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,

Recall of facts

First, let us recall all the communications and other R&D initiatives denouncing the unacceptable and heinous na­ture of this programme, as well as the intolerable discrimination it has created, in particular towards our CA, AST, and AST-SC colleagues ( our communications )

In particular, we denounced that this programme, aka "friends first", was the triumph of the fait du prince (or princess), and the open door to nepotism and favouritism!

Despite all our warnings, DG HR continued to move forward for two years!

All our criticisms and all our requests have been rejected and almost ridiculed by DG HR with an in­quisitive, haughty and contemptuous tone

In particular, by having recourse  to pseudo-legal arguments, the administration claimed that our requests aimed at allowing all colleagues meeting the eligibility conditions to enrol in this programme, without prejudice to the nature of their contract, were outright inadmissible.

In response to these unreasonable DG HR’s proclamations, we refused to recant our claims, we con­firmed all our criticisms and our legal analyses.

The changes all of a sudden introduced by DG HR to the JPP

Now, all of a sudden DG HR is proposing a new generation of the programme ... recognizing the merits of the criti­cisms made by R&D, after probably realizing, without a shadow of a doubt, that maintaining the current ap­proach was simply indefensible.

Faithful to its highly selective approach aimed at enhancing and amplifying opinions which go in the desired direction and simply ignore those which do not correspond to its priorities, DG HR has just published a communication announ­cing these changes, specifying that they aim to respond to requests from staff and their representatives…. which would have been, for once… and after two years and five exercises, finally heard!

In particular, as we have constantly requested, the JPP will henceforth be open to officials and to temporary staff in Categories AST and AST-SC, as well as to ALL fellow contract agents, both for function groups I, II, III than IV.

However, the condition remains of having a university degree and meeting the other selection criteria, in particular the maximum duration of 3 years of professional experience.

Candidates will have to pass the CBTs in order to be shortlisted by the DGs.

This is still an umpteenth pilot exercise and a consultation process will be organized to address, before the launch of the 2021 exercise, all the other aspects that remain unchanged at this stage concerning in particular the length of the professional experience required. , the number of candidates…

And DG HR must also explain how they want to duly compensate colleagues who were ineligible at the time under the old selection criteria and who are now ineligible again because they have exceeded the maximum duration of profes­sional experience!  

Regarding the communication from DG HR ( lien ), we could note, echoing the responses of col­leagues, that:

1) we are still waiting for the necessary reforms of the EPSO selection procedures, which are nevertheless the real deep root of the recruitment problems;

2) in the consultation with DG HR, a proposal entitled "Keep the Junior Professionals Programme" was the one that obtained the worst score among colleagues, coming down to -640 votes;

3) DG HR is the big winner of the competition ““making decisions while consultations with staff related to the“ modernization ”of Human Resources” are still ongoing” ;

4) social dialogue in the new DG HR’s style now seems to be a painful chore that they need to get rid of as much as possible: it is better to limit ourselves to a simple communication sent a few hours before the official announcement;

5) we take care of that poor and unfortunate DG HR’s colleagues who are thus entitled to announce exactly the opposite of what they had so proudly indicated so far and, as if that were not painful enough, they must also get­ting the heated criticism of staff representation about the lack of any real social dialogue;  

6) aware of their sincere embarrassment, we propose to grant these colleagues an allowance for such strenuous work!

7) the candidates’ selection procedure remains absolutely unacceptable and should have been cor­rected without delay since it lacks all the necessary guarantees of transparency and equitable treatment, and also because of the least parity-based dimension, under which the staff representatives are relegated to the role of simple obser­vers;

8) It is still unacceptable that our colleagues in the Executive Agencies continue to be excluded;

9) these changes will not be enough to stem the criticism relating to access to AD civil servant posts under condi­tions which are not even comparable with those of an open competition and which candidates for these competi­tions, including colleagues excluded from the JPP because of the eligibility criteria with regard in particular to the maximum duration of professional experience, will see their chances further reduced due to the quota of posts allocated to the JPP;

10) despite these changes, this programme risks remaining one of the primary sources of demotivation for many colleagues.

But, in spite of all this…, let us rejoice that our administration finally begins to recognize the merits of our criticisms that, without in any way refusing to recant our claims we had always confirmed by repeating… “And yet it moves” !

And we must recognize that this is a significant change as compared to the "change - a real masquerade" - concocted in the past by the DG HR by “moving” from the "Junior professional" to the "Junior programme" ... namely the triumph of "changing everything so that everything stays the same".

True to our ever-constructive spirit, we remain hopeful that within the framework of the next "social mono­logue" that DG HR announces in this regard for the next exercise, it will be possible to correct the remainder of the subsisting critical aspects.

Thus, we remain online, in front of our PCs, awaiting a convocation, in 2021, of course… a few hours before the launch of the next exercise.

Cristiano Sebastiani,

President