Here you will find the complete recording and the full transcript of the 2015 EPSO AD Information Webcast held on 19 March, 2015.
You can access the 2015 EPSO AD Notice of Competition here
Webcast Transcript
Online EU Training Webcast - 2015 EPSO Administrator Competitions
Download the PDF Version of the Webcast Transcript Here
Transcript Quick Links:
Understanding the AD Notice of Competition process
A NEW stage added – Intermediate Test: E-tray Exercise
Alright, I think we can begin. A warm welcome to everyone who is online at this time of the day.
I would like to get a quick confirmation from my colleagues in Budapest that everything is okay with the sound and the image quality so we can get started with our webinar. I just need two seconds. Great confirmation is here.
So a warm welcome to everyone! This is Andras Baneth speaking from Brussels live on the 19th of March, Thursday evening at 7PM, or a few minutes passed 7PM. Sorry for my voice, I have a little flu, but otherwise hopefully everything will go smoothly and the technology will be on our side today.
So let's get started with the webcast which is about the 2015 EPSO Administrator Exams. The exams which have just been announced today by the European Personnel Selection Office and we'll cover anything and everything linked to this specific competition.
So let me quickly navigate back to my slides and here we go.
So the webcast itself will last about one hour and we will send you the recording and all the background information we have afterwards. Just in case you missed anything, we will make sure that the recording and the Prezi presentation that I'm using is also available for everyone.
Let me do a little tweaking to make sure that you can see the full image.
Alright so in regards to our community, the Online EU Training Community has 38,400 fans on Facebook. It´s quite a strong community with questions, answers and sometimes lots of fun stuff that we share regarding EU competitions. We have a fairly high number of registered users, approximately 80,000 over the many years, almost a decade, that we've been running this preparation service and the website.
Now regarding the test packages, we have a very robust database with an extensive question pool. The following information is just for the record, data extrapolated and pulled from our database, to make sure that we can convey it as best practice and good advice to all of our users and future users.
So we have 100+ hours of webinars with over 5,000 participants trained over the years and we hope to welcome you to one of them.
Today’s Agenda
So with this very brief introduction, why don’t we take a look at today’s agenda? What are we going to cover in this roughly 60 or so minutes of today’s webcast?
Let’s look first at what a day in the life of an EU official is like, what it actually takes to become an EU official and then we will move on to the various positions that are available as part of this competition.
We will discuss the most important question, whether you are eligible to apply for these competitions? Why this is a great career opportunity? Then we will explore the various technical details of the Pre-selection and the Intermediate Test. I will flag this information with everyone, as you may not have read the Notice of Competition yet, that came out today. The term “Intermediate Test” is something new and has just been introduced by EPSO to this competition. We’ll also look at what this actually means.
Then we’ll say a few words about the Assessment Centre, without spending too much time on that. Just enough to mention what it is and why it’s important. This is something to keep in mind for the later stages of the EU competitions. We’ll also look at a few tips and tricks, give advice on how to prepare and suggest the best practice plan we believe you should follow.
At the very end we’ll be making an exclusive offer to everyone who is with us today. It is a substantial discount off all our packages and all our services that are available on our website.
So why don’t we get started with the first section and take a look at the place of work. Where are you likely to work as a result of successfully passing the European Personnel Selection competitions and then the process of being recruited by the EU institutions?
Well, the most likely places are Brussels and Luxembourg, while Strasbourg is less likely despite the European Parliament having its headquarters there. Officially its seat is in Strasbourg, but the vast majority, roughly 80% of EU staff actually work in Brussels, around 10% or 15% of staff work in Luxembourg and the rest work not so much in Strasbourg, but rather around the world both in the EU member states at the EU Representations and outside the EU at the European External Action Service supervised delegations.
So the place of work in most cases and especially for this competition will be Brussels.
Selection and the Recruitment
Now “selection” and “recruitment” are two separate terms in this process and EPSO, as the name suggests, is a Personnel Selection Office. EPSO does not recruit. The recruitment actually happens by one of the EU institutions, such as the European Commission, Council of Ministers, Court of Auditors, Court of Justice, Parliament, Committee of Regions, the Economic and Social Committee. These institutions are the ones who actually hire people. However, the process, the competition through which eligible candidates can be placed on a Reserve List from which they can be recruited by these EU institutions is undertaken by EPSO.
So they select candidates, but they do not recruit them. EPSO’s ultimate goal is to place successful candidates on a so-called Reserve List.
So the actually recruitment therefore is decided at the moment of recruitment, not when you apply for the EPSO pre-selection exams. So you won’t know whether you’re going to work for the European Commission or some other EU institution. It’s likely that you will work for the Commission, but you wouldn’t know that in advance. The reason I say it’s likely that you will work for the Commission is because the Commission is the largest employer, given its role in the EU institutional hierarchy. It has a staff of roughly 30,000 people, so the Commission is a very substantial and important employer from among the EU institutions.
Positions Available
So going further and taking a looking at the different positions that are available, you will see on the screen that there are actually two Competitions. The one that I’m talking about today is the one on the left side because that is the one that has just been announced for Administrators, the AD Competition. Whereas for the Audit, there is an Audit Competition coming up, but that’s only going to be announced next week. So in one weeks’ time we will know all the details of that Competition.
I will mention a couple of pieces of information that we consider likely to be included, but we don’t know yet for sure until the Notice of Competition is officially released. For these two Competitions, if you happen to have a financial or specifically an audit background in your education, then it is pretty likely that you will be eligible for the Audit Competition as well.
The general rule is: apply for as many competitions as you are eligible, because it is very rare that EPSO would prohibit you from applying for two competitions at the same time. This would only happen if one competition had two sub-profiles. Like for instance if the current Administrator competition had a sub-profile for Public Administrators and Economists. It doesn’t, so there is no exclusion. You can apply for as many competitions as you like and if you are eligible because you meet the formal criteria of the given competition, you are more than encouraged to do so as that obviously increases your chances. Furthermore, the more specialised a certain competition is (meaning Audit is far more specialised and targeted than an Administrator competition), your chances are slightly higher because fewer people will have those qualifications than the Generalist competitions.
Having said that, let’s take a quick look at the deadlines. For the Competition I’m covering extensively today the deadline is the 21st of April 2015. For the one that will be announced next week, the deadline will be one week later so 28th of April.
Now this may sounds a little patronizing, a little pedantic, or pedagogical but please do not leave your application to the last moment. Time and time again we get emails, I personally get emails from readers of my book or those who use our services saying: “Well, I just didn’t do it in time. I tried to apply on the 28th of April or one day before the deadline and the servers were frozen or the whole service was very slow and I couldn’t upload my CV, or I couldn’t fill in a form, or I couldn’t submit it. It’s totally uncertain whether their application actually went through.”
Please try not to make this sort of basic mistake. It’s one of the most easily avoidable ones. Just like putting on the seatbelt in your car. You don’t know that it’s going to save your life, but at least you did your share. So try to make sure that you actually apply on time for the competition.
Languages
Now let’s look at the language rules which seem to change from time to time though they are not particularly complicated. So the “first language” and “second language” are terms and this terminology explains how languages are classified.
EPSO doesn’t use the term mother tongue and there is a very clear reason for this. You might be an EU citizen, but your mother tongue maybe any language of the world. So if you were brought up in Dubai maybe your mother tongue is Arabic, but that’s not an EU official language.
So the “first language” has to be one of the official 24 EU languages in which you are a proficient user. You might be bilingual or you might speak a foreign language extremely well, fluently, perfectly, almost like a native. You are free to choose that language.
You will see via the rules in a few seconds that you might want to play around with this. I am not suggesting anything unethical. This area can sometimes be used to maximise your chances, strictly within the rules and by complying with all the requirements of the exam.
So you can choose anything as your first language as long as you’re confident in your use of that language and use it close to mother tongue level. This is important because language number two requires you to be a so called independent user. This does not require a mother tongue level of use, but fairly strong written and oral communication skills in that language. This needs to be English, French or German and must be different from the “first language.”
The reason why the “second language” is also very important, is because many of the tests (specially the Situational Judgment Test and then later the Assessment Centre), is going to be run in English, French or German. This means that you need to have mastered one of these languages well enough to shine. Well enough to really show your abilities and showcase what you know in those exams and to make sure that you are not disadvantaged by insufficient linguistic skills. Because of this, make sure you choose the second language very carefully.
Citizenship
Citizenship, you need to be a citizen of EU 28. Obviously you see on this photo this is not the EU 28. This is a bit broader than that. It’s for the geographic Europe but this is just to mention that you need to have citizenship from one of the 28 EU Member States countries.
Unfortunately non EU citizens cannot participate, for example Norway or Iceland. Those in the European Free Trade Agreement or other associated countries cannot apply for these sorts of permanent jobs via EU competitions.
Number of Available Positions
The number of available positions currently available for the Administrator exams (the one that I’m covering right now), there are 149 places on the Reserve List.
For the Audit, we won’t know until the Notice of Competition comes out on the 26th of March. That’s when we’ll know, but this number determines a lot of things, among them your chances.
If the number 149 looks a bit discouraging, it shouldn’t. I’ll explain this not just as a pep-talk or not just for a sales message but in a few moments you will see why that shouldn’t bother you, at least at this stage. So keep in mind, this is the end number that they are looking at.
Why Is It A Great Opportunity?
Why is this a great opportunity? I probably don’t need to preach to the converted because most of you who are on this webinar watching it live or maybe as a recording later on would know that it is indeed a great opportunity to work for the EU. Not only because the salaries are very attractive, especially for the AD 5 position which this current Competition is advertising for. As a basic salary, the net monthly income is roughly 4,500 euros which is a very attractive salary for anyone even in Brussels.
Then there are very good benefits if you are married, in terms of health insurance. If you have children, they can attend European schools. There are various other added advantages in working for a European institution.
New Pre-Selection Phase
We’ll look at the exam phases in a little more detail, but to already flag it, the Pre-Selection Phase is the first step towards the exam. I also already want to mention that this is brand new compared to previous competitions. This is different from previous competitions in that the so-called Numerical and Verbal Reasoning Tests are not counted towards the results of the Pre-Selection Test. So with the Numerical and Verbal Reasoning Tests (and if there was a camera feed you would see I’m showing the quotation marks) you “only” need to pass. This is less challenging than it used to be.
You’ll need to pass these tests with 50% pass marks, but the end result does not count towards the final score based on the ranking of the different competitors - yourself, your friends, colleagues and other who do the exam - is counted.
So the two exams which will be considered are the Abstract Reasoning and the Situational Judgment Test, but you will see this in a more visual way in a few seconds.
How to get one of these jobs?
This is the big overview that we’re going to cover in the next 40 or so minutes. As I mentioned at the beginning we will send you the recording, but in the meantime, if you have any questions or something comes up that you are uncertain about or I may not have covered by the end, feel free to send us an email. We’re always happy to answer, obviously free of charge, 24 hours a day, we always answer within 24 hours whether it’s Christmas or New Year or it snows or rains because we’re happy to provide useful information to the members of our community. So feel free to send us an email or a message on Facebook and we’ll answer your question.
Eligibility
Going forward in terms of the eligibility criteria. Eligibility is fairly straightforward for this Competition because for the Administrator competition all you need is a Bachelor degree. That’s a 3-year degree at an accredited university.
There are different rules that apply for equivalence if you happen to have received your degree outside of the EU, but that is a different story. So if it’s an accredited European university, a Bachelor degree, a BA degree, than it is sufficient to be eligible for this particular Competition. No work experience is required and that’s a big thing because you don’t need to prove any sort of work experience.
If you have some work experience, obviously that’s not a disadvantage, that’s a good thing. But those who are just out of university right now are just as eligible as someone who may have 5 or even 10 years of work experience. There it’s a different dilemma about career choice and preferences.
For the Audit Competition, as you see I put “to be confirmed.” We are expecting the Notice of Competition, released next week, to write that the degree needs to be relevant. That is, relevant to the field of Auditing. (At least this is how they usually announce it). So you cannot apply for the Audit exam if you happen to be a Biologist or a Lawyer or have a degree in a non-related field, unless you can adequately prove that your studies included a sufficient amount of Auditing in that particular field.
And one more thing to add to these issues, is if you are a last year student (so if you are still at university studying for your Bachelor degree) as long as you get your degree until the end of July 2015, you can still apply. So you don’t even need to have your degree in your hands to already be eligible to apply for this particular Competition.
Obviously those who already have their degrees or have work experience may not be so happy about opening the doors so wide, but well this is how EPSO approaches the selections process and it is indeed a great career opportunity for anyone fresh out of university.
So going further, let’s look at EPSO exams and the actual Pre-Selection exams that you need to pass. There is no big surprise there in terms of what exams you need to take - Verbal Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning and Situational Judgment Tests.
The way they are counted or not counted is actually what matters the most and this is something we’ll look at one by one.
Verbal Reasoning Test
Let’s look first at the Verbal Reasoning Test which is essentially a reading comprehension test. In terms of how much time there is, interestingly, EPSO already makes this information public in the Notice of Competition. Those who are follow this field, like us, and many of our users and customers would recognise these numbers in terms of having 10 questions and 18 minutes. This is a little bit new, but the proportions are unchanged to previous competitions. So you have, as you can see, a little less than two minutes per question for Verbal Reasoning. There’s always a text passage, an extract from an EU document or an extract from a popular Science magazine or an extract from a gossip magazine. It doesn’t matter what the source is because the question relates to the text passage and gives four statements. There is only one correct statement that correctly answers the question.
When it comes to outside information that’s how they can confused you. You may know something about the topic, say it’s about the Euro crisis and it’s all over the news these days so you may have read some statement from the Greek Prime Minister or someone from the German Chancellor and you think you have a certain bit of information which is not in the text and bang! You just picked the wrong answer because you confused something that is not in the text with something that you know from outside.
Generalisations – they might put a very broad statement, a general statement that all the people of France love wine and maybe the text didn’t say that. Rather the text said a certain region drinks a lot of wine because it’s a wine producing area of France. So a generalisation might mislead you and may get you to choose the wrong answer.
Sometimes a possibility versus fact. So if a statement has a “maybe”, “possibly”, “likely” those sorts of prepositions or adjectives (in that case the possibility versus fact) come into play and changes the meaning. So this is another trick they use in order to test how precise, how accurate you are in finding the correct statement. And then there are similar wordings, where synonyms or very similar expressions are being used for the same term though they don’t necessarily mean exactly the same thing.
Numerical Reasoning
So going further into Numerical Reasoning many of you have certainly seen the different tables and charts that are being used. These are like in mathematical. You would see this sort of chart with various pieces of information and data. In this case, there’s going to be 10 questions and you have 20 minutes to answer them. So two minutes per question to count, calculate and make sure everything is right and accurate.
It’s a lot of data you might think, but the most important thing here is to narrow down the amount of information that you are dealing with and to make sure that you don’t calculate data and pieces of information that are unnecessary.
So for instance making sure to pick the element, cell or piece of information that is the important one is the first crucial step to solving such mathematical riddles efficiently.
There are different skill layers that you need to apply for success in the Numerical Reasoning Tests. You need to accurately interpret the data, meaning make sure which pieces of information are needed.
Reasoning comes into play in the sense of - how do I come to the conclusion that’s required of me? You actually make an estimation. You can make an estimation of how much it could possibly be because in some cases you don’t need to get the specific amount, you don’t need to actually calculate. An estimation may be enough and that might save you 10 to 15 seconds, which comes in very handy when you deal with the next question, which might be more difficult.
Abstract Reasoning
The Abstract Reasoning Test is a little tricky. Tricky in the sense that in the new system (the one that was just announced today), you will have 20 questions. It used to be the case that you had 10 questions, but this has now been change to 20 questions and 20 minutes.
The proportions are the same, one minute per question. This has remained the same, but 20 questions is a bit of a challenge. Abstract Reasoning, as you may recall from a few minutes ago, are the test results that will count towards the final score, so this is a very important one.
The way it looks is the following. You are presented with all sorts of so-called abstract patterns or different drawings or charts. The different parts or different elements of that drawing move, rotate, disappear, appear, become inverse, reverse, change shapes according to a certain logic and you need to find that logic very quickly and decide which one is the next in the sequence.
Situational Judgment Test
And then we have the Situational Judgment Test. The Situational Judgment Test or SJT is the one which is most similar to the one you see on the screen. I won’t burden you by reading out the text, but the idea here is that you’re presented with a certain social situation, a workplace situation where you need to find the most effective and the least effective course of action.
So this one in particular is about implementing software and choosing which people should be involved in the project. There are different approaches and from the four statements what is going to be terrible and what is going to be really good. So you need to find which one is the most effective way forward or the course of action, and which one is the least effective. You have 20 question and most likely 30 minutes to answer these. This is not confirmed in the Notice of Competition but previously this was the rule.
Here the time is not really a problem. Here the situation is often challenging. It’s not numerical reasoning where 2+2=4 but rather a judgment test, so there’s a tiny element of subjectivity. As such, I need to defend the makers of these tests and those who created the simulation on our website. I know firsthand there’s a very thorough methodology behind it and the process is done by a psychologist dealing specifically with these issues to make sure that it’s not as subjective as you may think it is. So it’s not as simple as, well I think this should be done and someone else thinks otherwise. This is not the case. It’s more structured and it’s more streamlined than we might think from the outside.
Pre-Selection Overview
So let’s look at the Pre-Selection. So the Abstract and the Situational Judgment are the two tests for which the scores count towards the next step. Those test results decide whether you make the cut, whether you are among the top performing candidates, but you also need to make sure that you pass 50% of the Numerical Reasoning and 50% of the Verbal Reasoning tests.
So with the Numerical Reasoning and the Verbal Reasoning it is enough to just pass, whereas with the Situational Judgment and the Abstract Reasoning, you need to pass with an amazingly good score.
Pre-Selection Scoring
This is a visual summary of what I just said. So for the Verbal, it’s 5 points. You need to get at least 5 out of 10. Numerical is the same story. For the Abstract and the Situational Judgment, you also have the objective pass mark which is 10 and in the Situational Judgment’s case it is 24 (not 20), but these two test marks are really important. So it’s not enough just to pass these but pass with a very, very good score. So practice methodology is extremely important for these exams. So that’s the Pre-Selection.
+1: Intermediate Test: E-tray Exercise
Now this is something new and this is something that EPSO introduced in their Notice of Competition today, which is a very interesting and I think, a very positive development in the Administrator Competitions. They call it “Intermediate Test”.
What that means is they do the Pre-Selection Test. Pre-Selection remains Pre-Selection as we just saw it and those with the highest score for the Abstract Reasoning and the Situational Judgment Test can pass to the Intermediate Test.
Now the Intermediate Test is an additional step. It’s a subsequent step, so it’s not part of the Pre-Selection. It’s after the Pre-Selection and it’s an e-tray exercise.
E-tray exercise. I took this screenshot from an EPSO sample, but we also have a large number of e-tray exercise samples with explanations on our website. We are also making three, maybe even five new full sets available very, very soon because this is an important test and has become even more important since becoming a part of the Intermediate Test. It’s an extra step towards the Assessment Centre and here you would have 15 to 20 questions and most likely 50 minutes. This is not yet confirmed, but this gives you a rough idea of the timing.
This is a kind of test where you need process. By this I mean, reading different emails, like you see on the top part of the screenshot, and then going on to choose which one is the best way forward. That is, whether you totally agree or totally disagree with a certain course of action. Do you really think that A, B or C is a really good way forward or not necessary the best way forward? So that’s the e-tray exercise.
Now here is the good news. EPSO says that around 10 to 11 times the number of people, who are eventually going to be on the Reserve List, will be invited to the Intermediate Test. So given that there are 149 places available, if we do a rough calculation that mean 1500-1600 candidates.
So this makes me more optimistic and I encourage everyone to be more optimistic, because in the previous system, if you passed the Pre-Selection, but with an insufficient score, only a handful of people went to the Assessment Centre. So you didn’t need to be just good, you need to be extremely good in your results. By inserting the Intermediate Test here, it increases your chances of progressing further. You shouldn’t look at how many people are going to be on the Reserve List, but rather you should look at the Intermediate Test number. 1500-1600 candidates. With sport preparation you do the same thing. You don’t look at standing in the first place, at the very end getting the gold medal. Sure you may want that, but your focus is on the next qualifier. Your focus here is the next round of selection and when you’re preparing for the Pre-Selection you have to say I have a 1 in 1500 chance of making it. And if you make it to that point, you have time to worry about the next step.
So in this competition, your chances have massively increased by the inclusion of this particular test, because this is what you have your eyes on. So 1500-1600 candidates come to the Intermediate Test, which is an e-tray exercise. It’s a computer-based exam, as I mentioned, and you can simulate that both on EPSO’s website and obviously on our site as well.
E-tray Scoring
The way the scoring works, is it already connects with the concept of “Competencies”. Competencies are the things tested in the Assessment Centre. There are eight competencies that EPSO is looking to measure and evaluate every candidate on. Four of these are going to be tested in the e-tray exercise: Analysis and Problem Solving, Delivering Quality and Results, Prioritizing and Organizing and Working with Others.
We have dedicated webinars focused on Competencies, I’ve also written a number of articles, free tips and tricks articles and also e-books (free e-books) available our website on the role of Competencies. How they are measured? How to optimise your performance? We have a lot of advice on this topic, so feel free to look those up. These are so-called soft skills, which are measured through specific tasks.
The e-tray exercise, as a dynamic computer based exercise, is designed to measure your ability to work with others and prioritise etc. etc. So overall each Competency can be awarded 10 points therefore you can get 40 points in total.
So there is a ranking. There is no real pass mark or at least it’s not mentioned in the Notice of Competition because the point of this is to invite to the Assessment Centre the top 300 or 375, to be tested and evaluated in the Assessment Centre itself.
So as you can see if you make it to this point you will then focus on the e-tray exercise. And when you passed the e-tray exercise, that’s when you go onto phase number 3, the Assessment Centre.
Sorry let me go back for a second. So essentially you have four exams or four exercises in the Assessment Centre. It’s a one day series of exercises in Brussels (exceptionally in Luxembourg) but for this Competition, it’s going to happen in Brussels. You can expect a Case Study, an Oral Presentation, a Group Exercise and a so-called Structured Interview or Competency Based Interview.
L2 refers to “language two” so this is all done in English or French or German and it has to be different from your “language one”.
Assessment Centre Scoring
And the scoring in the Assessment Centre? There you have a total of eight competencies, four of which you have already seen and there are four others like Leadership, Communication and various others. Each Competency is given 10 points so there is a possible 80 points in total. There is also a certain pass mark. You need to get at least three points per competency and at least 50 points in total. The way these competencies are tested are through the exercises that you have seen via the previous slide.
Reserve List
So let’s go on and look at what’s the goal in all of this. Well obviously the goal is to make it onto the Reserve List. There is a certain numbers of places on the Reserve List, something we have seen in 149. It has validity, it’s usually one year.
Then there is recruitment, the actual hiring by one of the EU institutions from that particular Reserve List.
Actually getting a job interview is the final part, where you are called up to the European Commission, called up to the European Parliament, called up to the Court of Auditors and you pass a normal, classic job interview.
I can share with you advice and tips and tricks for any kind of job interview or performance requirements of this kind. You need to present yourself well, you need to argue in a certain way, and you need to convince them that your profile is relevant for the job. There are lots of bits and pieces that I could share with you and do feel free to contact me when you get to that stage.
In terms of how to get a job or actually how to pass the Competitions, our advice is to practice for 8-12 weeks. This is highly subjective and even highly personal, but based on our statistics, the feedback we get from our several thousand users and those who have passed; they did practice for quite an extended period of time. I always say that if I were so sit a Competition now (I have done my share several years ago), if I were to do this now, I definitely would start from a very different point from where I was when I was very much into the whole calculation, the mathematics, the algebra part of it for the Numerical Reasoning.
I would make sure I understood the certain methodology and that I could solve a question very fast. Again I came back to my favourite sport comparison, that everyone can run if they’re physically fit. You could run hundreds of meters without any problems. The problem is how fast can YOU run a hundred meters? Because others can do it much faster than you and that’s why you need practice. You need to practice to improve your performance.
Prepare every day for 30 minutes or prepare every third day, it doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent. Systematically, regularly prepare for the Competition; don’t just rush two weeks before the exam because that is not going to work.
Learn the methodologies to make sure that you know the shortcuts and what is the best practice. How can you quickly find those important pieces of information in the chart in the Numerical Reasoning? Identify patterns, the different moving shapes in the Abstract Reasoning. Know what the Science is behind the Situational Judgment Test, because that will help you perform better at the actual exam.
And then you need persistence. Persistence, again to use a sports comparison, is to not have a roller coaster kind of performance, but rather that you are consistent and persistent in your preparation.
Do lots of simulations because when you get to the exam and when you go to the exam centre, you’re going to be familiar with the interface. You are going to be familiar with how the computer systems and the buttons work. All of our interfaces, everything we do, simulates the EPSO interface. We take it very seriously because we want you to go to the exam and make sure that you don’t waste a single second learning the interface or risk losing a single point because you’re not intimately familiar with the way the computer system works for the computer-based tests. So doing simulation definitely helps you a lot and helps you achieve your goals.
Just a few screenshots of our test Verbal Reasoning. We are extremely proud to offer Verbal Reasoning in 12 languages and we are working on our 13th and possibly even 14th language. These are translated and/or written from scratch to make sure the quality is perfect for the Verbal Reasoning Test. So you can practice that, hopefully in your “language one”, I almost said mother tongue but then I corrected myself in time.
Numerical Reasoning with an onscreen calculator, something that you can see on the screen right here.
Abstract Reasoning with all sorts of shapes, figures and puzzles, where language obviously is not so important given the fact that it’s about shapes.
And then the Situational Judgment Test, we have that in English and French so you can practice. This again is modelled on the competencies and the approach that EPSO requires from candidates.
So we have almost come to the end in respect to your evening, on this gloomy Thursday evening. Online EU Training has different training and practice packages so I encourage you to check those out. Lot of them are free, lot of them are tailored for beginners or those who are new to the field so you can practice accordingly.
The Verbal Reasoning, as you see from all the flags, we cater for all these languages, which personally fascinates me to see Greek or Bulgarian Verbal Reasoning Tests, which unfortunately I cannot read. But the feedback from our users is that they are robust. The Situational Judgment Test we have it in German as well, I failed to mention that and our other tests are also in English and French.
We have lots of webinars to help you with the methodology. They are usually 2-hour webinars. Some of them are live (we actually have a few live webinars coming up), where you can ask questions from our tutors and our coaches. You’re very welcome to submit requests or comments if you have any specific interest or any specific needs. We are always listening and very happy to help you.
That’s why we have an enormous collection of free e-books and tips and tricks in order to help you understand the methodology, master it and realise your dream of getting an EU job.
This is just a screenshot of our test interface. Actually this is what it looks like when you launch a new test interface. We are currently tweaking and adjusting it to match the new number of questions and timings that I mentioned at the beginning of today’s webcast.
Books
Now please forgive me for using this opportunity to promote my very own books, but they are highly relevant for these purposes. There is one addition for the Administrator exams and the other one covers the AST exams. Actually the 2015 additions have just come out a couple of weeks ago, so keep these great reads in mind.
Special Discount Offer
Before I close this evening, I’d like to mention again that we have a special discount offer. We are offering 19% OFF on all our services, webinars, any kind of product that you can find on our website. This is a fantastic offer and it’s not something that we do often, so make sure you utilise it. The discount code is myad2015. It’s all small caps and this is only valid for 48 hours, basically until Saturday evening. So before you go out with your friends to have a nice drink on Saturday, make sure you use this special discount offer. You’re very welcome to share it with friends, colleagues or anyone that you know who is preparing for an EPSO competition or might be preparing at one point in the near future, because this is valid for anyone and everyone, but only for 48 hours.
What you will receive within 1 day after the webcast
So as I mentioned at the beginning, we will make sure to send you the full recording and this Prezi that I’ve been using over the past one hour. We are also going to put together a transcript of my beautiful words and my wisdom within five days. We’ll try to do it a bit sooner, but that is going to be available for everyone to see in the next couple of days on our own website.
I thank you very much for your participation and I hope I respected your time and we stayed within the 60 minutes that we set out for this information webcast. As I said, if at any point you have a question, suggestion, specific need or interest, or there is something you don’t understand or you are lost in the EPSO processes, we are more than happy to help you. Whether it is me personally or a member of our team, who are extremely devoted and committed to the cause of helping candidates succeed and get an EU job.
So this is the email address but this is something you can also find on the website under the Contact Us menu. We also have lots of tips and tricks that I encourage you to read, print, share and learn from.
So thank you once again for your attention.
A tiny disclaimer regarding what I have said over the course of this webcast is hopefully as accurate as humanly possible. Please note that we are not EPSO and that we are not the official source of this information, so there may be a tiny bit of information now and then that may not be fully accurate. Always make sure to check the official Notice of Competition or the official documentation, but as I said we do spend several hours and weeks and months on understanding the processes as deeply as possible so we can be as accurate as humanly possible.
Thanks once again for your attention. I wish you a lot of luck and a lot of success with this exciting opportunity and as I said your eyes should be set on this new system of Pre-Selection, Intermediate Test and Assessment Centre. This is actually very good news for everyone because it increases your chances of proceeding from the Pre-Selection Test to subsequent parts of the Competition.
Thanks once again for your attention. Have a lovely evening and please feel free to get in touch with us.
This was Andras Baneth from Brussels, 19th of March 2015.
Useful reading:
The classical way of singling out wrong answers: Abstract reasoning - finding the wrong answer
The visual way of singling out wrong answers: Abstract reasoning - finding the flow
The magic of rounding and estimating: One Numerical Reasoning Tip That Will Save You 20 Seconds per Question
Download FREE E-books on reasoning tests of the AD exams.