Court of Auditors EPSO Special Report confirms the pitfalls repeatedly denounced by R&D : a largely unsuitable selection process !
EPSO - SPECIAL REPORT - read
A largely unsuitable selection process
The report just made public by the Court of Auditors on the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) confirms the pitfalls repeatedly denounced by R&D for months, even years.
The lack of attractiveness of the European
institutions, recruitment at basic grades despite confirmed professional
experience, the creation of new recruitment channels as open to criticism as
the Junior Professional Program, the difficulty for fellow contract agents to
have prospects of long-term employment, the lottery generated by internal
competitions… so many problems clearly identified for a long time by R&D which show that the recruitment system is unsuited to
the needs of the Institutions and particularly to the European Commission.
With the special report on EPSO
that the Court of Auditors has just made public, this finding is once again
confirmed.
Since 2003, these competitions
have been organised by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), in
cooperation with the institutions.
The EPSO selection process has
been running in its current frame since 2012 with large-scale generalist
competitions (public administrators, lawyers, economists, linguists,
secretarial assistants, etc.) and specialist competitions from which have come
42% of the winners identified between 2012 and 2018. This process has three
phases: planning, assessing candidates, and publication of reserve lists. The
tests vary from one competition to the next, but the phases of each competition
are generally similar with a preselection (psychometric tests on a computer),
an examination of application files, a talent screener for some competitions,
the assessment centre where candidates are assessed against a set of predefined
skills and competencies, and finally, a reserve list.
Every year, the EU institutions
recruit around 1 000 new permanent staff members (officials) for long-term
careers, from more than 50 000 applicants.
Generalist profiles represented 37 % of all requests
for laureates, over the 2012-2018 period, and linguists an additional 20 %.
Over the years, there has been a decline in the generalist profiles. The demand
for translators has plummeted in recent years, as a result of technological
progress, as well as from decisions to increase the use of outsourcing. The
context for recruitment within the institutions has changed since the design
and implementation of the EPSO Development Programme. Since 2012, the reserve
lists of most of the competitions organized by EPSO have fewer than 20
successful candidates. One can therefore wonder about the cost of such
procedures.
It is essential to create a good,
attractive working environment that brings about positive stimulation, so that
the staff is willing to go to work.
1. The "EU Careers" brand,
created in 2010 with the aim of increasing the attractiveness of the EU as an
employer, has not fulfilled its objective, both geographically and
socio-economically
On
the one hand, it appears that the "EU Careers" brand remains very
concentrated in Brussels and Luxembourg and is not very attractive beyond,
geographically speaking.
It appears that 37% of the people who answered the surveys
carried out outside of EPSO assessment centres declared having a direct link
with the institutions, either because they were already employed by one of
them, or because they worked in the public sector and exercised functions related
to the EU. Whatever their nationality, two thirds of the candidates take the
pre-selection tests in Belgium or Luxembourg.
The "EU Careers " brand has failed to
attract sufficient numbers of university graduates or young professionals.
Candidates for AD5 competitions often have
professional experience and the proportion of candidates under the age of 35 is
declining. Only 22% of recently recruited AD civil servants are under 35 and
62% are over 40. These officials already had at least 10 years of
professional experience by the time they joined the institutions, much longer
than that generally required for competition grades.
In 2019, the average age of entry into the Commission
for AD officials was 39 years old. For the last generalist AD / 2018
competition, the average age of the successful candidates was 31.5 years.
Currently less than 4% of the Commission's workforce is under 30 years old.
It follows that the recruitment of experienced people
to entry-level positions is detrimental to the age pyramid of the workforce and
to career management.
And in the face of this
imbalance, some institutions like the Commission have launched their own
"Professional Juniors" programs in defiance of the rules of equal
treatment, and opening the door to favouritism.
2. An inadequate recruitment process for
specialists
However, it should be noted that the regular organization of large-scale
competitions has generally helped to ensure the availability of an appropriate
number of generalists who could be recruited. However, with regard to
specialists (eg specialist linguists, administrators specialized in macroeconomics
or information and communication technologies, etc.), the EPSO process is not
suited to the current needs of the institutions.
On the one hand, the EPSO selection process is too
long, on the other hand, it is too expensive for this type of competition.
Therefore, the institutions prefer to launch their own
recruitment procedures, which last on average eight months against thirteen
months for EPSO, giving full latitude for using any type of test they deem
necessary, and then opt for the recruitment of temporary staff rather than
officials.
All profiles combined, the average cost per successful
candidate for generalist competitions amounts to around € 24,000. Broken
down by function groups, this cost is € 25,000 per AD laureate,
€ 21,900 per AST-SC laureate and € 15,300 per AST-SC successful candidate,
knowing that the preselection tests cost between € 48 and € 92 per
candidate, depending on the competition.
For specialized competitions, the
cost varies greatly depending on the number of candidates and successful
candidates. Since the latter is generally very low, the average costs are high:
nearly € 30,000 per successful candidate for AD7 lawyer-linguists (26
laureates for 1,170 candidates), or even nearly € 40,000 for AD5 and AD7
conference interpreters (13 laureates for 573 candidates).
3. The weaknesses of the recruitment
process
Psychometric tests are not only used to assess the suitability of
candidates for the job, but also, in fact, to exclude some of them in order to
facilitate the management of the competition procedure. It should be noted that
when these tests are used, 16.5 % of candidates on average give up the
competition before taking them. The success rate (ratio between the number of
successful candidates and the number of applicants who have taken at least the
1st test) is 2 %. So, the process is very competitive. But there is no
mechanism to measure the satisfaction of the institutions with the candidates
recruited.
The limited number of languages that
can be used for some parts of the selection process creates legal uncertainty.
Legal actions led to the cancellation of competitions (without cancelling the
aptitude lists) and the suspension of EPSO's activities for a good part of
2016. The current regime has not been annulled by a decision of a court, but
language limitations open the way to new legal actions.
Finally, competitions depend on the availability of
jury members, who are appointed on an equal basis between the
administration and the staff representation. However, all the parties have
difficulty finding competent and available staff to attend a competition jury.
Not only is the lack
of cooperation between EPSO and the institutions a cause, but also the total lack of recognition of the
interest of the service in the procedure,which
does not facilitate the engagement of staff in these tasks. In addition, managers
are often reluctant to release their best performing agents to perform these
tasks.
Conclusion
Faced with these issues, the Court of Auditors has
issued several recommendations to which R&D fully subscribes:
1) Address identified weaknesses in the selection
process,
2) Introduce a new selection framework for specialist
competitions,
3) Improve EPSO’s capacity to adapt to a fast-changing
recruitment environment.
R&D requests that these recommendations are fit into the
more general framework of HR strategy. It is indeed a matter of developing a
holistic approach to the question of recruitment and not of inventing ”quick
fix” procedures such as the JPP or the selection of temporary agents to
overcome specific problems because, over and above, recruitment places the
whole of career development into question.
In this regard, R&D reiterates its attachment to the basic principles of
the civil service: equal treatment between candidates and competition with
anonymous tests. R&D has always
worked in this direction by allowing all potential candidates to be trained
free of charge since it is not a question of "business" on the backs
of colleagues.
No, the future of all those who dedicate themselves to
the European civil service is such an important matter that one cannot conceive
that this service will not finally be seriously reformed.
Cristiano
Sebastiani,
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