EUROPEAN DIARY:The aim of the changes in procedure for EU job applications is to recruit a higher calibre of official
A NEW round of recruitment to the EU institutions opened last Tuesday. Within 48 hours, some 9,500 prospective candidates had started the online application procedure (www.eu-careers.eu). Only 323 posts are available so competition is intense, all the more so given the dearth of job opportunities in the recession.
Still, reforms to the recruitment process are designed to make it easier for smart graduates to prevail. There was a time when joining the EU bodies was a two-year marathon with a premium on indepth knowledge of the EU’s structure and history. That cumbersome process has now been streamlined, with competency favoured over a simple facility to retain facts about European treaties and policies.
The core aim is to recruit a higher calibre of official, says David Bearfield, director of the European Personnel Selection Office. People who cram at the weekend on arcane aspects of the EU are not necessarily what the union needs, he adds. “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can do.”
The competition cycle will take between five and nine months. It is the first cycle open to candidates from all 27 member states since the 2004 enlargement. With thousands of EU staff due to retire in the next 10 years, it also marks the start of an annualised staff intake to replenish the ranks. “It’s likely to increase incrementally over the next few years,” says Bearfield of the number of vacancies.
Viewed from high places in Dublin, this is seen as a key opportunity to boost the number of Irish people working their way through the European administration. Although European officials are not allowed to toe the national line, contacts and influence are as important in the EU as in any other sphere of life.
Given the union’s advancing reach, this is crucial. Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said as much at a recent seminar for Irish students organised by his department. “The Lisbon Treaty means that the work of the institutions will grow in importance in the coming years,” he said as he encouraged Irish graduates to apply for new positions.
The Minister was not so blunt as to say the more Irish that work in the EU the better. But that is the thinking.
Figures from 2008 suggest almost 200 of some 250 Irish officials in the European Commission work at a senior level, among them the commission’s top-ranking civil servant, Catherine Day, and trade director general, David O’Sullivan. The concern, however, is that only 66 Irish officials were working at lower grades. This puts fewer Irish in line to rise to the higher echelons of the commission as time proceeds. The Government wants to reverse that.
From Brussels, the authorities see the new recruitment process as a keystone for the future.
“We’re going to be losing a lot of experience. We’re acutely aware of the war for talent. There isn’t enough talent to go around. We need really bright people to meet the challenges we face all over Europe,” says Bearfield.
War? In the business world – particularly in boom times – deploying the language of military combat to recruitment reflects a certain sense of urgency. Failure to hire well increases the risk of commercial failure, or so the theory goes. Similar views now prevail in the public sector.
The EU is no different from other public employers. When business was in an expansionary phase, it found it relatively difficult to attract and retain the brightest people.
Economic circumstances mean fewer graduates will be able, at least in the short term, to go down the private route. In Ireland, as elsewhere, budget constraints have also curtailed public recruitment. Yet if these two forces play into Bearfield’s hands, sifting for quality among thousands of applicants would bring its own challenges.
Hence the revamped recruitment process, partly designed in collaboration with the Public Appointments Service in Dublin. The system involves computer-based pre-selection testing in individual EU countries followed by an assessment stage in Brussels, including interviews, group exercises and presentation drills.
In addition to specific professional skills and knowledge, the system aims to assess skills in analysis and problem-solving; communicating; delivering quality and results; learning and development; prioritising and organising; resilience and working with others.
As for the pay, graduate recruits could expect to start on a gross salary of about €4,200 a month. At higher levels of the administration, salaries are very attractive indeed. The basic gross monthly pay for a senior official a couple of rungs below the top level is in the region of €12,300.
Even though the new system is designed to make it easier for people who are not Brussels insiders to find their way through the maze, one old hurdle remains.
All stages of the competition are conducted in English, French and German, but candidates whose mother tongue is one of those three languages must take the competition in a second language.
That said, there is an exception for fluent Irish speakers. As Irish is an official EU language, candidates have the option of putting Irish as their first language and taking the test in English. Be warned, however. Proficiency in Irish will be tested as well.
People trained in European public administration, law, economics, auditing and information technology are being sought in the current application round. The closing date for online registration is April 15th.
