Some EPSO exam candidates might have heard the name of 2010 Administrator (AD) exam applicant, Dimitrios Pachtitis. Mr. Pachtitis is the candidate who successfully challenged EPSO’s pre-selection method by highlighting the "mis-allocation of competences

For the whole of July, I had been gingerly logging in to my EPSO account every single day, waiting for the little red flag to say that I had ‘1 new email’. Well, the end of July came and went, with no sign of the assessment centre results. Just as I was about to start harassing the EPSO team and inundating their inbox with emails of complaint, I logged in to my account on Monday early August and there it was! (click to read more!)

As a fun experiment, based on EPSO's Ongoing Exams page, we have created a beautiful word cloud with Worlde.net to see what the European Personnel Selection Office is mostly focusing on - in their words at least. Here it goes!

As you can see, the most important and commonly used words include: candidates, EPSO, Assessment,Invitation, Tests...

It's a cliché to say that technology is changing our world. But two linguistic innovations from Google may change the way European diversity can live on while bringing Europeans closer to each other.

The question until now was: if we want a democratic EU with 23 official languages, how can that work without compromising on efficiency? Look at the European patent: an issue unresolved for 40 years because European leaders could not agree which 3 or 5 languages will be the 'dominant' ones to translate all patents into - so a political stand-off followed.

Now, thanks to technology, Google offered to translate for free all European Patent Office filings via ...

The way most European institutions communicate and the mindset of the interactive web 2.0 communications is in utter contradiction. There is a compelling story to tell, but most EU institutions should learn how to say it.

True, the European Parliament is still much better than other EU bodies such as the Council of Ministers in understanding how online communications work: they have set up their own TV channel, regularly host live chat events, and try to speak the citizens' language, even if there is still a lot of room for improvement. EPSO, the recruitment office, has also been a rare exception within the Commission, but...

(Click to see the comparison chart of bureacratic vs. web 2.0 cultures!)
 

EPSO's recruitment reform from March 2010 has been a huge success. It has lowered the barrier to entry for many potential candidates by eliminating the much hated EU knowledge tests (think of "How many times has Viviane Reding been a European Commissioner until now?") and thus opening the door for some 37,000 applicants for the Administrator exams this spring.

But this new system has a huge inherent danger: many of the new recruits will know very little about how the EU institutions operate when they start working in them...

In the age of Google and Facebook, being findable has become the most important asset you can have.

Websites are optimised to show up as the 1st hit in Google when specific words are searched. But what about your CV when those searching for an EU expert, a Greek translator, a consultant with experience in the European Parliament, type in those magic words into LinkedIn, a recruitment database, or EPSO's e-laureates list? Adding the right words into your profile description can make or break a job interview invitation.

In the new EPSO recruitment system, it is even more clear that the EU wants to find people whose goal is to work for a cause, an issue that is larger than themselves. Meaning: don't come just for the money.

So I wonder if EU salaries were, say, 40-50% lower (thus similar to Belgian private sector wage levels), would people still be interested in working for European institutions?

We know the surveys that gauge candidates' motivation why they wish to become EU officials, and "salary" usually only appears in the 2nd or 3rd place. H...

EPSO certainly wishes to attract a large pool of candidates for its contract agent (CAST) exams, but the way information is presented seems quite inefficient. Here are some pain points I suggest improving:

'Call for Expression of Interest’ : would an average candidate know whether this is a simple indication of interest or an actual application for a selection exam? Would be worth clarifying what each term means already on the main page in one bullet point so that prospective applicants can have a quick overview

CAST or cast: the expre...

Now that the political agreement on the new European External Action Service (EEAS) has been made, the question arises: who will this new service have as its staff?

The idea to have 1/3 Commission (mainly RELEX and some related DGs), 1/3 Council (from its Brussels Secretariat) and 1/3 Member States (national diplomats) in the service is interesting. Senior people mention some 1200-1600 starting staff, but it is widely held that the total number of the service staff will go up to as much as 6000 until 2013.

If you are aiming to get an EU affairs job in Brussels, you must act by the classic job market rules: you shall convince an employer that only you have the specialist knowledge they are seeking. This requires horizontal (generalist) and vertical (specialist) knowledge. Neither of the two is enough these days, so we decided to share some great ideas in the coming months on how to get an EU affairs job.

Let's see the first crucial element: find your niche.

What is a niche? It refers to a special segment of EU issues or a specialty that m...

When EPSO announced its new selection procedures, it was welcomed by many with enthusiasm. Lowering the barrier to entry while selecting more suitable candidates via the Assessment Center by removing EU knowledge tests was a big relief for most people. But recruitment is not limited to EPSO: consider the (s)election of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the European Commission President and other senior politicians. Maybe a change of procedures is the answer to the EU's problems?