Dispatch Planning interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV.
2. Tell me about a dispatch or planning problem you owned end-to-end - on-time, plan compliance, exception handling, or courier utilisation.
3. Why dispatch + planning - versus station operations, courier management, or routing engineering?
4. Why last-mile - versus long-haul trucking dispatch, middle-mile, or warehouse planning?
5. Why the firm?
6. What's your read on the firm's dispatch + planning operation?
7. Tell me what you understand about how the firm runs its dispatch tooling and routing - platform, dynamic vs static, OCC integration.
8. 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.

Technical concepts to master

• Route build + density + courier match

  VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) + last-mile variants · Density + stops-per-hour as the cost lever · Stems + dispatch ratio + plan validation · Static vs dynamic routing - when each fits · Courier-order matching priority

• Dispatch board mechanics + macros + tooling

  Macros + status codes · Dispatch board archetypes - station-anchored vs centralised OCC · Last-mile routing platforms - in-house vs commercial · Board hygiene + plan freshness + shift hand-off · Span of control + dispatcher to courier ratio

• Exception handling + IROPS + dynamic re-plan

  Triage priority order · Dynamic re-dispatch mechanics · Weather + IROPS playbook · Courier no-show + employee fleet shortfall · Customer refusal + exception handling

• Courier-pool utilisation + safety + customer-window discipline

  Courier accept rate + offer fairness · Courier retention + churn drivers · Safety cardinality + courier-window discipline · Non-CDL HOS + regulatory frame · Customer-window respect + on-time + first-attempt

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

Sourced from

CSCMP State of Logistics + Last-Mile chapter (Kearney + CSCMP annual) · Last-Mile Experts + Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index + ParcelHero analyst reports · Routific + Onfleet + Bringg + Locus.sh + Wise Systems routing-platform documentation + practitioner blogs · OSHA + DOT FMCSA Hours-of-Service + Vehicle Safety standards + EU Working Time Directive · Dispatcher + courier-manager interview banks (Glassdoor + Indeed + Reddit r/logistics + r/AmazonDSPDrivers + r/UPSers + RocketBlocks operations track) · MIT Center for Transportation + Logistics + Georgia Tech Supply Chain - urban logistics + dispatch research