You can find the complete recording and the full transcript of the 2014 EPSO AD information webcast Online EU Trainig held on 13, March.
For more information and training materials, you can always refer to our AD primer!
Hello everyone. My name is Gabor Mikes. I’m the Managing Director of Online EU Training and as opposed to what you can see on screen, I will be your host tonight and we are going to talk about the 2014 in EPSO Administrator Competitions that have just been announced by EPSO literally today at midnight.
This information is so new that EPSO hasn’t even updated their website so you will be among the first to learn about what EPSO has to offer in terms of administrator positions in 2014.
I would like to mention that we are recording the webcast, the information webcast so if you don’t follow a certain part or heaven forbid there should be some technical difficulties, then we will publish the recording as soon as possible.
It is worth however to stick around until the end because as usual we have a very special offer for those of you who participate live and I’ll have to tell you that it’s actually quite special this year that we have in store for you and we are also going to ask you a very, very teeny tiny favor which I’ll tell you a little bit more towards the end of the webcast.
So a couple of words about Online EU Training, if you’re new to EU Selection Competitions, Online EU Training is the premier provider of preparation and practice materials for EPSO exams. We have over 75,000 users on www.eutraining.eu, more than 33,000 people on Facebook so if you have any questions about the exam, you can ask us, you can go on Facebook and discuss it with fellow competition participants. It’s a good place to start getting some information.
The main two ways in which we help candidates is by offering practice tests questions and packages. We have a database of over 24,000 questions. They’ve been used over 16 million times in the past few years and we also offer webinars which are web-based trainings on how to bring out your best at the EPSO tests. We held over 85 hours of webinars in the past few years and with over 4,000 participants so they are quite popular.
Now let’s get down to business and let’s quickly overview what we’re going to talk about tonight. First of all we are going to look at types of positions that have been announced this year. It’s changing from year to year and there are some quite significant changes in how the types of positions and the duties of the administrators that EPSO is looking for are described in the Notice of Competition so we are going to talk a little bit about that. We are going to see how many positions are available because this is crucial information so can better judge your chances of success. We are going to talk about whether you are eligible for participating in the competition and we’ll see what the factors are that going to making that decision.
We’ll talk about why being an EU administrator is a great opportunity. I don’t think I have to convince many of you because you are already interested in becoming an EU administrator so I’m sure you already know some of the benefits but we’ll summarise those just in case.
We are going to talk about the two phases of the competition. First the Pre-selection phase which is composed of computer-based test and then the assessment centre phase which is held in an actual building in Brussels.
We will talk a little bit about how to prepare for the exam and at the end we will talk about the special exclusive offer that we have in store for you and the small favor we have to ask in exchange.
Alright, so when it comes to the Administrator Competition there are three things you may need to know about: the place of work, the types of EU institutions you might end up in and the typical tasks that you might perform.
When it comes to place of work there are three cities that provide the bulk of the opportunities and job positions that there are: Brussels, Luxembourg and parts of Strasbourg where the European Parliament holds plenary session from time to time.
To go into little bit more details. The Selection Process, the Competition is intended to select people for work in a lot of EU institutions. The European Commission, European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, European Court of Justice, Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and a number of other institutions.
It’s very important to note that which institution you end up in, you can’t decide that at the moment of applying. It’s only decided at the moment of recruitment and before you get to that question, before you have to ponder that question, you have to go through the entire selection procedure so I would recommend that you don’t spend too much time on thinking about this right just yet.
Now actually there are two competitions that we are talking about tonight and only one of them have been announced officially. The competition that has been announced today is the classic Administrator Competition and the code of this competition is EPSO/AD/276/14. 14 stands for 2014, AD stands for the fact that it is an administrator level competition and 276 is just the code used to denote this competition. And it is here that I have to mention a very important change compared to previous years. In previous years, whenever an AD or Administrator Competition was announced, there were profiles or topics or so-called domains from which you have to pick which one you’re applying for.
Profiles are basically professions or specialisations. Let me give you a few examples. In previous years, the competitions were divided into profiles such as Public Administration, Economics, Statistics, Audit, Finance, Law and so on and so on.
This year there no sub-divisions into profile. From what we can tell from the description of the competition, all of the positions are in the European Public Administration profile. Why it is an important and good piece of information? Well, it is good because as we will see, there are no special diploma requirements for Public Administration profiles.
Anyone with any kind of university diploma can apply so finally this will be a competition where you won’t have to ponder whether your diploma is relevant for the profile selected. But we’ll talk a little bit more about this in a few minutes.
Many of might not know is that one week from today on the 28th of March, another competition will also be announced. Another administrator level competition, EPSO/AD/277/14 which is specifically for Auditors. Specifically for AD 5 level positions in the area of Audit.
Now we don’t know why EPSO decided to run this as a different competition under different code but this is how it is. If your specialty is Economics and within that Audit in particular then you should apply for the Audit competition and because it hasn’t been announced officially yet, there will be a few areas where we are saying is a little bit speculative, it is our best guess but I will always indicate whether what I’m saying is fact that was announced by EPSO or are best estimation.
So a couple of words about the deadlines. The Administrator Competition was announced today and you have until the 15th of April to finish your application. Don’t leave it until the last day because EPSO servers frequently crashed on the last day of the application period. The Audit Competition will be announced one week from today and it will be closed on the 23rd of April 2014. So it’s a shifted one week later.
Alright. Let’s talk a little bit about the criteria, the eligibility criteria, the factors you need to consider before deciding whether you can apply for this competition or not. And these are divided into two categories: General Criteria and Specific Criteria.
Let’s see what the General Criteria are. These are usually quite easy to decide for example you have to be an EU citizen; you have to be from among the 28 countries now comprise the European Union. Another general criterion is your knowledge of languages. You have to have a first language of which you have to a thorough knowledge of. This has to be one of the official EU languages so it can be anything from Bulgarian to Romanian, Spanish, Hungarian, Dutch and so on and so on.
This is usually your mother tongue the reason it’s called first language because it’s last of a, it’s more of a neutral term plus there are people who are truly bilingual and they can’t really make sense of the word mother tongue. You also have to have a second language of which you have to have a satisfactory knowledge. This has to be one of English, French or German.
Now many people I asked what does it means satisfactory knowledge. The easiest way to put is to say that satisfactory knowledge is knowledge which allows you to work and perform job duties everyday in an EU institution in the second language. This is what you have to consider.
This is a summary of what we’ve just discussed. Once again first language any official EU language, second language: English, French or German.
Let’s see how many positions there are and this is the big question there will be 137 administrator positions opened to you if you are part of this year’s competition so EPSO today opened the pathway to 137 people to have a new EU job and this is great because it’s a very large number we can literally say more than a hundred positions are available and the good news is that they are all in the European Public Administration profile so that means that no matter what diploma you have, you can apply for the competition.
Now in addition to these 137 there will be another competition as we’ve just mentioned one for Auditors. We don’t yet know how many people will be sought in that competition but it will be another great opportunity if you have a specific relevant degree for the Audit profile and I encourage you to apply for that competition as well or just for that competition because while the Administrator Competition with the Public Administrator profile has its own advantages, the Audit competition has separate advantages. For example that fewer people have a degree that will be deemed relevant for the Audit profile that might increase your chances.
We’ve talked about general eligibility criteria and the number of positions. Let’s see what specific criteria you also have to meet and these fall into categories: your qualifications, your education background and your work experience. Now it’s very easy again for administrators, you have to have a Bachelor degree, any kind of Bachelor degree or you can even be a last year student at university if you can finish university by a specific date. I believe it is June or July this year. If you can do that, then you are eligible for the competition.
And here’s another piece of good news no work experience is required. EPSO is specifically seeking people who imagine a longer career at the EU institutions that’s why they opened up this possibility for fresh graduates as well. Now another typical question that many people asked: Can I apply if I’m not a fresh graduate? Is it a problem if I have several years of work experience? And the short answer is it’s not a problem at all. There’s no age discrimination. Feel free to apply. You just to have accept that whatever work experience you have will not be an objective advantage when compared to people with no work experience.
So if you have a Bachelors degree or you will have one by later this year, you are eligible. Now what about the Audit Competition? With the Audit Competition since it is also an AD 5 entry level positions, it is our belief and our best estimate that again no work experience will be required. The big difference is that you will have to have a relevant degree. And a relevant degree is at least an Economics degree or preferably an Economics or Finance degree with an Audits specialisation. And we are not sure about whether last year’s final years students will be able to apply. We will confirm this via a news site on the www.eutraining.eu one week from today.
Now why is it a great opportunity to work for the European Union? I’m sure you’ve already talked about this and gathered some information because otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in the positions at all but it’s good to summarise them just the same. Well, first of all something that is very important ever since the big economic crisis is that it offers very high job security. In addition to job security, it offers very good benefits, very good health insurance if you have kids or you plan to have kids, the EU maintains very good European schools. There are benefits and additional income can be generated if you’re married and have children and all of these is in addition to very attractive salaries. Now this of course also depends on your view point. If you are from one of the wealthier member states of the EU, then the salary levels might not sound that attractive than if you’re from a less well off member states but if can generally be said that the salaries are quite attractive.
Also obviously there are a lot of intangible benefits as well, working in a multicultural environment, working on something that is truly important than the impacts the lives of hundreds of millions of people and these are of course also important.
Why is it a great opportunity to apply this year? Well one of the first thing that I can mention is that the Pre-selection phase is easier this year than at any previous year in memory. We’ll talk a little more about this but let me just say that the reason it is easier has to do with the Numerical Reasoning Test. Those of you who are not yet familiar with this test, I’ll show it to you in a few seconds. Those of you who are already familiar, you know that many candidates hate this test and for many people, it will be a great relief that there will be relaxed conditions for the Numerical Reasoning Test. We’ll see what these are a little bit later.
So we have come to the most important section of tonight’s webcast. How to actually get one of these jobs? A very basic overview of a how the process of the applications and the process of the competition is divided into five parts.
First, you yourself should check your eligibility. The reason I’m saying you yourself should do it is because EPSO will actually check your eligibility, your work experience, your educational background, your language knowledge and so on and so on at a later phase but you should do it. This should be the first thing to do.
Second, you will have to go through what they call the pre-selection or admission phase of the exam which you will do at your home country or wherever you are at the moment when this phase comes and this is a series of computer-based tests.
Third, if you’re successful at the Pre-selection or Admission Test phase, we will see how success is defined. You will be invited to the assessment centre. As I already mentioned, the assessment centre is a physical place with several exercises. It takes an entire day to participate and if you’re successful at the assessment centre, your name will be placed on the reserve list from which you can be invited to a job interview. We will see what the reserve list is and we will see what a job interview looks like in a few minutes.
So what does this Pre-selection phase consists of? There are four tests that you need to take: Abstract Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning and the Situational Judgment Test. We will see what these tests look like for now let’s just remember that Abstract, Numerical and Verbal Reasoning are administered in your first language and the Situational Judgment Test is administered in your selected second language one of English, French or German.
The first test that you will face is the Verbal Reasoning Test. The Verbal Reasoning Test is a test based on a text passage. One or two paragraph long texts followed by a standard question usually: Which of the following statements is correct? And this is then followed by four statements, four sentences. And your job is to decide which sentence, which statement is the correct one. Correct is defined as you being able to prove that it is true based on the information given in the text passage. And of course there are methods to doing this fast. At Online EU Training methodology webinars, we talked about how it is important to disregard outside information that you might have about the topic. We talked about how dangerous it is to confused generalisations with what is actually stated in the passage. We talked about how the text passage introduces a fact in the statement and we also talked about how similar and different wordings used in statements can mislead you in to picking the wrong statement as the correct answer.
The next test is the Abstract Reasoning Test. Sorry, I haven’t mentioned the Verbal Reasoning Test consists of 20 questions and you have 35 minutes to answer those. So once again the next test is the Abstract Reasoning Test and this test consists of 10 questions and you have 10 minutes to answer them.
Now in the Abstract Reasoning Test, you have to look at the figures at the top row. You look at this from left to right. You have to consider, you have to think of it as a series where every figure is somehow based on the previous figure. So whatever you see in the third figure, in the top row in this example it’s somehow is a consequence of the second or first figures in the same series.
And at Online EU Training webinars we talked about the various building blocks and rules that govern Abstract Reasoning Tests. To give you an example of the building blocks in this test, we have a black circle, we have a white rectangle, we might have a black rectangle as well. These are typical building blocks in Abstract Reasoning Tests and the rules or patterns that you have to notice can also be a wide range of things. In this example, movement is one of the rules or regularities that you have to notice. The black circle moves following a certain pattern from one position to the next one.
The Abstract Reasoning Test is a test of your so-called fluid intelligence. It measures how well you perform in unfamiliar situations where you cannot rely on your previous experience.
The next test type is the Numerical Reasoning Test. It measures your ability to work logically with numbers. It usually is based on a table of data. In our case it’s the top EU production of apples and you have four countries and the EU total listed and for each of these players you have the weight of the apples harvested each year and the area harvested in the two years shown. The question always talks about relationships between these figures. It always requires that you notice what you have to do to decide which data to use and how to get the correct answer.
In a Numerical Reasoning Test as we talk about this in webinars about Numerical Reasoning methodology, four skills are used: Data Interpretation which is the ability to extract information from the table that you need, Reasoning which allows you to figure which calculations to perform, Estimation which helps you simplify round off, round down to make your job easier and finally Calculation which allows you to actually get the correct answer.
The Abstract Reasoning Test also consists of 10 questions and you have 20 minutes to answer those questions.
Now a lot of people always ask us about the Scoring and its quite complex - the EPSO scoring of the test. But you have to remember these two concepts: the Pass Mark and to be among the Best X Candidates. The Pass Mark is the easier concept to understand. It basically means that there’s a maximum score that you can achieve at a test. In Verbal Reasoning it’s 20 for example, in Abstract Reasoning it’10, the Pass Mark is the minimum score you have to reach to be even considered for the next stage of the competition. And sometimes separate tests are scored separately which means that separately you have to achieve separate Pass Mark for each. Sometimes they are scored together. This is the case in this year’s AD competition for Abstract and Verbal Reasoning.
These two tests are scored together total score for these two tests together is 30 points and the Pass Mark is 50 so in other words you have to score at least 50% to be even considered. The total score for Numerical Reasoning is 10 points, the Pass Mark is 5. Sorry I don’t know why it says 15. 10 points and the Pass Mark is 5, that’s again 50%.
And the fourth test type is Situational Judgment which can get you a whopping 40 points and the Pass Mark is 24. It is scored separately. Now, this is the crucial difference compared to previous years. If you reached the Pass Mark in Numerical Reasoning which remember is 5 points, those points that you actually received whether is 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10, they are no longer considered. They are thrown away and they will not count towards your total score in the Pre-selection phase so if you reached 5 in Numerical Reasoning, then you’re good to go.
So let’s take an example. Let’s says you score 17 in Verbal Reasoning and 8 in Abstract Reasoning, that would give you 25 points in these two tests and if you score 30 in Situational Judgment, that will get you a total of 55 points in the Pre-selection phase. What is the total score that you can achieve? 40 points in Situational Judgment and 30 points in Verbal and Abstract Reasoning that is 70 points.
So you have in this example 55 out of 70 points. What happens next? This is where you have to be among the so-called Best X Candidates. What does that mean? It means that EPSO will create a rank ordered list of all the candidates’ scores going from top to bottom and they will draw a line under the name of the candidates who is ranked at the number that they wish to invite to the assessment centre.
So let me again give you a concrete example. There are 137 positions available this year. EPSO itself says in the Notice of Competition that they seek to invite 2 ½ times as many people to the assessment centre as there are positions available. 137 2 ½ times as much as 137 is roughly 350 places in the assessment centre.
So EPSO will draw a line at the 350th person and whoever has the same score as that person will also be invited to the assessment centre. So if this line happens to be drawn at 55, then you will be among the lucky ones who will be invited to the assessment centre.
So we’ve talked a lot about the assessment centre and that is the next phase that you can get to if you’ve been successful at the Pre-selection phase. What is the assessment centre like? It is a phase where fewer people will participate than in Pre-selection phase so that means that EPSO can afford inviting all of you to Brussels. They will reimburse your travel costs. So they’ll invite you to Brussels and you will participate in one day invent undergo several different exercises and then you will be scored at the end of it just like in the Pre-selection phase.
What are these exercises? First of all, I’m going to contradict myself because the first exercise at the assessment centre, the Case Study is actually not administered in Brussels. It forms an integral part of the assessment centre but it will be taken in the same test centre where you took the Pre-selection phase. So you have to go back there one more time. Take the Case Study. The Case Study is a test where you have to read a lot of documents in different format. Be it an articles, emails, research papers, what have you and you have to collide, you have to collate and absorb all that information and then you have to answer one or more questions in an essay format based on the documents. And no matter how you perform at the Case Study, the next task you will be invited to the other exercises in the assessment centre in Brussels.
So you arrived at the assessment centre building and you will have free exercises to go through. An Oral Presentation, a Structured Interview and the Group Exercises. All of these exercises including the Case Study are administered in your selected second language which means English, French or German. So what do these look like?
Oral Presentation it again starts with you getting a dossier of information. You have to read through and you have to present that information or the answer to the question in about 5 to 10 minutes duration to a panel of assessors. You are also given a flip chart or a white board and you have to create an illustration to whatever you are going to say. And the logic and clarity of the illustration also is a factor in the score that you will get for the Oral Presentation.
You will also participate in a Group Exercise where again you will be given some background information and you will have to cooperate with 5 or 6 other people in achieving a prescribed outcome and people will observe you while doing that.
And finally there’s the Structured Interview which in its format quite similar to a classic job interview in that they will ask you questions but it is much less about the actual job and much more about your past experiences in how you handle certain situations.
We go into much more detail in assessment centre classroom trainings and assessment centre webinars organised by Online EU Training and one good feature of these trainings the classroom versions of these trainings is that we can simulate all of these exercises. We even bring video camera and we can record and analyse candidates’ responses and you can learn a lot from those.
How’s the scoring done in the assessment centre? Interestingly you are not scored on an exercise by exercise basis. Instead EPSO has 8 competencies in which it wants to measure you. These competencies can include things like Leadership, Organising and Prioristing Skills, Working with Others, Stress Management and so on and so on. And for each competency, you can get a total of 10 points and each competency is measured in at least in exactly two different exercises. So for example, Teamwork or your ability to work people can be measured in the group exercise obviously but also in how you respond to Teamwork related questions in the Structured Interview. And in the end the assessor seat down together and they give you point from 0 to 10 for each competency. Your job is to reach the Pass Mark and again be among the best in each competency. The Pass Mark is 3 points out of 10 for each individual competency and since there are 8 eight competencies, the total score is 80 points.
Out of these 80 points you have to reach 50 to be considered for position on the reserve list and of course you also have to be among the best 137 candidates in the rank ordered list. This is the final hurdle before you can get on the reserve list.
What is the reserve list? This is the very strange concept for a lot of people who are new to EU exams. The reserve list is the fruit of your labor. It means that you gone through the exam and EPSO has deemed you a good fit to become an EU official. This means whenever an EU institution needs a new person because somebody quits or somebody goes on maternity leave or simply they expand the activities of that unit or that orgnisation and they need a new colleague, they will turn to this reserve list and they will turn to one person on that reserve list. And one day you will be invited to a classic job interview and this is at this point where the actual institution you will end up working in is decided.
A couple of important things about the reserve list. First of all, they have a validity. This means that if you are placed on the reserve list at the end of say 2014, it has an expiry date. It means that you have to be recruited from that list within that time frame. Now, this again sounds very frightening because you might think that if you’re not recruited in that time frame, all of your efforts might be in vain but don’t worry, EPSO has become quite good at estimating the number of people they need so in recent years, what we’ve seen is that a vast majority of people find employment from the reserve list.
And the final thing when you are invited for a final job interview, you don’t have to frat at; it is very similar to a job interview in the private sector. They’ll tell you about the job, they’ll ask you about specific experiences you might have had, you can also ask about the position and when the answers you’ve given and they have given are mutually accepted and found desirable by bought parties, then you will be made an offer and you can decide to accept or decline it.
Now a couple of words about how to actually prepare for all of these. Since it is a relatively long process, it can stretch several months, our main suggestion is that you always only concrete on the next hurdle available. So once we finished this webcast, the only thing you should concentrate on is fill-out the application form as well as you can. And you have roughly four weeks to do that. In the meantime and once you submitted your application, you should start practicing for the Pre-selection tests are early as possible. We don’t know yet the exact time period in which the Pre-selection test will take place but we estimate that you will have several weeks to prepare. Our suggestion and based on the information we have gotten from candidates from previous competitions who were successful, it is ideal to practice for at least 8 maximum 12 weeks before the competition. And it’s not about the quantity of practice in each individual practice session that you do, it is much better to prepare for 30 minutes even for only 30 minutes everyday or as many days of the week as possible. It’s important to lots of simulation and to simulate exam conditions as closely as possible. This means doing let’s say number of questions at the exam using a computer to do it and sitting in a quiet place and so on and so on. And then the practice test and the test interface on www.eutraining.eu are quite ideal suited to just that.
It is also advisable to learn a little bit about the methodology. What these tests are about, what are the tricks and strategies to be successful in the pre-selection, that completing this test and of course you can turn to the detailed explanations we offer on Online EU Training’s test interface and we also offer web-based and classroom trainings where we address this questions in a lot of detail. And perhaps the most important thing is you have to be persistent. You have to find a way to stay motivated because again it’s not a very fast process but you have to concentrate on the rewards. You have to concentrate on the positive and how much you want to get an EU job. If you can do that, getting through this process and all of the steps and all of the phases of the process will be much easier.
Towards the end of the webcast, I wanted to show you a few screenshots from www.eutraining.eu. This is what a Verbal Reasoning Test looks like. You have a passage of text, you have four answer options, four statements as answer options. If you clicked on show answer button if you are in practice mode you can see what the correct answer is and we are constantly working on this in many of our Verbal Reasoning Test. We also have now explanations for each of the statements; why that particular statement is correct or incorrect.
This is what a Numerical Reasoning Test look like. You have a table of data, you have question and you have various answer options. We also offer an onscreen calculator which is important because this is what you might face at the real EPSO test centre as well and it’s best to get used to it as early as possible.
Here’s an example of an Abstract Reasoning Test. You can see the top row where you can use to figure out the rule governs the exercise and the bottom row lists the answer options. Again we are very proud that we offer detailed explanations explaining you the rules for each Abstract Reasoning Test on Online EU Training which can be very helpful in your preparation.
And finally an example of a Situational Judgment Test. As you will see if you decide to practice with us, this is similar in format to a Verbal Reasoning Test in that it is based on the a text passage and four statements which are actually four different courses of action that you can follow in that given work situation and the peculiarity and unique feature of a Situational Judgment Test is that you have to be select two answer options. The one that you believe is most effective and the one that you believe is least effective in the given situation.
Now which solutions are recommended for your practice on Online EU Training when it comes to practice tests, we recommend the different sizes or different versions of the EPSO AD Abstract-Numerical-Verbal Reasoning Tests, they come in Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond so you can get 300 questions but also a thousand eight hundred practice tests if you have time to practice that much.
We also offer EPSO AD Situational Judgment Test packages consist of different numbers of Situational Judgment Test. A unique feature of this is that we score it in the same way as EPSO does and we provide you with a ten pager report on your performance at the test.
When you purchase the practice test packages on Online EU Training, you can select the language of test questions. We have currently 11 languages from French, Spanish, German, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and a number of other languages and it is my opportunity here to announce that we are also working on introducing Dutch Verbal Reasoning questions and we hope to finish this in time for the 2014 AD Pre-selection period.
The Situational Judgment Test are administered by EPSO in English, French or German and they are offered by Online EU Training in English, French and German and Numerical and Abstract Reasoning Tests are offered in English and French.
We believe that the nature of these tests allows you to practice this effectively even if your selected first language is not English or French.
The webinars we offer for EPSO AD exam are divided into two parts. We have two-hour webinar on EPSO AD Abstract and Verbal Reasoning and two-hour webinar on EPSO AD Numerical Reasoning and the Situational Judgment Test. We are still waiting on the exact timing of the exam period and as soon as we have it, we will announce the next pair of dates for these webinars.
We also have a lot of free resources that I recommend. We have E-books with workbooks where you can practice all of the test types with detailed methodology explanations on introducing typical problems, typical challenges in the various EPSO tests and we have a huge selection of tips and tricks articles which can be very useful.
We have recently redesigned our main page where you can compose your practice test. You can compose test on one of two ways. If you want to do a practice test, you can select the number of questions of each test type to be included in the test. You can also select the difficulty of each test whether it’s an AST test or an AD test or a Translator test that you wish to practice. If you are going to exam mode you can by one click add all of the test questions that consists this particular type of exam you are participating in to the test with just one click and the system will set the difficulty and everything automatically.
Now if you want to practice offline as well say on the train or on the subway or simply just somewhere where you have no access to computer, then we recommend The Ultimate EU Test Book which is offered by my colleague, Andras Baneth. The questions in the book are completely separate from the website and we can recommend this no reservations. Of course the best thing to do is to simulate the exam on a computer so these two things complement each other.
Now I mentioned that we have small favor to ask and we offer a big discount in exchange. The small favor that we ask is we would like to ask you to fill out a very short survey about how you prepare for the EPSO competitions. Let me try to convince you that it is worth filling this out.
First of all we would like to learn a little bit more about how you use or how you intend to use the practice materials on Online EU Training. Namely how many questions you think there should be in the packages, what are the test types where do you think we should expand our database, how much time you intend to practice, how many questions you think you will use in the exam period, all of these allows us to tailor our product development efforts to make our products more suited to your preparation needs. So this is why we ask you to fill out the survey at the link shown here.
You don’t have to remember the link, we’ll send you a follow up email with the recording of this event and the link will be in there and we will also put it on the frontpage of the website.
And if you give us this five minutes we will be eternally grateful on the one hand and we would also like to offer you 20% OFF any preparation material on Online EU Training and to get the code, all you need to do is to answer the few questions in the survey, your unique code will be at the end of the survey. We encourage you to invite others as well to fill out the survey and get the discount so if a friend of yours is preparing for the AD competition, then feel free to forward the survey to them. Just remember that each code is unique so if you want to take advantage of it, then better not to pass it on. The code will be valid for one full week starting now and once again the link will be in the follow up email and on the frontpage of www.eutraining.eu as well from tomorrow.
So in a day or two, we will put up the recording of this information session. If there are any parts that you want to rewind, you can do that. We will also provide a transcript and once again let me kindly ask you to help us build better practice products for you while filling out a very short survey.
So I would like to thank you very much for your participation. I hope you found this webcast useful and the information we have given here useful. I personally hope to see you at our webinars which help you with EPSO tests methodology and hopefully most or all of you one year from now will be able to say that it was worth embarking on the journey because you are now the happy owners of the position on an EU reserve list.
So have a wonderful evening and goodnight!