STU/66th Council/15/038
13 November 2015

The STU draws your attention to the dangers
of the new reform of recruitment processes

The APX Commission report will be presented today at 3 p.m. in the plenary session. It includes proposals that will impact our future:

1. Open to internal AND external recruitment of all posts with immediate effect.
2. The reduction of the duration of the advertisement of external vacant posts from two months to one month.

The STU, while accepting point 2 concerning the reduction of the duration of the advertisement period, cautioned the Administration in its addendum 38 C/40 Add.2 about the detrimental consequences on staff of the implementation of point 1 for the following reasons:

• In the absence of career development policy, of concrete training programme or merit-based promotion, the internal advertisement of posts is the only existing way of encouraging the progression of staff members.
• In the absence of clear, effective and objective mechanism that garantees that priority be provided to staff members in the recruitment process, we are not assured that this principle is respected in case of direct external advertisement of posts.

More effective measures could be identified and implemented to reduce current delays of recruitment periods , such as shortening internal vacancy announcements with proper alert mechanisms (permitting all staff members to be systematically informed), respecting the existing recruitment deadlines, and actively identifying posts for which external candidates may be needed, while maintaining the current rules concerning internal advertisement of vacant posts.