The sheer number of comments at the main post ‘So I Won’t Be A Commission Official‘ has been causing problems, so all the old comments are here instead, and hence searchable.

2,067 Comments

  1. Suzana

    @ riviere

    Actually, CAST=Contract Agent Selection Tool
    This is the central server managed by the Commission Data Centre in Luxembourg where all the applications are stored

  2. riviere

    Gracias. Now I just need to know how you found out ?

  3. CAST = Contract Agents Selection Test

  4. riviere

    @ Breach thanks for the enlightenment on the NUMBER 27 but what about the letters C.A.S.T. ?
    What do they signify ?
    Admittedly I have better things to worry about with the tests next Friday 13th………. But still………

  5. Breach

    @riviere: AFAIK the number has to do with the enlargement countries — e.g. CAST 25 was for citizens of all countries of the EU prior to Bulgaria’s and Romania’s accession. Then you have CAST 25. CAST positions are temporary ones. Though I hear there are people who’ve been temporary agents for at least 10 years now. You can’t just switch to a permanent position (which pays better). There are typically AD exams for these each year (and the tests there are tougher). I doubt that even EPSO know when they’ll organise a new CAST — guess about two years from now.

  6. riviere

    CAST – ANYONE know what the letters stand for ? It annoys me not to know;

    CAST 28 – ANYONE have any idea when the next load of tests is likely to be ? Are they every year more or less ? [Do enough officials top themselves each year to require and annual influx ??

  7. sunflower

    @ Chowdhury

    I really will be grateful, if after the 10th you could come back on this website and tell us (if it’s not your 1st competition) how did you find EU tests (easier, more difficult) of an AD or CAST 25 competition.
    Thanks in advance!

  8. Chowdhury

    Any one to help.

    I am giving exam on 10th july.EPSO/CAST 27,Dev.Co-operation Adviser-Good gover & Security. I must do preselection test in French as you have to choose second language. How I shall be comfortable with the french test.Of course numerical reasoning is very hard.Any English speaking friend gives exam in French?I am Belgian.Thank you.

    Chowdhury.

  9. I’m back from ECHA interview, after an interview at EFDA/ITER Staff. First of all I must admit that ECHA seems to be a really interesting place. EPSO have organized interviews directly with ECHA responsible peple, so you had also the possibility to speak with them, ITER have decided to have an indipendet commission, this mean that many of them had to admit not to have any knowledge about Fusion.
    I had a wonderful impression from ECHA, they are professional, friendly and they know what to ask, a negative impression from ITER/EFDA staff. I hope it will help someone for the next interviews.

  10. Breach

    @fr

    Hah! Interesting. Isn’t this like half-admitting their current data base is lacking? 🙂

  11. … and there is call from EPSO’s web site today for a new set of questions for several area, amongst which ICT, so chances are that people who have made several tests will lose their edge as well 8^)

  12. Breach: yes, I think the automatic generation of the test probably helped me vs. hurt you 8^( I guess that our posts will be useful for anyone going for the ICT profile, as the competency test is usually what people have the most questions on. In any case good luck too!

  13. Breach

    @fr, sorry I missed your first post. Well, if the majority of questions you were asked were like that then you got lucky 😉 (At least from my point of view) I did fine with all UNIX, Windows, TCP/IP, what-is-ADSL-sort-of-questions, Project Management theory questions, etc. Problem is, they were about 10 in my case 😉 I also think I did fine with most Programming / DBMS questions, but we’ll see. Again, the tests are automatically generated on the fly from a common database, so it does involve luck too. Good luck!

  14. Christos Bezirtzoglou

    @Viking

    Normally the jury gets a normal print-out of the e-CV you upload to EPSO. No special formatting in my knowledge.

    @ Vinking, Suzana and other people who bought the first edition of my book

    Since I am in the process of finalising the next edition of my book, I would be glad to incorporate your comments and remarks. I would be honoured if you send them to my email c.bezirtzoglou@vip.gr.

    I am also thinking of introducing a section with the experiences during the competition of candidates from all grades and specialities. If you are interested, please email me.

  15. riviere

    FT
    or email me directly to rivierephoenix@gmail.com

  16. riviere

    ft

    any chance u can remember more specifically of the eu orientated qs ??

  17. Viking

    @ Christos

    1.
    I must admit that I had difficulties making a short CV before my oral exam even though I was aware of the fact that a long CV is no advantage at all.

    However, I’d like to stress that I’ve never seen an official printed version of an EPSO-CV – by which I mean the version the members of the jury have at their disposal. It is possible that the CVs are formatted in a way which makes them slimmer. The version I could print from the EPSO home page was very long due to the large amount of (partially unfilled) different rubrics.

    2.
    You are right about the non-discrimination principle. Thus, the option I suggested is not viable.

    3.
    PS
    I had purchased your book before I took my exam and it was helpful. Thanks for that!

  18. OK, I did the test for CAST 27 FG IV / ICT this morning. Verbal / numerical test was as expected, not very difficult but indeed some more tricky questions and time was just about right with some pressure at the end for the numerical test. I was not proud of myself on the EU test because most of the questions were on which treaty introduced such body or institution, which is something I have some mental block to remember, but in the end the weighing is only 20% without a passing score. I would have preferred questions on how the current EU works and what are the policies, but OK, it was my first EPSO exam 8^)

    I have to say that I am puzzled by Breach’s remark on the ICT test: the one I had definitely did not have MOST of the questions on spacial vector, dithering… and so on. I got the ETRS89 question, however most of the 40 questions were more general ICT questions in nature, like what is ADSL, CORBA, which of these 4 is a valid IP address and even 2/3 questions that can be found on the eu-competitions.com web site in the ICT test. I am guessing there is some random assignment of questions here?

  19. Christos Bezirtzoglou

    @Viking

    Note that a four-five pages CV is not better than a two pages CV. Beware that the jury will have to read (more often skim through) all CV from people who passed to the oral stage.

    The way that they do it, is by taking 5-10 minutes just before the actual oral examinations (Start blowing my own horn: You could find a detailed timeline for the oral exams in my book. Stop blowing my own horn)

    Thus, making your own version as suggested is no option! At the very end the jury should dismiss your “special” version of your CV based on the non-discrimination principle.

    General remark: Of course my suggestions are not a panacea, but rather an educated guess (well, a little bit more!) based on information and feedback from a number of candidates and members of jury. At the very end, it is in the hand of individual candidate to make their CV better.

  20. Viking

    Hi Christos,

    Three pages seems a bit unrealistic to me. I don’t know if you have seen the new e-CV from EPSO, but it is difficult to keep it down to a reasonable amount of pages. In addition, there is no formatting option so you cannot highlight anything. This makes it difficult to write a text which is easy to skim.

    The only solution I can think of is to take the data and the structure from the e-CV and make your own version which you give to the EPSO-secretary before the exam. If you write the CV in an intelligent way and highlight the most important facts, it will be possible for the jury to skim the text very quickly. This should make one’s chances better.

  21. @ Breach any other spoiler you can share ? 8^)

    I have my test tomorrow, was fairly confident for the numerical/verbal reasoning and EU parts, but kind of nervous about the ICT part since there is no way to find out what kind of questions can be asked. Now you got me scared!

    I guess I’ll post more on that tomorrow for those interested.

  22. Christos Bezirtzoglou

    @Suzana

    No specific specifics 🙂 exists.

    The main constraint that the jury has is extremely limited time. In that sense prioritise the drafting of your CV as follows:
    1) Keep brief and concentrate on essentials – three pages is already long and the jury is not interested to learn about your kindergarden studies,
    2) Tailor draft the CV according to the job description and present the truth – you do not want to find out that you are lying (i.e. if you have done one presentation in public, it will be useless to claim public speaking competenties!)

    Have your CV and your claims scrutinized by a “real” friend, who will spot the inconsistenties.

    Finally, thank you for buying my book. Please note that recently we have published also a French version, entitled “La Voie de la Réussite aux examens oraux de l’Union européenne”.

    c.bezirtzoglou@vip.gr

  23. Suzana

    @ Christos
    Thank you for your reply.
    I already have your book. I just need some more detailed info, because as you very well know,there are many ways to present your work history and still be bried, logical and truthful. I have tailored drafted my CV many times before, but for private companies, not for EPSO;-) There must be some specifics..

  24. Christos Bezirtzoglou

    @Suzana

    Please find below an extract of the new edition of “Succeeding in the EU Oral Examinations” pertinent to your question on CV presentation

    • Have a presentable CV
    • Keep brief
    • Be logical
    • Concentrate on essentials
    • Present the truth and nothing but the truth
    • Tailor-draft your CV
    • Use the required template only

  25. Dear unsuccessful AD/26/05 candidates,

    you may have noticed that the reserve list has finally been published last Friday. I did not pass although I was well prepared and in my view performed well in the oral exam. More surprisingly I did not even get the pass mark – the minimum points required to take into account the good results of my previous written exams.

    At first I was quite struck – but after some networking I discovered some interesting aspects I would like to share:

    1. The statistical results show some evidence of preferential treatment of candidates who have the same nationality as the majority of the jury members or speak their language.

    http://www.es-ue.org/Documents/1313%20EPSO-AD-25-26-27-28-29-05%20et%20EPSO-AST-07-05%20laureates.pdf

    2. The only nationalities which performed significantly above average were the Italians (96%), the Belgians (74%), the Spanish (73%) and the French (73%).

    3. The jury was composed of 3 Italians, 2 Spanish, 1 French, 1 Austrian and 1 Irish. The exam language was French. Full jury members were 1 Italian, 1 French and 2 Spanish.

    4. There is clear evidence that the jury messed up the rules of procedure which facilitated arbitrary decisions.
    It seems that every unsuccessful candidate received a grade below pass mark.

    In total only 174 candidates passed to the reserve list although according to the OJ the jury had to select 180 candidates.

    5. According to EPSO’s webpage the jury was composed of 4 full (including president and vice-president) and 4 alternate members. On my day only 3 jury members were present. On other days juries were composed randomly with the correct number of 4 and even 5 members. I know of at least 4 exam days were only 3 jury members were present.

    6. Apparently the jury did not follow any pattern of substitution: Everybody substituted everybody – it was a complete mess.

    7. The legal information provided on EPSO’s webpage is obviously and entirely wrong. In particular the time limit to file an informal complaint within 20 days has no legal meaning and the information on the exclusivity of complaint and lawsuit is wrong, too. I am wondering is this a sign of incompetence or intention?

    8. Everybody concerned is entitled to file a formal complaint within a time limit of 3 months – i.e. until 10 August 2007 . This complaint is a pre-condition to file a lawsuit.

    9. EPSO refuses any motivation of its negative decisions nor comments on the disparity of composition.

    10. I am convinced that the procedural mistakes constitute a violation of the principle of equal treatment and the obligation to ensure the stability of jury composition. According to the CFI case law such substantial mistakes in procedure can lead to annulment at least of the individual decisions.

    11. I have invested a lot of energy and time to prepare for this concours apparently rigged. Perhaps I was a bit naive to believe in a fair selection procedure in the orals but as a lawyer I am not prepared to accept this without exhausting all legal means.

    12. Financial risks are limited: proceedings in public service matters are free of court charges, the Commission is obliged to bear its own costs.

    13. I am looking for everybody concerned by a negative decision in this concours, AD/26/05, to share information, knowledge and work. Please contact me if interested! The more – the merrier.

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSO_lawsuit/

    P.S.: As a clarification for all others: I am sure that everybody who passed deserves it – my congratulations for being lucky! It is EPSO’s fault composed of legal service officers who are seemingly incapable to observe the most basic rules. And one of this rules is: If you cheat make it look right – apparently procedure was not the strong suit of this jury.

    We are a group of people who feel deceived and want to exercise our right to appeal against a decision we believe is unfair.

  26. Suzana

    Can someone recommend a good coach for the oral exam? I;m interested mostly in advise for how to write and present the CV.

  27. riviere

    Breach – cd u email me?

    rivierephoenix@gmail.com

    thanx.

  28. riviere

    BREACH

    [IS THAT …. as in…. ‘breach birth’ ? ] U shd definitely complain, and you won’t be the only one; tho’ I reckon you might get more change out of complaining to yr MEP as well as the Ombudsman.
    The point is, we all accept there is a need for testing but the tests must be FAIR. It is not fair if some Competences can check out in advance what sort of questions are being asked in their Specialism (as they can in Law, for ex) and some cannot. When you have no idea what they might be asking then it becomes just who gets lucky on the day rather than who is the most competent.
    SO do complain. Maybe if enough complain we could have another bash in a few months. I’m fairly confident I could get through if I knew what i was preparing for……..
    The generic reply ‘ Look at the J-D’ is absurd, when there are Specialisms who don’t have to do that but can just look at past papers.

  29. sunflower

    @ Breach
    When someone asks infos about the competence test, EPSO is replying generically to check the profile’s nature of duties described in the call. So, if the subject of your competence test was not listed in the nature of your duties, you should officially complain.

  30. Breach

    @sunflower, nope, not RELEX

    @pollux
    No, I’m not certain I was tested in the right category, that’s for sure 🙂 However, the presence of programming, RDBMS questions and the like suggests so… My current best guess is that the ‘communications’ part was prepared by LANDSAT people or some such… there was one (1) question which was about GPS, and that’s about it…

  31. sunflower

    Breach, for which category you took the CAST27 tests? A RELEX profile?

  32. pollux

    @Breach

    Are you sure they tested you in the right category? Maybe there was an error and you were assigned to the wrong profile. There *are* several profiles related to geographic information systems, geodesy and remote sensing, so…

  33. Breach

    To give a simple example (spoiler here) I know you guys are competition: What is the ETRS89?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETRS89

    Somehow I can’t help but notice that it’s in the Geodesy category 🙂

  34. Breach

    Let me share my CAST 27 ICT experience:

    a) Verbal test — pretty decent, couple of tricky ones, but on the right level, and time was ample (at least for me)

    b) Numerical test — really got me this time — simply not enough time. The questions all had a nice table but the questions required a lot comprehension and calculations. Mind you, these are still all very basic calculations, chiefly percentages, but I ran out of time here!! Think the previous test was way easier (then again, the questions are automatically generated so luck is also involved here)

    c) EU test — I’m getting good at the EU, got about 90% right for sure 🙂

    d) ICT Competence test… Uh…OK, so. If you’re into IT (like me) you are in for a surprise! I’m in a Senior Position at an US software company and I’ve been serious IT for the last 10 years. In total there were about 5 sane, IT questions. Lots of OOP / RDBMS related ones, think I got some of them right, though I’m not a Developer or a DBA.

    BUT! The big but has to do with the the majority of the questions which were about — cartography and geodesy (not even sure that’s the official title for this stuff! Now, what exactly does that have to do with ICT? I mean, fine satellite mapping etc, but the questions were simply out of scope for this test. Spatial vector whatever, dithering, pixel approximation, come on? Am I the only one who didn’t see this coming? I’m actually considering contacting the Ombudsman as this is simply not funny — EPSO need to least publish a list of areas which are tested when they say ICT — apparently they have a whole different vision than me (don’t think that’s just me too).

    Good luck to everyone here.

  35. @ Pixie.

    I had my oral exam last week (field Law).
    It was less knowledge-based than expected and more HR-oriented.
    Knowledge-based questions were more general (e.g. what do you know about EU social policy, Eurojust, ESC and CR, the dury to state reasons), not very detailed technical questions.
    There was no 5min presentation on one of the topics of the written exam (as was the case with AD 26/05), just brief CV presentation.
    The rest was more HR-bullshit like (my favourite!) – what would you do if you catch your colleague drinking at work…!?!

    No questions about recent events/legislation or the Constitution.

    Good luck!

  36. riviere

    PS – DOES ANYONE HAVE AN IDEA WHEN THE NEXT SET OF TESTS IS LIKELY TO BE ORGANIZED ?
    I am clearly going to fail this lot but am confident I could pass them if I had time to prepare and knew quite what I was preparing for….
    Question is : how long will I have to wait for another chance ?

  37. riviere

    On 13 July RELEX candidates are not doing comp-based tests.
    We are doing classic paper and pen tests in 3 sections:
    1} EU stuff [ = who was the first Pres of the EEC and so on]
    2} Numerical / Verbal reasoning [past questions are easy to find]
    3} Your Specialism – and it is different depending on which Specialism you plumped for. Now, my point is, many if not most Specialisms you can look at past papers – classic ex Law. But I can find ZERO on Political Matters – and it is a v v wide area – much wider than #Law# or #IT# or whatever.

  38. Did someone already go to the oral exam for AD 46/06 or 47/06? Pls share some info…
    Many thanks!!

  39. pollux

    @ana maria

    Google for “lixium” AND “epso”, then you will find a forum.

  40. pollux

    @riviere

    In the first computer-based test, the questions are the same for every group of spezialisation.

  41. riviere

    CAST 27 – POLITICAL MATTERS SPECIALISM?

    DOES anyone have any idea how one can ascertain the KINDS OF QUESTIONS which will be posed in the Specialism for Political Matters Adviser ????
    I can see how you could prepare for EU LAW specialism for example – there are textbooks as Seb has pointed out – but how does one get any remote idea of the kind of questions which will be asked for Political Matters ? And will they be MCQs or an essay or a Dossier or what????
    Have such tests been run before ? Is it possible to see a previous paper ????

    There have to be tests – I have no objection to that – but surely unless one is able to prepare on the basis of a reasonable assessment of the likely KIND of questions the tests become more a case of who gets lucky on the day (or has inside knowledge) rather than who is objectively the most able ??

    ANyone with useful info please email me directly at
    rivierephoenix@gmail.com as well as answering here

  42. Ana Corina

    Does anyone take part in this competition, Psychopedagogy Adviser Cast 27?
    Did anyone take part in this competiton Cast 25?
    I would like to find out more details about the second part of this exam ( specific knowledge questions, specific knowledge books).
    Thanks a lot.
    crn_radulescu@yahoo.com

  43. ana maria

    could anyone tell me if there is a yahoo group on eu competitions in the field of law?

  44. pollux

    @Georgia

    Q:”Anyone having passed the Cast 25 who have got an e-mail calling them to submit CV to any agency?”

    Have you been registered with the ELSA database? As a successful candidate in FG3/4, you are asked to enter your CV in ELSA, so that they have a better basis to compare the skills of successful CAST25 candidates when making their selection. Of course you could also submit your CV to each institution, but that would be rather inefficient.
    Another way would be to enter your CV on the “EU CV” website. All institution have access to it.

    For some exotic profiles in FG4, the agencies/institutions can even directly consider ELSA, they don’t _have to_ only choose from successful CAST25 candidates.
    …which is a pity for them of course.

  45. @georgia

    yes, thanks. I’d like to have some information about the test, the kind of questions, the written part and so on

    did you pass it?

    then I have a great doubt: as a proofreader, are you going to work mainly in your mother tongue language or mainly in one of the three official working languages?

    if you prefer, my email is anasazi_nospam@alice.it
    (removing _nospam obviously)

    @korvin

    sorry, but I don’t have any sample test, apart from that published on epso web site

    bye

  46. Korvin

    Hi,

    I forget to give my mail adress : renoym@hotmail.com

    Thanks

    Korvin

  47. Korvin

    Hello Georgia and Peter,

    I will be very pleased if you could tell me about the test of proofreaders and more pleased if you could share with me some samples of questions with answer.

    I’m going to do the test EPSO/AST/38/07 (correcteurs d’épreuves typographiques). I have seen that the preselection test will be of 4 parts.

    It is the first time that I’m going to do a test in proofreaders and question are very specific so if I could have some sample of previous test in field (correcteurs d’épreuves typographiques) in french ? (série de questions à choix multiple en fr visant à évaluer les connaissances spécifiques des candidats en rapport avec la nature des fonctions, ici correcteur typographique). ? Ce sont des questions assez spécifiques du genre qu’est qu’un cadratin, que signifie le terme extra light, …

    Si vous aviez également des tests écrits concernant ce domaine, ce serait super !

    I will be thanks full if you could help me and send me some samples about these tests.

    Thanks

    Korvin

  48. Georgia

    @peter

    I took the test for proofreaders two years ago. I could tell you what the test was all about if that’s what you need.

    By the way, is anyone sitting for the Cast 27 Relex tests on July 13th?

    Anyone having passed the Cast 25 who have got an e-mail calling them to submit CV to any agency? I got one from the new agency in Helsinki. Would anyone have an idea what’s next?

  49. hi, is anyone doing the Cast 27 preselection for the function of proofreader?

    or anyone working for EU as proofreader?

  50. adrianas

    Hi everybody,

    is there someone who already took the oral exam AD46 for Romanian/Bulgarian citizens? I am interested in possible subjects to the oral exam in Auditing. This is my e-mail in case someone knows something: adriannas11@yahoo.com

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