Three brand new videos have been added to our growing collection of helpful tips and tricks about the EPSO exams. Read on to find out more!

We have just learned that the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) is seriously considering to launch brand new selection tests and exams from January 2014. Online EU Training is the first to report on the planned changes below.

In this tips and tricks article, we describe a method that is very helpful in solving timetable-type questions in EPSO AST (EU assistant) organising and prioritising tests. Let's take a look at an example where you have to not one, but two ferries to get to a meeting, and you need to figure out how long you can tay if you want to make it back home the same day. To mix things up a bit, you also need to get a cab at the ferry port to get to the meeting.

EU career candidates often wonder who the "assessors" are in their EPSO Assessment Centre and whether they really are able to provide an impartial, professional evaluation of their performance at the EPSO exam.

To gain more insight into how the assessors are trained, I myself followed an intensive course in November 2012...

 I have recently been invited to an EU agency when I applied for a post of a temporary agent as secretary assistant. As many candidates are wondering how such interviews are conducted (considering that they are different from the EPSO competitions), it is probably interesting for others if I share my experience.

Last week we held a Live EPSO Questions & Answers Webcast, and we are happy to report that it was a great success!
 

Many candidates joined in to ask about the EPSO exams and we were more than happy to answer. Time constraints made it impossible to answer every question, but here we make up for it!
 

You can here all questions on EU careers, competitions, jobs, recruitment and exams in this latest Tips & tricks article.
 

We've also embedded the full recording of the event for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy, share and tell your friends!

Arboreus is proud of its CEO, Gabor, who has just completed the first Marathon of his life in Berlin last weekend (see photo, he is on the left). As big a achievement as it is, it also got us thinking what EU career exam candidates have in common with Marathon runners: as it turns out, quite a lot!

So let's see a few things that come to mind:

Pick a big, juicy, audacious goal: by looking at the sheer number of EPSO exam applicants, you may get the same feeling of butterflies in your stomach that those considering to run continuously for 3-4 hours (at least!) and cover...

In talking to Online EU Training users, one of the main requests we hear is for explanations for numerical reasoning tests to be much more detailed. We are here to report that we are already working on this!

Our current explanations, while containing all the essential information to be able to answer the test questions correctly, are quite short - usually 3 or 4 sentences in a single paragraph.

Many candidates are afraid of the structured interview in the Assessment Centre, while others approach it as "just another job interview". Both can be misleading and dangerous for your scores and the optimal performance: the structured interview is one of the most important parts of the AC and you need to "nail it" to prove you have the right competencies the EU career office looking for.

Based on more than 70 personal coaching sessions and candidate feedbacks, I collected a list of tips which, if candidates knew, would lead to a much better performance at the EPSO structured interview. Here it goes:

It seems that the new language test for the Translator competitions are a common source of confusion - so we've decided to help you out and shed some light on the issue. Read on to find out what languages are used in which parts of the exam and where can you find more information on the topic!