A competency is a set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable, and improve the efficiency of, performance of a job. During job interviews and assessments, competencies are used as benchmarks against which assessors can evaluate candidates.
In EPSO there are two types of competencies.
- “general” competencies are independent of the level or type of competition
- “field-specific” competencies are depending on the level and the field of the competition. These are usually specified in the Annex 1 (Duties) and Annex 2 (Selection Criteria) of the Notice of Competition (NoC), and tested through the Field-Related Interview (FRI), the Written Test in the Field (WT) and most currently the Field-Related MCQ.
General and field-related competencies are somewhat overlapping (e.g., written communication for specialists) however, in EPSO, they are assessed through different tests, separately.
A candidate’s “core” competencies are the combination of field-specific and general competencies plus some basic skills like abstract, numerical, and verbal reasoning. For EPSO exams usually only a pass mark needs to be obtained for these reasoning skills, and the scores are not considered in the overall assessment.
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