E-recruitment practices in the civil service

 

On 21 July 2020, SIGMA organised a virtual workshop for both ENP and IPA partners to discuss e-recruitment practices in the civil service. This initiative comes as a response to many requests received by SIGMA on the occasion of previous coronavirus (COVID-19) webinars – many participants requested to discuss the practice of e-recruitment in more detail, as it gained importance during the pandemic crisis.

Over 100 participants representing public institutions, but also NGOs and experts from almost all partner administrations participated in the event, as well as representatives from ReSPA and a number of EU Delegations.

Take a look at the agenda.

Introductory remarks from the Deputy Head of the SIGMA Programme were followed by an introductory presentation on the topic of e-recruitment.

The main part of the workshop consisted of the following three presentations by Albania, Belgium and Lithuania, on specific solutions related to e-recruitment. Also view questions asked during the workshop, with answers provided by the speakers.

• E-recruitment in Albania

• E-recruitment in the Federal Pubic Service Finance, Belgium (Ministry of Finance)

• E-recruitment in Lithuania

• Questions to and answers from Albana Koçiu, Director, Department of Public Administration, Albania

• Questions to and answers from Joke Bauwens, Head, Recruitment & Selection Department, Federal Public Service Finance, Belgium (Ministry of Finance)

• Questions to and answers from Simona Abraitiené, Advisor, Selection Division, Civil Service Department, Ministry of Interior, Lithuania

Further support material can be viewed below.

Public Administration of Albania	Federal Public Service Finance, Belgium	Public administration of Lithuania
Online recruitment to the civil service in Albania as a response to the COVID-19 crisis	Code déontologique pour candidats	Data on recruitment (Lithuanian only)
Annex 2: Online testing – instructions for participants	Code of ethics for candidates (unofficial translation by SIGMA)
Annex 3: Online interview – instructions for conducting video interviews I in Albanian	Entretien en ligne via Skype (version candidat)
Annex 4: Recruiting procedure for candidates	Entretiens en ligne via Skype (version jury)
Guidelines for the evaluation procedure (Albanian only)

The workshop showed that there were some common concerns related to e-recruitment, mostly related to proctoring, data security, IT preparedness and the cost of introducing e-recruitment. There was also a question regarding whether applied solutions worked equally well for all categories/groups of civil servants. These questions and answers from speakers are available here.

The primary takeaways from the workshop are:

• The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic crisis stimulated many innovations in human resource management in the civil service, including developments in and increased application of e-recruitment.

• It is likely that increased use of e-recruitment will persist after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic crisis, and different e-recruitment solutions will be further developed.

• Advantages of e-recruitment such as increased transparency, flexibility, efficiency and participation outweigh the challenges related to supervision of candidates during the examination phase, possible technical problems, lack of IT skills and security concerns. Many countries pointed out that the barrier for introducing e-recruitment is the lack of funding to make such an investment in the short term.

• E-recruitment needs to be understood in a broader sense and should also include  actions related to employer branding and onboarding of new recruits (see good practices from Belgium).

• The results of the poll run during the workshop show that e-solutions could be applied in all phases of recruitment and not only during the application and testing phases.

• The usefulness of e-recruitment can be different for different organisations. It may be more useful for centralised recruitment systems, or larger organisations with a wide number of candidates (economies of scale).

All workshop documents can be browsed on Slideshare