mile carriers, on-demand platforms, grocery + meal delivery, quick-commerce, and contracted last-mile providers.

What interviewers look for

Can the candidate build a daily route plan that respects courier-window + density + duty + customer-window without HOS-shave or one-stop emergency creep?
Do they read a dispatch board with discipline - macros caught up, PTAs current, exceptions flagged, next-2-hour plan visible?
Are they fluent in dynamic re-plan - re-dispatch on failure, brokered overflow, gig-courier offer mechanics?
Do they treat couriers as people - offer fairness, lane preference, safety - not as a clock with wheels?
Can they handle the customer-window cardinal - on-time + first-attempt - and triage exceptions without dropping service?
Are they grounded in dispatch tooling - last-mile routing platform, telematics, ELD where applicable, macros + status codes?
Long-game fit - dispatcher / supervisor / planner / OCC / dispatch manager trajectory?

Behavioural questions to expect

Walk me through your CV.
What it tests: Story arc and genuine fit for last-mile dispatch + planning. Interviewers want dispatch-desk evidence - a board owned, a plan built, a peak survived - not a slide-deck strategy CV. Tests whether the candidate has actually owned route build + courier-order matching + exception handling.
Tell me about a dispatch or planning problem you owned end-to-end - on-time, plan compliance, exception handling, or courier utilisation.
What it tests: Depth of dispatch ownership. Tests whether the candidate frames problem -> on-the-board diagnosis -> intervention -> measurable outcome - not 'we ran a process improvement project'.
Why dispatch + planning - versus station operations, courier management, or routing engineering?
What it tests: Authentic alignment to the dispatch craft - daily plan build, board rhythm, real-time exception calls - not the cleaner office-based ops or the upstream platform work.
Why last-mile - versus long-haul trucking dispatch, middle-mile, or warehouse planning?
What it tests: Specificity. Tests whether the candidate is drawn to the last-mile chaos - dense stops, tight windows, customer at the door, dynamic re-plan - rather than the slower-clock world of OTR trucking or static warehouse planning.
Why this firm?
What it tests: Whether the candidate has done the homework. Bar: firm-specific evidence from the operating model, dispatch tech, recent operational events, leadership - not generic 'great brand'.
What's your read on this firm's dispatch + planning operation?
What it tests: Dispatch literacy - operating model, dispatch board structure, courier-mix, customer commitments, where the dispatch team likely focuses day-to-day.
Tell me what you understand about how this firm runs its dispatch tooling and routing - platform, dynamic vs static, OCC integration.
What it tests: Tech fluency on this firm's stack - routing platform, telematics, dispatch board UI, OCC integration, automation maturity.
Walk me through how you build a daily route plan for a station running 60 couriers and 2,500 stops, 70% parcel + 30% grocery, with employee + partner-fleet mix.
What it tests: Plan-build craft - density + window-aware route construction, courier-order matching across employee + partner mix, plan validation discipline (no one-stop emergency creep, no missed-window route loading).

Technical concepts to master

Route build + density + courier match

VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) + last-mile variants: Mathematical formulation of multi-stop multi-vehicle routing - minimise total cost subject to capacity + time-window + service-level constraints; NP-hard in pure form, solved via heuristics in commercial last-mile platforms.
Density + stops-per-hour as the cost lever: Stops per route mile (or per square km served) is the dominant cost driver in last-mile dispatch; higher density means lower stems, more stops-per-hour, lower cost-per-stop.
Stems + dispatch ratio + plan validation: Stems = non-productive driving (depot to first + last to depot); dispatch ratio = stops loaded / route capacity; plan validation = no one-stop emergency creep, no missed-window route loading, no HOS-shave.
Static vs dynamic routing - when each fits: Static = routes built once from forecast stops + locked at dispatch; dynamic = routes adjust in real-time as stops are added (on-demand) or fail (re-dispatch).

Dispatch board mechanics + macros + tooling

Macros + status codes: Standardised courier-to-dispatch messages (e.g. arrived station, loaded, departed, arrived stop, delivered, exception, available) - the daily heartbeat of the board.
Dispatch board archetypes - station-anchored vs centralised OCC: Station-anchored = dispatcher sits in the station, owns local courier pool + customer relationships; centralised OCC = dispatch from a control tower across multiple stations; hybrid = local + central layer.
Last-mile routing platforms - in-house vs commercial: Last-mile-specific routing platforms (in-house at the largest parcel carriers + on-demand platforms; commercial via named last-mile routing vendors) automate plan-build + recommend dispatch.
Board hygiene + plan freshness + shift hand-off: Daily discipline - PTAs + ETAs current, macros caught up, exception loads flagged, next-2-hour plan visible, shift hand-offs documented.

Exception handling + IROPS + dynamic re-plan

Triage priority order: Courier safety -> customer-window risk -> downstream cascade -> revenue impact. Always in that order.
Dynamic re-dispatch mechanics: Re-assigning a stop or set of stops mid-shift - to nearest available courier with capacity, lane fit, and service-tier capability; gig overflow if employee pool exhausted.
Weather + IROPS playbook: Storms, regional shutdowns, road closures - trigger pre-positioning, route holds, customer comms, service-tier triage.
Courier no-show + employee fleet shortfall: Mid-shift courier no-show or sick call - dispatch options: re-assign to nearest available, gig overflow, partner cover, escalate to courier-manager for retention signal.

Courier-pool utilisation + safety + customer-window discipline

Courier accept rate + offer fairness: % of dispatch offers accepted by gig courier pool; offer fairness = couriers feel offers are reasonable in pay + lane + dwell + sequence.
Courier retention + churn drivers: First-90-day retention is the leading indicator; common churn drivers are unfair offers / lane assignment, dispatcher relationship, safety incidents, scheduling, pay-vs-effort, vehicle quality.
Safety cardinality + courier-window discipline: Safety is the ground floor - injuries, vehicle collisions, customer-property incidents - never traded against throughput; courier-window-shave is the dispatch sin.
Non-CDL HOS + regulatory frame: Non-CDL last-mile vans have lighter HOS rules than long-haul (no ELD mandate in most cases), but OSHA + FMCSA + Working Time Directive (EU) apply; gig classification adds another regulatory layer.

Practical drills

Your station has 50 couriers available tomorrow and 1,800 stops to dispatch. Service mix: 60% parcel B2C (next-day window), 30% grocery (2-hour windows clustered 0900-1300 and 1700-2000), 10% same-day on-demand. Couriers split: 35 employee van, 10 partner-fleet, 5 gig overflow available. Walk through how you build the plan - stops per courier target, route-shape logic, courier-mix assignment, and where the binding constraint sits.
Your station's on-time delivery has dropped from 96% to 91% over four weeks. Volume is flat, courier headcount is steady, weather has been normal. Plan compliance has slipped from 92% to 86%. In-day re-dispatch % has risen from 5% to 11%. Walk through your diagnosis from the board and the first three interventions.
It's peak week. Your station is at 130% of baseline volume (3,250 stops vs 2,500). On-time is 89% against a 96% commitment. Courier accept rate has dropped from 82% to 68%. Two routes per shift are running 60-90 minutes late. Walk through the 72-hour recovery plan with the headline capacity math + the dispatch + courier + customer levers.

Smart-question anchors

Operating-model mix - parcel + grocery + on-demand + quick-commerce, station + depot footprint, urban vs suburban posture
Dispatch board structure - station-anchored vs centralised OCC, span of control, shift coverage
Courier model - employee vs gig vs partner-fleet mix, recruiting funnel + retention posture, offer-engine maturity
Routing + dispatch tooling - in-house vs commercial platform, dynamic vs static, AI / ML maturity, mobile + telematics integration
Customer commitments - on-time + first-attempt commitments, delivery-window options, out-of-home (locker + pick-up point) share

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