The results of the concours for administrators are now out, and – surprise, surprise – I did not manage to pass. Here’s the extract of the letter:
The selection board for the above competition has now finished marking the pre-selection tests in which you participated. I regret to inform you that although the marks you obtained in these tests were above or equal to the pass mark, you were not amongst the top 630 candidates.
Point B.1 of the competition notice stipulates that only those candidates with the 630 highest marks in the pre-selection tests would be asked to submit a full application with a view to their possible admission to the competition.
Your marks are as follows (1):
Test a): 38.333 /60 (pass mark 30)
Test b): 15.263 /20 (pass mark 10)
Test c): 30.769 /40 (pass mark 20)Total: 84.365/ 120
For your information, the candidates who obtained the 630 highest combined scores had at least 92.611 points.
I would add that the Selection Board’s decision does not preclude you from taking part in any future competitions organised by the European Personnel Selection Office.
It’s beyond me how one can get 15.263 / 20 when there were 40 questions, but anyway, c’est la vie. All the best to all the geeks who know who won the Sakharov prize in the year X or other equally useful everyday facts.
FILE DOWNLOADS
Blog commenter ‘viking’ has made some new test files available for download, and he had also supplied the manual for electronic Reserve Lists. Some additional test files have been provided by Sorina (see comment #1003) – download 342kb, ZIPped. Enjoy!
SOCIAL NETWORKS
If anyone is a member of Facebook there’s the ‘So I won’t be a Commission official’ Facebook Group, and the EU Integration Traveler IQ challenge (you need to add the Traveler IQ Facebook application) – a more fun way to revise for the concours…
NOTE
Due to such an enormous number of comments here I have had to divide the comments function. The latest few hundred comments are below, and all the older comments are archived here. All should work technically now.
now that epso is going to launch the new style competition…..what will happen to reserve lists still valid and full of people waiting to be contacted ? any insider with ideas about it ?
Hi all,
I have passed an AST3 exam and I am on the famous waiting list from January. From your experience, how long a candidate should wait for before being contacted ? I know that some of us are never contacted but in average… any idea?
Do you think that it is useful to contact institutions directly (if you do not have any contact?) I just do not want to loose my time…
thanks in advance!
Is anybody else here taking EPSO/AD/147/09 (EPA)? It is so frustrating how results from the written tests are sent to us piece by piece. I got the results from the MCQ in December, results from written test b today, and results from written test c are expected “in due time”. According to the indicative planning, the orals were supposed to be in April but given the delay with notifications at this stage, the timeline will be pushed back.
Should I be hopeful about written test c? I wonder if this is mostly a formality that you are, in fact, fluent in your native language, or whether they do care about structure,substance etc.
In reply to Jon’s original question (don’t know if it has not been stated before),
how could such strange numbers emerge…
From a message from EPSO:
As a result of an inaccuracy identified once the written tests had been held, the Selection Board has decided to delete the following multiple choice questions:
Test a): questions 5, 19 and 20
In order to ensure equality of treatment for all candidates, the decision to delete these questions has been applied to the tests in all languages. The total score given in the Notice of Competition remains unchanged. The value of each remaining question has been calculated by dividing the total score by the number of remaining questions.
Hello,
last week I was included in a ECHA Reserve List, for a CA FG III position.
Does anybody have experience on how recruitment works in that Agency? Someone out there already working in Helsinki?
My experience in an EPSO AD Reserve List has been quite frustrating so far (like for many of us in this forum), and I was wondering if I can hope to have more chances with an Agency.
Thanks in advance!
It is not 100% right. Some positions, even if paid by the EU budget and according with the Staff Regulation, are not exempt from national taxes. Try to ask to the AD, AST and contract agents working for the European University Institute or for the College of Europe.
whatever. all EU salaries are taxed by the EU not belgium.
Tell me your political orientation and I will tell you the vacancy for you. 😉
Every parliamentary group have some present or past vacancy.
If someone is an Official in some institution, he could be detached there.
Other questions are: the salary is tax free or is it subject to the Belgian tax law? I know that some posts as AD, AST or CA for some organisations are not exempt from national taxes…
could you point me to the vacancy notice?
Hi,
I have read some vacancy notice for positions at the EP, as a Temporary Agent for parliamentary groups. I have found something not clear: the duration of the contract. They usually specify the starting date (or month) but the duration of the contract it is not stated.
Are contracts for a discretional period, or until the new elections, or for an indefinite duration? Thanks
Hi all,
I passed a AST/77-86/09 competition. What would be the next right thing to do? To find out to which insitution I am resevred and try to send my Cv and application to the insitutions or wait for the flagging to start and see if I am flagged. This is all very new procedure for me, so any help and advice would be appriciated.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you Nitta,
Every time when I ask a question you are so helpful and sympathetic. Thanks once again:)
Hi, I am sure this has been replied before, but could you please let me know whether you get reimbursed your travel costs when you get invited for a CA interview? Also, in terms of the level they hire you, I would be very grateful if you could let me know whether internships and masters are counted as professional experience (I’m not sure how that ”more than four years of professional experience” for grade FGIV 14 works)
Many thanks!
D
@sunflower
Purely hypothetically, do you think someone else might have been offered the job? Isn’t it customary in that case to inform me (the rejected party) as soon as possible of this fact? It’s rather cruel to keep a candidate waiting for over a month for a negative answer!
Regards,
Michael
@ Michael
After medical tests and paper submitted to DG ADMIN, it passed 1 month and 5 days before I got my job offer, so your job offer should be on its way to you.
As Rayos said, you first will receive it scanned by email and a couple of days later by normal post.
Good luck!
no prob – enjoy your far from brussels destination
Well, Bones, a far-far away diplomatic job has its fascination to me and my target was to work for an international organisation (I prefer not saying more about myself).
Maybe I will get a permanent job, if not, I will have gained an important experience for further career developments.
36 year old leaving a permanent job to take a (entry grade?) CA position? may I ask what country you are from? best of luck thou’
I got my European Contract! Well it is not an AD5 post (I passed the Job Competition) but a far-far away CA post. Like old-boy (or girl) FRUSTRATED said, I put a foot in the door and I am very happy. I am also leaving a very comfortable (even if definitely under-paid) post in the civil service of my country to start this ‘new life’.
Friends, I want to spend one word against the stream. I made and passed EPSO competitions, they have been hard and long but very fair. I never saw any doubtful situation and, btw, neither heard anything from many friends I met.
Like many of us, I sent some dozens of spontaneous applications. It’s been tiring and frustrating but open, everybody can do it. I never had to postulate to the powerful people in search of recommendations from the friends of friends, and it is very nice.
I considered to work for other international bodies and, really, it is neither clear how does recruitment work.
I don’t know if I am a ‘bête de concourse’. If so, I was not aware in the last 36 years. If I see to the standard competitions, laureates needed to (a) have some knowledge of EU (let’s say of the Organisation), (b) to be able in verbal and numerical tests (a very objective skill), (c) to know their field of expertise, (d) to be able to summarize and report on a working subject, (e) to be able to manage a de-visu interview.
If I would need to recruit an employee I would really care for this kind of requirements.
Well, the system has its problems, but what in the world has not? So at the end I believe in ‘fair job competition’ as a real opportunity of professional & social growth. Without job competitions, many of us would not have the opportunity to develop an international career and (this is potential) much more incompetent-but-well-introduced people would have overtaken us.
In my last post, I’ve been asking if you all noticed how this forum is changing. It was a laureates and job competitors forum. Now there are many insiders that talk of the internal problems (with their good reasons) and it is very likely they are the same people. So it seem to me that many of us are getting their opportunity. Isn’t it?
I know that soon I will have to cope with insiders issues but, by the moment, I am grateful to EPSO and EU Institutions and I wish good luck to you all.
Many thanks once more to Jon for this great forum.
Rayos,
Do you work at the Commission? You must have a pretty bold HoU who dared to give you a clearance before the results of the medical examination was concluded (should you really have to wait for them for three weeks? What else might procrastinate the process – I am quite sure nobody else has been offered the job?).
Regards,
M
@fbb
And to Nitta: “As the old EU15 secretaries are totaly unsuitable for doing any kind of job – labeling an envelope, book a meetingroom via Outlook, not to mention speaking some English” – oh boy missy, you really are full of yourself aren’t you??
you obviously don’t work where I do. There are some who are very competent, but there are plenty of others who are absolutely useless – long-term sick leave, unfamiliarity with computers, unable to draft minutes properly, unfriendly to boot, unwillingness to change… That doesn’t stop them collecting 5000+euros net. ASTs are – relatively – the most overpaid staff in the institutions.
point 2
The age limits were discriminatory and absolutely unjustified. They cut out a lot of excellent candidates, who would have had a lot of positive things to offer to the EU institutions.
But probably no less fair than the current system. equal pay for equal work anyone?
@Michael
The HR department will send you an e-mail with the signed and scanned letter of invitation to the job.
In my case the HoU called me informally a few days after the interview to inform me that I will be the chosen candidate. This is probably because I have a nice HoU. And also he wanted to make sure that I can prepare a bit to start the job as early as possible, as it was a distance recruiting that he knew would involve me moving to the new location, terminating my private sector work contract etc. etc.
Of course even though an informal phone call means that you will receive the letter, I would not recommend you to quit your job without the written job offer.
@Frustrated beyond belief
After all, I’m more than 34-36 years old :))
@Frustrated beyond belief
I totally agree with you!!! The age limitation was, without a doubt, discriminatory. I was just “remembering” how things have changed in 10-15 years time.
@mloplop
I remember, but unlike with the degree thing, abolishing the age limit was a GOOD thing. It was in fact one of the best decisions ever made regarding EU recruitment competitions (just like abolishing the “no university degree” requirement for AST competitions was one of the worst, if not in fact _the_ worst.)
The age limits were discriminatory and absolutely unjustified. They cut out a lot of excellent candidates, who would have had a lot of positive things to offer to the EU institutions.
What about AST 52/2008? Anyone contacted yet?
Does anyone know the current recruitment situation of the candidates that passed CAST27 for the Scientific Adviser profile? Has everybody been contracted (except me, of course)?
It was rather suspicious that the results came out almost a year later after the exam.
Thank you very much for sharing any piece of info!!!!
Hello,
I’m new here. I find all your messages very helpful.
From the document that Elated has provided,
http://eca.europa.eu/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/2812316.PDF
Apart from the incredible 7.200€ that costs each laureate, I would underline point number 32 which says that the institutions asked EPSO for 15.000 laureates and they only provided 10.000. Furthermore, only 7.000 of those ended with a contract.
Also very eye opening are the tables on pages 31 and 32. Of those 10.000 laureates two thirds come from EU-12 and one third from EU-15. EU-15 has four times as much population as EU-12. A country like the UK with a 60 million inhabitants produces half as many laureates as Estonia with 1.3 million citizens. Of course many competitions were restricted to the new countries so there is a logic behind this. But if we forget the ratio population/laureates and look at the ratio participants/laureates we find that some countries like Italy get a laureate for every 22 candidates that take the exams, while others like Malta or Estonia get a laureate for every 3.5 participants. Six times more chances in one case compared to the other.
Still, the most annoying thing is the one that says that only 70% of laureates end getting a contract after only 66% of the openings offered end with a successful laureate. That simply cannot be right. People should be informed of this situation before they inscribe to the whole process. This means that the real number of contracts available are actually half of those offered in the official notice of competition.
Thank you for reading and thank you to Jon for providing this place.
Does anyone know who’ll approach you after a concluded (successful) job interview – is it GD HR by letter or the Head of Unit with a telephone call?
Three weeks have passed since the interview and the medical examination.
The post in question is an AD5.
@Frustrated beyond belief
Don’t you remember that, apart from the impossibility for someone holding a University degree to take part in AST competitions, there was also an age limit (in the early 90s competitions)? I think the limit was 34-36.
@ JF
The Institution/s that asked for the competition has exclusive priority until it renounces it. In my case, that lasted until I found out that number two on the merit list got my job because of hard lobbying, and then I requested that the Institution let the reserve list go. They agreed to renounce exclusivity very quickly. That was LESS than 12 months into the validity of the RL.
AD
@frustrated – I agree, why they just announced an AST to AD competition is totally beyond me.
On the other hand, the institutions are quite happy to recruit grossly overqualified AD staff (34/35 years old on average) for graduate level positions, and seem to expect them to work diligently, collect their salary, and never have an ounce of ambition.
@concoursman – this isn’t ENA, where after a two-year elite formation the top laureate chooses his or her DG. the recruitment system is far from perfect and everyone knows that. Asking institutions to pick the ‘top’ off the list is unrealistic within the context of the current system. on the other hand, it seems to me only fair that EPSO is far more honest with candidates – but why would it want to do that? (“join the EU, if you husband or wife is already working here in a highly-graded AD job, it’s probably your best option to pick up 2/3000k on the side”)
Nitta,
I thought it was your last post?
Di
link is too long, case F‑53/07
Di,
there were a similar court case a few years ago, I digged it out for you.
http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=en&jurtfp=jurtfp&numaff=&nomusuel=&ddatefs=01&mdatefs=06&ydatefs=2006&ddatefe=30&mdatefe=12&ydatefe=2008&docnodecision=docnodecision&allcommjo=allcommjo&affint=affint&affclose=affclose&alldocrec=alldocrec&docor=docor&docav=docav&docsom=docsom&docinf=docinf&alldocnorec=alldocnorec&docnoor=docnoor&radtypeord=on&newform=newform&docj=docj&docop=docop&docnoj=docnoj&typeord=ALL&domaine=&mots=&resmax=100&Submit=Rechercher
I’m afraid it depends on the Selection Board. I know people who passed the AST competition with no relevant work experience (which I had, my dear dear friends, as no one supported my higher education, I work since I was 17, when left school and finished secondary part-time:))
Some of them are English or German teacher, there is a judge (yes), a few in IT (I know two former Head of Unit who are now AST1), err…a tourist guide. Quite many are economist. Time to time I have to sceen the EPSO database when we look for new AST staff and I noticed that most of them (I would say 98%) has at least one degree. (EU27)
Try again later, maybe you get lucky with another Selection Board.
To this yes/no degree argument – they had degree but did not put into their CV. So no reason to discriminate. Also from a HR source:)
@ Morgane,
You’re welcome.
There’s places where you have more adrenaline, drive and professionalism as a general rule (for some reason people perform better under tight deadline… procrastination is mankind’s favourite pasttime), but then again… if those places aren’t taxed out of existence, they are run by capitalist bloodhounds…
we all make our choices and live to regret them.
Take care and see you soon,
Elated,
many thanks for your earlier info about the timing of the medical exams etc. It does seem to work the way you summarized it.
***
By the way, what a charming discussion about the Commission, our dream employer! You know what, it seems to me that whatever you say about this institution it must be true. It is all there (people just for money and never ending lunches and people with ideas and some drive, good bosses and idiot bosses, professionalism and good skills and guys whom you could ask ‘how did you get in here’ etc.). Good evening!
Well, I was generally speaking, be it AD or AST or whatever…
Frustrated beyond belief, please tell us a graduate from which secretarial school in which city will materialize your dreams? Make a list, submit it to EPSO and there you go. Is this not the way it works?
Which namely Commision do you mean by “maybe the Commission will notice what a mistake it was to abolish the “no uni degree” requirement for secretaries”?
Since a given concours allows a “yes uni degree” this clause must have been debated.
Regards
Nitta, you must be a troll of some devious device…. entertaining nevertheless.
@ FBB
I can see where you’re coming from, but had those quadrilingual secretaries been born 22 years ago, they would now have been donned with a master’s as well and expect to become AD officials … expectations haven’t deflated proportionally to degree inflation and there’s no easy fix here.
I feel your pain, but “user2008” is only right if s/he is talking about ADs.
I am not talking about ADs, I am talking about secretaries. And trust me, those who want to work as secretaries in the Commission, and succeed in an open competition or CA selection, do not spend 4-5 years waiting for a job offer. Not even 4-5 MONTHS.
Hi user2008,
You could not describe it more accurately than that! You are 100% right.
I
@user2008
lol
so true
4-5 years later? Yeah, right!
Trust me, the shortage of good, experienced secretaries in the Commission is such that when the laureate lists, and the CA FG II lists come out, people fight over the candidates. Every single one of them (well, apart from the PhDs with not one day of secretarial experience) gets contacted a dozen times during the first month.
When those people are contacted (this is true especially for the CAs), the problem is not that any significant time has passed; it’s the fact that they are not in any way interested in doing any secretarial work at all, and never have been. For the life of me I don’t understand why they decided to apply in the first place.
And to Nitta: “As the old EU15 secretaries are totaly unsuitable for doing any kind of job – labeling an envelope, book a meetingroom via Outlook, not to mention speaking some English” – oh boy missy, you really are full of yourself aren’t you?? Talk about condescending!
All the four fantastic secretaries in our unit (and indeed all the other secretaries I have come into contact) are EU15s in their forties and early 50s, and they do know how to do all that, and loads more besides. And they are multilingual (French, English, Dutch, German…)
Unfortunately, they are a dying breed. 10 years from now, when they and their kind all retire, maybe the Commission will notice what a mistake it was to abolish the “no uni degree” requirement for secretaries (the situation is bad now; how bad will it be then, I shudder to think!). Unfortunately, it will be too late.
Hi Nitta,
I would like to ask you some questions because maybe you know the answers:)
I received a mail from the Selection Board, that my diploma is not “directly relevant to the nature of the duties “. (The competitoin is EPSO/AST/100/09.) My B.A. is Bulgarian and English Philology and I have M.A.Linguistics and Translation. So, do you know what kind of education I have to have to be admited? Do you know other people working in EU institutions as assistants in secretarial field? What kind of education do they have?
Thank you in advance.
” It is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING to go through the databases, and to contact dozens of candidates, only to find out that the last thing they would do (well, apart from selling themselves on the street) would be to work as a secretary.”
Probably they were too young when they applied for the concours and when you call them 4-5 years later, they have already graduated, married, had children, developed their career. There also might have been someone gone on pension.
@ Frustrated beyond belief
You are so right! I met the people that passed the same concours as me, for a secretarial post and they all have at least 2 Masters or a PhD! And of course they all want to do the work of an AD! But that is not possible so they are just nagging.
The institutions are craving for good and experienced secretaries and unless they change the system, they will never get them. I had 13 years of experience as a secretary and I was the only one with such a background that managed to pass the exams. But of course! If you compete against people with huge diplomas, you get no chances anymore. This is not fair, neither for real secretaries nor for the institutions.
And a note to all ADs out there. Maybe you haven’t heard the rumour but apparently if you have worked as an AST, even if you pass an AD concours later on, the institutions prefer to take other candidates cause having worked as an AST counts as a negative on your CV for the EU. They do not like people who lost time doing secretarial work and don’t trust them to be administrators anymore. This I heard from high-level people working at the Commission. And they inform all people they know to abstain from AST exams. Just go for the AD.
Frustrated beyond belief
“And there was another one, a laureate of a secretary list, who described how she was hired, and then only worked as a secretary for nine months, and then luckily was given a nicer job (yep, another university laureate totally unsuitable to secretarial work). Well how great for you! But what about the secretary post you left open? Bet they were REALLY happy to see you leave after only nine months!”
Actually, it was like that – I work for the Commission for 2,5 years by now, the first 9 months as a secretary. As the old EU15 secretaries are totaly unsuitable for doing any kind of job – labeling an envelope, book a meetingroom via Outlook, not to mention speaking some English – I got extre work and attention from my bosses. Which lead to extra training and responsibilities, which again lead them asking me to take another post as a financial assistant as they considered it was a waste of human resource.
The girl who come as a replacement is Belgian and has 3 degrees, also not unsuitable! She is very bright and I hope she is going to pass an AD competition soon.
You know, these days a secondary school education is just not enough to work as an assistant to top management. We write the Annual Management Plan, the Annual Financial Report, ACUR files and other internal reports as well – just like any other assistant in the privat sector! Why should the EU be different? Work for the EU as an AST is not an excuse for doing nothing and stop self – development. I am really sorry if you don’t understand that. (Which does not mean I will not respect your opinion.)
It was my last post, unfortunately your comments gives me more sadness than any useful inside information to you. Being frustrated is one thing, being rude is another.
take care all
Sorry, I’m not the same “frustrated” who was posting earlier; my previous post was my first one here. I just picked the first “name” that came to my head (and based on my mood at the time of writing..)
But the problem I described is a real one, and a serious one. Which is why it made me so mad to read some of the posts here… “Oh, I passed the CA tests for GFII, Secretary, but I’m not interested in secretarial work at all, so when I get contacted I decline”. WTF?? Well why then did you even take part in GFII SECRETARY tests in the first place?? It is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING to go through the databases, and to contact dozens of candidates, only to find out that the last thing they would do (well, apart from selling themselves on the street) would be to work as a secretary.
And there was another one, a laureate of a secretary list, who described how she was hired, and then only worked as a secretary for nine months, and then luckily was given a nicer job (yep, another university laureate totally unsuitable to secretarial work). Well how great for you! But what about the secretary post you left open? Bet they were REALLY happy to see you leave after only nine months!
Hi frustrated!
nice to see you here again. You give moro info and deep opinions than when elated… 🙂