Certification

Certification: beware deadlines!

*Update 23.01.2025 check out the official announcement[1]: exams E1 and E3 will now be one exam: Certification Training Programme new model in a nutshell. Backwards compatibility is outlined there.

Update 13.01.2025, congratulations to the 98 colleagues whose name is on the draft list for the joint committee interviews! To those of you whose name is not there you have you have until Friday 17.01.2025 to appeal (5 working days from 10.01.2025). You have nothing to lose! Give it a go!*

Continue reading Certification: beware deadlines!

AST & AST-SC staff: ECA Report Highlights Long-Standing Career Challenges

*Update 20.12.2024, Here’s our Note to HR on European Court of Auditors Special report.pdf.*

*Update 22.11.2024, thanks to all of you who attended the event today. Here is the presentation, our AST FAQ and our summary of AST/SC issues.* Continue reading AST & AST-SC staff: ECA Report Highlights Long-Standing Career Challenges

ASTs: exploited and forgotten or given a future? 

*Update 21.11.2024 check out the European Court of Auditors, 2024, Special report 24/2024EU Civil service–A flexible employment framework, insufficiently used to improve workforce management: it concludes that ‘…the institutions do not focus on imbalances in the SC and AST function groups in their analysis, and concentrate instead on the AD group, and in particular the starting grades (AD5-AD8).‘ (P. 51) Check out their corresponding chart on p.51 showing the huge and unaddressed imbalances in AST and AST/SC function groups. Why on Earth choose to focus efforts on middle management, on part of a function group?[*] Where’s the global vision? Why tackle the hard stuff?* Continue reading ASTs: exploited and forgotten or given a future? 

Certification 2024/25: and so it begins!

*Update 20.12.2024, Here’s our Note to HR on European Court of Auditors Special report.pdf.*

Original Article: Apologies for the very short notice, we didn’t see any announcements and now the deadline is fast approaching.  The Certification exercise is open and the deadline for submitting your motivation letter is Monday 30 September at 23.59. Please don’t miss your chance to participate! Here is the published information. Don’t leave it to the last minute: the letter text is uploaded via sysper (similar to the way the self-assessment is done) and can sometimes take more than one attempt. Continue reading Certification 2024/25: and so it begins!

Are we testing competences or IT setup?

We don’t normally publish the full text of a note as an article but, given the known IT incompatibilities, we do so here: we want to make this text available to colleagues regardless of where they are based. Please find below a slightly abridged version of the note we sent to HR (internal exams) and EPSO (certification exams) with a copy to all relevant DGs and IT services.

Generation 2004 requests that EPSO and HR engage with colleagues and services in order to address the known compatibility issues between the different EU institution[1] IT environments and the online testing/exam platforms used[2] (whether EPSO or internal exams, the issues encountered overlap). Continue reading Are we testing competences or IT setup?

Certification resit options: let’s pool our information!

*Update 30.04.2024 resitters, you have until Friday 17.05.2024 noon (CEST) to register for the certification procedure. If you haven’t received the email, get in touch with them.* Original article: The deadline for making a decision on which exams to resit (or not) is Friday 26.01.2024. As ever, we’re all about making informed decisions. Several of you have got in touch to say that the answers you have received do not match the information in our article Certification resit options: energy efficiency? It is not clear to us whether there is a DG-specific reason for this or whether the answer itself has changed, leaving recipients to try to find whose information is most recent.

Continue reading Certification resit options: let’s pool our information!

Certification resit options: energy efficiency?

To those of you resitting any part of the Certification, please be aware that you can choose to do any or all of the outstanding exams: the choice is up to you (the deadline for making the choice is Friday 26.01.2024). This flexibility of choice is not particularly clear in the corresponding European School of Administration (EUSA) website. Continue reading Certification resit options: energy efficiency?

Echoes of unhappiness

*Update 08.03.2024: do women have fewer promotable tasks i.e. are women spending time and energy on less-valued jobs? What are your thoughts?*

Original article: In our Newsletter (10.10.2023), we announced a survey for assistant (AST), secretary/clerk (AST/SC), Contract Agent (CA) or Temporary agent (TA). The survey is now closed, and we thank the 1581 colleagues who contributed. We present here our preliminary results and will follow up in more detail in a later edition of our newsletter. The majority of respondents were ASTs and CAs, female colleagues, mainly from 40- to 60-year-old, based in Brussels/Commission.  

Continue reading Echoes of unhappiness

Certification: 5 days to appeal non-inclusion

*Update 13.01.2025, congratulations to the 98 colleagues whose name is on the draft list for the joint committee interviews! To those of you whose name is not there you have you have until Friday 17.01.2025 to appeal (5 working days from 10.01.2025). You have nothing to lose! Give it a go!* Continue reading Certification: 5 days to appeal non-inclusion

Certification programme overview and details

Congratulations to the 35 Commission colleagues who completed Certification in 2023! For those of you participating in the interviews for the 2023/24 edition you have 5 days to appeal non-inclusion on the list of those who will go on to the next interviews, get ready! For those who manage to get their names on that list, there is training available for the interviews. Generation 2004 is aware of the exceptionally poor exam results in 2024, we are awaiting the publication of the corresponding report to make comparisons with the previous 17 certification exercises. Continue reading Certification programme overview and details