EU revamps search for top talent
The EU is scrapping the dreaded general knowledge quiz in its initial selection tests, so aspiring Eurocrats will no longer fall at the first acquis or passerelle clause.
The European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – says it is bringing EU recruitment into line with best practice in public administration worldwide, overhauling procedures that date back to the 1950s.
“Better, faster, stronger” is the slogan for the new system, launched on Thursday by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO).
But making the entrance exam more skills-based, rather than knowledge-based, may not be enough to attract more candidates from the UK, which is under-represented in the Brussels bureaucracy.
UK nationals account for 1,289 of the commission’s 25,019 staff – or 5.2%. But official data show that similar-sized countries have more – Germany 8.3%, France 10.2% and Italy 10.3%.
Belgium, the host country, provides 19.8% of the staff. Belgium is arguably over-represented right across the grades.
The situation for the UK is no better if all the EU’s bureaucrats – more than 40,000 – are considered.
A recent study by the Paris-based Robert Schuman Foundation, a think-tank, shows that Belgium again tops the list, accounting for 16.3% of EU staff in total. France is second, with 10.8%, and Italy third with 9.8%. The UK accounts for 5.1%.
Founding states have the highest numbers in the European Commission
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The new recruitment process will not make concessions for the often weaker foreign language skills of UK nationals, compared with their continental counterparts.
All successful candidates will still have to be fluent in one of the main EU languages – English, French or German – in addition to their mother tongue.
The commission says it has ruled out any nationality quotas, though it can encourage candidates of a particular nationality to apply.
Speedier process
The nerve-racking waiting time for candidates anxious to know whether they have made the grade will be cut to a maximum of one year.
Myriam Watson, a French official at the Commission, said she had applied in September 2005 and did not get her result until April 2007.
A Commission spokesman, Michael Mann, told the BBC that the global jobs market had become more competitive and “if it takes candidates two years they may go to work somewhere else”.
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 Across the [EU] institutions they are crying out for British people  UK official at Commission
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The EU knowledge test in the first stage of selection tended to favour candidates already working in EU institutions, he said.
Both he and Mrs Watson said the oral exam at the second stage of the process was one of the toughest hurdles.
“I had to do a 10-minute presentation before a panel of eight people, but the whole oral lasted 45 minutes, and I had to answer immediately,” said Mrs Watson.
“Still, I had done a simulation before with some people I knew and it was more stressful than the real thing. I didn’t want to look bad in front of people I knew.”
English new lingua franca
The EU has recruitment cycles for three main categories: administrators – for example, lawyers and economists – linguists and office assistants. The competition is such that candidates with degrees are now applying for assistant-grade jobs in Brussels.
The entry-level salary for administrators is 4,267 euros (£3,886; $5,809) a month before tax – but the income tax is a lower, special EU rate, and staff enjoy numerous other perks.
In the new format, candidates who pass the initial computer-based selection tests – verbal, numerical and situational reasoning – will spend a day at an assessment centre in Brussels.
The assessment will be “more focused, professionalised – and there will be more use of human resources personnel,” Mr Mann said.
According to Mrs Watson, the old system did not sufficiently test candidates’ ability to work in a team.
The assessment day, including the oral, will be conducted in the candidates’ second language.
English has now superseded French as the main language of communication in EU institutions, since the major eastward enlargement of 2004.
Yet ironically the institutions do not have enough native English speakers to handle the ever-increasing quantity of documents requiring translation.
The EU now has 23 official languages – and many translations, for example from Maltese into Lithuanian, go via English.
A UK official at the commission, who asked not to be named, told the BBC that “across the institutions they are crying out for British people, because English is the main drafting language in the commission”.
The official blamed the low take-up of UK nationals on a lack of British awareness about EU careers, coupled with a decline in foreign language teaching in UK schools.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8562762.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
'You just don't look disabled'
New York (CNN) — People come up to Aimee Mullins all the time and say, “you know, I have to tell you, you just don’t look disabled.”
The record-setting athlete, actress and model says, “And it’s sweet because I know that they’re confused, and they’re telling me this because they know I’m missing both legs from the shin down, but they’re presented with this package of a highly capable young woman. This has happened all over the world. I tell them it’s interesting because I don’t feel disabled.”
She believes that people are not born disabled. “It’s society that disables an individual by not investing in enough creativity to allow for someone to show us the quality that makes them rare and valuable and capable.”
Mullins was born without fibula bones and was expected to use a wheelchair to get around. Her legs were amputated below the knees when she was a year old. She learned to walk, bike, swim and play sports using prosthetics.
While a student at Georgetown University, she competed in the NCAA Division I, using pioneering carbon-fiber prosthetic devices designed to imitate the hind legs of a cheetah. At the Paralympics in 1996, she set world records in several track events, drawing attention that landed her on magazine covers and in one media “best of” list after another.
2010 Paralympic Winter Games begin Friday in Vancouver
Mullins was featured in a 1999 show by the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen and has gone on to a career as an actress. In an interview with CNN.com, she said she’s beginning work on a screenplay about the life of scientist Rosalind Franklin, whose discoveries helped lead to the unlocking of the structure of DNA.
In a talk at last year’s TED MED conference in San Diego, Mullins explored the concept of disability and talked about how overcoming adversity is something everyone must confront, in one way or another. [TED is a nonprofit that distributes talks on a wide variety of subjects at http://www.ted.com/; TED MED is a separate organization that licenses the TED logo and focuses on medical and health care related issues.]
Mullins spoke to CNN Monday. Here’s an edited transcript:
CNN: You spoke at the TED MED conference about the negative connotations of the term “disabled.” How important is it that we get the language right?
Aimee Mullins: It’s not so much the word itself. The idea of being politically correct is not the goal here. It’s how we use the word very casually as a label to try to encompass somebody’s value to our community and the worth of their contribution to our community. That’s what we need to get right.
I’ve had so many letters from parents or medical professionals who will say, I didn’t even think about how casually I’ll tell someone oh, I have a disabled child. It never even occurred to them that if they really stop to think about it, their child may have a specific medical condition that can be defined as paralysis or autism or being an amputee. …it’s how we use words and how they shape what we think about difference and other people in our community.
CNN: In your own life, how significant have these kinds of words been?
Mullins: Well for me I never ever felt the ownership or any identity with any community of disabilities. I didn’t grow up being told that I was a disabled child. After the ’96 games, and I was competing in Division I track at Georgetown and I was starting to get mainstream press … where I’d be on the cover of a magazine that was heralding my speed and athletic prowess and it would say, “Disabled athlete Aimee Mullins runs faster than most people on the planet with flesh and bone legs.” And I thought how does a journalist miss that, and just casually write “disabled athlete.”
I’ve had journalists asking me what do we call you — is it handicapped , are you disabled, physically challenged? I said well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I’m a bilateral below the knee amputee.
Ten years later, watching Oscar Pistorius go through many of the same issues I had 10-12 years ago, I realized that our language just hasn’t caught up with the opportunities technology is providing for people…
I feel like today there’s a different sense, so much more widespread, of people feeling like they don’t want to be negated, they don’t want to be marginalized, they want to make their own definitions of their identity. They want to identify themselves.
CNN: You have said that there’s a stigma relating to differences between people. Do you think, just setting the word aside, is there still a stigma relating to physical limitations such as being an amputee?
Mullins: There’s much, much less of a stigma here. It’s my own personal experience that parents of children today who are amputees have an entirely different view. I think a lot of this is because of the Internet. They have so much more access to information and to learn about what prosthetics are out there. And a sense of sheer numbers, to learn that you’re not alone. …
I’ve been in developing countries where being an amputee and indeed having any kind of physical or intellectual or emotional disability is highly stigmatized. I was in Kibera [in Nairobi, Kenya], one of the largest slums in the world, last fall, and mothers of babies born with club feet are encouraged to abandon these children. If the babies are born with Down Syndrome, they’re encouraged to abandon them.
If the mother doesn’t actually abandon the child, the child is kept in a backroom in a shack and literally does not see the light of day. And the child is not even counted. When I asked a mother how many children she had, she told me she had three, but there were four. I was sitting in their living room and her three year old had been born with his head enlarged and the rest of his body wasn’t developing at the same rate.
I had a really disturbing message from a doctor who was at TED MED and heard me speak and went to Haiti immediately after the earthquake — he’s an anesthesiologist. And he said, we have to talk because I have so many patients down here who are choosing death over amputation.
And so I’m sure that part of the social stigma in a developing country when employment and work are already scarce, it’s hard for people to imagine how they could support their family financially with a different body.
CNN: How does technology play into this and how is it changing the lives of amputees?
Mullins: Technology’s a huge factor. There had been a real dearth of technological advancement since the last world war. …
I grew up as a teenager having this wonderful naivete about, well I can go see something that James Cameron dreamt up and [Oscar-winning visual effects designer] Stan Winston built it. Why can’t I have that for my body? Or I would go into Madame Tussaud’s wax museum and see the kind of artistry was done there for a leg. Why can’t I combine that with Stan Winston’s doing?
Watch James Cameron’s talk at TED2010
It was a very lonely voice echoing in the wilderness… And I really think because of the two wars we are in right now and because of the fact that we have so many young men and women in this situation, it’s unthinkable that we’re willing to make a 19-year old irrelevant by not giving them their capabilities. And that’s why you’re seeing so many leaps in progress.
Again with the growth of the Internet, so many more people are saying I found some designer in Silicon Valley who’s using a 3-D printer to create a model of a prosthetic leg and customize it and print it out. There is that sense of possibility that’s been so expanded because of technology and because so many more people have accepted this invitation to come into the conversation. I’ve had fashion designers, graphic designers, and communication designers, people who don’t have engineering backgrounds, who don’t have medical backgrounds, who are very intrigued by the idea of creating prosthetics for assistive devices…
The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people’s cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home, you feel impacted by not having it. It’s an important part of your daily function and what you can do in a day.
CNN: How much of your own time do you devote to raising awareness about these issues?
Mullins: I’m not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me. You can’t possibly speak for a diverse group of people. I don’t know what it’s like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy.
I don’t speak for such huge and diverse groups. What I’ve tried to do, what I’ve been fortunate to do, is to live my live and create my life as I’ve wanted to create it. To be able to live with such an autonomy has itself raised awareness.
Reference Link
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/09/mullins.beyond.disability/index.html?hpt=Mid
Courtesy
CNN
Police chief aims to save boys from life of crime
Sweden : Stockholm county police chief Carin Götblad has recommended the creation of special municipal task forces to coordinate efforts from police, schools and social services to steer Sweden’s youth away from criminality.
“I suggest that the key actors – social services, schools and the police – are given a legal responsibility to support the parents of young people,” Götblad, who is leading a state inquiry into the matter, wrote in an article in Dagens Nyheter on Wednesday.
The Stockholm police chief has been tasked with developing ways to identify young people in the risk zone and to propose strategies to prevent their recruitment into criminal networks.
There are around 5,000 young people in Sweden who are considered to constitute the recruitment pool for criminal groups, Götblad said. The group is primarily made up of boys living in deprived residential areas in the major cities.
“We have a lot of knowledge about the backgrounds and risk factors around young people who develop a criminal lifestyle. It primarily concerns boys and young men living marginalized in the most deprived areas,” Götblad wrote.
Resources should be focused on these groups, for the sake of the boys, but also “for a safer society,” the police chief urged.
Götblad has also suggested the creation of Projekt Pojke (Project Boy) to address social problems, psychological ill health and stereotyped gender roles among young men and boys.
“These boys are particularly vulnerable. Schools are not formed according to their needs and there is today almost no labour market for young, uneducated men,” she said.
Projekt Pojke would offer work experience and free-time activities and work to change values and attitudes that encourage criminal activity, the police chief said, adding that companies and the business community should be encouraged to become involved.
Karin Götblad proposed that the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) should be tasked with, in collaboration with other bodies, produce a manual for developing a systematic method for identifying exposed groups and for leading individuals away from a life of crime.
According to Brå statistics, men account for 80 percent of those suspected of crimes.
Reference Link
http://www.thelocal.se/25442/20100310/
Courtesy
The Local
Public bodies to accept thousands of interns
Sweden
To meet labour market policy goals the Swedish Alliance government is now demanding that public authorities accept thousands of interns.
“When I received the letter I was convinced that they had written it wrong, that there was one too many zeros,” said Elisabeth Bjar, HR director at the Swedish Tax Agency to the newspaper.
The government’s “Lyftet” scheme is aimed at occupying some 130,000 unemployed people, but by January municipalities and counties had only accepted 20 interns. The state will instead now take on the interns.
Swedish labour minister Sven Otto Littorin told the newspaper that he is well aware that finding places for 65,000 interns within the state apparatus was unrealistic.
“It is a high target, which I am conscious that we will not meet with regards to state authorities. But at the same time I think that we have to put pressure on state authorities to actually take part, in the same way as we have asked the local authorities to do so,” he told the TT news agency.
Littorin is also aware of the risk that trainees will not be given anything meaningful to do. But, he said, any activity is better than “just sitting at home and waiting for the benefits to arrive.”
“Even if the work tasks may not be 100 percent perfect, it is still better to have somewhere to go, to feel that there are others around, that you are not just left alone to wait for the money,” Littorin said.
Littorin rejected accusations from the ST union that the government is pushing the scheme to simply push down unemployment figures before the autumn election.
“It is of course not that at all, for the simple reason that these people are already unemployed. They remain registered as unemployed. So this is not an attempt to cook the books. However it increases the chance that they might return to work increases, and that is the whole point.”
Reference Link
http://www.thelocal.se/25232/20100226/
Courtesy
The Local
Swedish researchers discover new bird species
Swedish researchers, together with their Lao colleagues, have discovered a previously unknown bird species in south-east Asia.
The new species, named Phylloscopus calciatilis, is related to the willow warbler, but lives only in areas of limestone rock.
“Kalkstenssångare (Limestone Leaf Warbler) would be a very fitting name in Swedish. It is very attached to this environment,” said Per Alström, a researcher at Artdatabanken at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
The find, which has been detailed in the scientific journal Ibis, means that Alström is now one of the leading experts in his field.
A total of a 18 new bird species have been described in Asia over the past 20 years. Five of these, four warblers and a wagtail, have been discovered by Alström, together with his colleague Urban Olsson at Gothenburg University.
The new species is clear green on its top side and clear yellow on its belly. It is not unusual in Laos and Vietnam, and is probably found in southern China.
That it has remained unknown to science until now is due to its striking similarity to another, closely related species, from the same region. Its song is however distinguishable and DNA studies have confirmed that it is a distinct species.
Alström and Olsson were working together with the Wildlife Conservation Society Lao Program in Vientiane.
Reference Link
http://www.thelocal.se/25008/20100216/
Courtesy
The Local
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