An objective and fair selection procedure

31.01.2008 / 00:00 CET

With reference to the letter of Aris Apollonatos (‘Communications breakdown in Commission entry-test', 24-30 January), I would like to make some comments on behalf of the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO). The office had been entrusted by the EU institutions with CAST 27, a selection procedure (not an open competition) aiming at establishing lists of experts in different fields who could potentially be hired as contract agents (not permanent officials), normally with time-limited contracts.
Among the challenges EPSO had to face were the high number of candidates applying, the limited time it had to test them and the need to keep the whole procedure objective and fair. The European Commission wished to dispose of lists largely exceeding the number of prospective positions it could offer, so as to have a real choice of candidates for each post to be filled.
The selection procedure followed the lines described by Apollonatos. It can be agreed that a multiple-choice test based on knowledge of facts is not always the best way to test the real skills of a candidate, in particular in areas where factors like ingenuity, intellectual curiosity and synthetic thought processes are of paramount importance.
But the point that Apollonatos is missing – and like him several candidates – is that EPSO endeavoured to present the Commission, as requested, with a long list of candidates having a real interest for the domain and sufficient knowledge of facts in the area of inform-ation, media and communication in the EU, as well as verbal and numerical reasoning skills, but that this is not the final step. It is up to the institution then to choose within the lists those candidates best suited to perform the jobs at hand and this the Commission will do via in-depth interviews where invited candidates will be able to prove that they possess the qualities and professional skills required of press officers and communication specialists.

Alan Piotrowski
EPSO
European Commission
Brussels

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