Dear all,

I'm a native Finnish speaker, and for the first time I find myself in a situation where I can choose my mother tongue as either language 1 or language 2. Up until now, I only ever did the reasoning tests in Finnish and everything else in English, which for me was more than fine. However, with the current selection procedure language 1 is also the one I'm supposed to fill the application form in, and the big, bold letters at the top of the application form says to make sure I pick a language that is understood by the selection board and recruitment services (i.e. "the most common shared official EU languages"). 

So, now I have to either a) write the application form in Finnish, and probably not be understood by the people who might be interested in hiring me, or b) do the case study and interviews in Finnish, which feels very strange, not the least because I have only ever done professional work in English. It also feels strange not to put my mother tongue as language 1. 

Are there any small language speakers here who have gone through a similar process? I'd love to hear how it worked for you, particularly at the assessment center. 

Dear Vilma,

Zoe Wed, 01/05/2022 - 19:57

Dear Vilma,

You are right, it is very strange. I have the same question/problem as you do. I get the impression that they are trying to disqualify some candidates from the start and they came up with this method..!

Have you tried contacting EPSO? Do you have any feedback from them on this? (I guess there is no point in sending a message now, they are not going to reply by Monday.)

Thank you and best of luck!

Zoe

Hi Zoe,

vilma.kuuliala@gmail.com Fri, 01/07/2022 - 12:56

Hi Zoe,

I wrote to them today in a momemt of optimism, but it is indeed very unlikely that they will reply in time. For now I'm leaning towards choosing my native language as language 1. Considering that this is a specialist competition, I rather maximise my changes of passing the competition, and worry about the application later.

I will let you know in case I hear back from them. 

Surpisingly, I did receive an

VilmaK Fri, 01/07/2022 - 18:19

Surpisingly, I did receive an answer. For the most part they just repeated what is stated in the notice of competition, but they also highlighted the fact that successful candidates on the reserve list can upload their CV in one of more languages, and that CV will then be transferred to the recruiting services together with their application form. They did also emphasise that completing the application in a language other than L1 is grounds for disqualification. 

Impressive, I didn't think

Zoe Fri, 01/07/2022 - 20:38

Impressive, I didn't think they would reply soon enough!

I see... Thank you very much for sharing this information.

Best of luck with your application and the exams!