"The emphasis will be put more on abilities and potential, rather than on knowledge already acquired," said Peter, who coaches candidates seeking to pass the EPSO exams.
Declaring herself "a big fan of the new system," she explained that "much more than knowledge it tests abilities, motivation and emotional intelligence".
Ability to learn, speak and write, and ability to communicate and work in teams will primarily be evaluated along with resilience, said the Romanian. "Their idea is […] to train the civil servants much more than to recruit them when they are already at their peak."
Comparing the new system with the previous one, which featured an EU knowledge test, Peter said that "in continuity, there are still […] tests on verbal and numerical reasoning, but next to that […] they have to pass an abstract reasoning test – which is a kind of intelligence test – and a situational judgement test, which is a kind of emotional intelligence test".
Asked to identify its potential pitfalls, Peter said "the first I can see is whether the way we assess gives the right responses for what we want to assess," warning that it remains to be seen whether the tests and exercises are able to accurately measure motivation, ability and willingness to learn, and ability to work as part of a multicultural team.
"Are the exercises conceived for the assessment centre able to tell us 'yes' or 'no'? If there are pitfalls, they would be here," Peter explained, before stating: "If there is a system able to respond to these questions, then it's the assessment centre system."
50,000 or so candidates participated in the first round of testing to take place under the new system this spring. Asked whether the assessment centre would prove capable of processing such record numbers, Peter suggested that the threshold for passing pre-selection would be high enough to ensure that only a reasonable number are successful.
"I suppose that there is a clear decision to be taken beforehand on how many people will pass the pre-selection tests," she said.
One danger of setting a high threshold at such an early stage is that pre-selection only measures certain aspects of intelligence, like situational judgement and verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning.
"Keep in mind the autistic genius who will pass the pre-selection tests [but not] the assessment centre," said Peter, warning: "By him passing, probably someone who is good but not a genius didn't pass."
As for whether the new system would allow the European Commission to find the right geographical balance when making appointments, Peter believes the only potential hindrance here will be linguistic ability, and expressed concern that the languages used most frequently by the EU executive are French and English.
"I'm afraid we could lose some very bright individuals […] who would probably make very good civil servants because they are not able to express themselves in French and English as well as we are used to others doing," she said, citing as examples Estonians or Lithuanians, whose first language is their mother tongue, second language is Russian and third language is German, leaving English and French as only their fourth and fifth languages.
