UN Updates: The story so far

It has been a while since I have last written about the UN NCRE. Nothing much has developed over the last few months but as I have said, that was to be expected. While patiently waiting, I have been busy working on a few projects that I am excited about. Firstly, due to resignations and contractual issues; we have had to delay the launch of our website again. But I am excited about that because we have taken an entirely new approach to the whole development process. One was we collaborated with our Marketing department on this initiative. In the past projects were mostly developed in isolation. Secondly, although e-commerce will be some years away we have taken the initiative to add an e-commerce comment on our new website. We are building it on Drupal and after testing eCommerce, we finally decided to go with Ubercart for our e-commerce front end. Next exciting bit of news is, 4 new web servers have arrived and are just waiting for me to get my hands on them and put them online. After a year of pleading I finally get to have options to offer our customers, we will now offer a Linux web hosting environment in addition to the Windows offering we currently offer. That will be a huge leap forward.

But back to the UN. Read on and find out some of the information that I have collated from other sources on the Internet.

From the UN NCRE website, this announcement.

2010 National Competitive Recruitment Examination (2010 NCRE):
NCRE 2010 is delayed until summer 2010. Additional information will be provided on our website by Sept. 2009

Looks like those wishing to sit for the exams in 2010 have reason to be happy after the initial scare that the program would be suspended for 2010. Additionally, Statistics and Information Technology results for those convoked for the 2009 exams are now available. For candidates who have sat the exam in 2008, Political Affairs and Programme Evaluation have finalized their rosters. Candidates in these streams should now be awaiting for placement once an appropriate vacancy is available from the UN.

For those now on the roster, here are some inside information you will certainly find very valuable. I got this off a long running thread of discussions on Frank Ejby Poulsen’s blog by far the most popular blog on this topic.

In response to a question on how many people on the roster actually get a job, a UN Program Manager registered as Mazza on the website responds:

“There are no statistics, at least not published, on placement time, or how long it takes from going from the roster to an actual job.

One correction to your question first of all; you don’t get on the roster to wait for a specific job to open up. There are a bunch of jobs out there, that require a specific set of skills. When one of these jobs opens up -because a P2 got a promotion, moved to another P2 post, quit, went on mission or secondment, a new job was created- the manager will request HR to provide him with the list of available roster candidates. He may ask for a specific roster, so only to see the economic affairs officers, but may also ask to see others he may feel could qualify. In my case, I am Program Manager, but took the Humanitarian Affairs exam. Just happened to qualify for the program management job.

The manager or HR will contact those candidates that appeal to the manager. At the least, they will need to speak the required languages, have the right work experience, and for certain very specific jobs it may be required to know how to use a certain kind of software or know of a specific branch of law, for example. These candidates will be approached to see whether they are interested to be interviewed.

Then a normal procedure is followed; candidates interviewed according to the competency-based interviewing method, a choice is made, the job offer is made, the candidate accepts or not.

There is absolutely no rule that says you can’t be contacted the day you are placed on the roster. I know colleagues who were off the roster and in the UN within 3 months. It really just depends on the job available, your qualifications and the qualifications of the others on the roster; it is a competition between you and the other candidates, as for any other job. And yes, there is a bias against people new on the roster, as in general they will be younger and thus with less relevant experience as those who have been on the roster for 3 years, assuming they have not spent those years wasting their time. If you were a manager, I guess you’d prefer the candidate with more experience, too.

As for the time limit, so far the roster has never been cleared, except for those who have refused 2 offers. So you can be on the roster for however long you want. I know they say it’s max. 1 year, but that isn’t something that’s enforced. There are horror stories going around of people being on the list for 10 or 15 years.”

Mazza comments and summarizes a few things by saying:

“1. The speed of the marking process. The exam questions are written by UN staff in the area of the exam. So, the Admin exam will have questions designed by people working in Admin, HR, etc. If the question you designed is part of the exam, then you will be responsible for marking that specific question for all the exams around the world. As you can imagine, especially in large groups like e.g. social affairs, this may take a while…Also, bear in mind that the people marking actually hold full-time jobs, get sick, pregnant, go on mission or holiday, etc. As you can’t publish results until every question has been marked, it can take a while.

2. The success rate. Internally, with the information about the suspension of the 2010 exams, we were sent some statistics aswell. The exams are suspended because they want to review the speed and efficacy of the process. Looking at the stats, I personally think it is the right thing to do. For example, in 2007 there were 6977 applicants. 1741 were convoked to the exam. 1195 actually sat the exam. Of these, 39 made it onto the roster. This is a success rate of 3.2%, which is among the highest since the start of the exam. In 2001, the success rate was 2.0%, in 2002, 1.15%. In 2005, 14364 candidates applied, but only 2554 sat the exam in the end. All this should tell you that you should not be too sad not having made it onto the roster, and that the General Assembly is right in wanting to revise the process.

3. Someone asked if it helps the grading (i.e. easier grading) if you’re from an underrepresented country, like Afghanistan. If you paid attention, you would have known that only candidates from underrepresented countries can even enter the exam. So no, there is no different scaling for different countries. Besides, the exams are marked blind (i.e. the corrector does not see name, sex or nationality of the candidate). Would you want a job in the UN with all your colleagues knowing that you had an easier time at the exam than they all had? Didn’t think so!”

The respondent now works with the UN in Program Management. I hope those information will be helpful for those who regularly read my blog for information on the UN NCRE.