5 Mistakes All Epso-test Candidates Make

1. “I can prepare for the exam in two weeks.” Unless you’re a genius and don’t mind drinking ten Red Bulls a day, you will need at least two months to thoroughly prepare for the competition. EPSO will ask you many details, data and names that will take some time to memorize, especially if you first need to learn the basic institutional aspects of how the EU works. We advise making a day-to-day timeline for preparation with two days left for repeating challenging topics.

2. “I can find all information on the Internet in no time.” You can certainly find most information you need, but the question is whether you really know what is needed? The European Union and the skills needed for verbal reasoning, abstract reasoning and numerical reasoning are such a vast topic with so many details that finding the right information takes meticulous collection of information. Luckily Online EU Training has already done this for you and the most relevant links are available free on our Resources page.

3. “I’m good in maths so I don’t need to prepare for numerical reasoning”. This is the most dangerous assumption you could possibly make: numerical reasoning is the test that takes out the highest proportion of candidates. Even if you’re good in calculus you should practice counting and logical arguments every day until the exam so that you won’t waste time with otherwise simple issues. The same goes for verbal reasoning: read as many articles in English as possible and make sure to look up each word that you don’t know to improve your vocabulary.

4. “The EU recruitment procedure will go fast.” Unfortunately, it won’t. It takes about 9 months from the publication of the competition until the reserve list is published. Even this does not mean recruitment, it only shows that you are eligible for appointment to a specific post, which may again take some time.

5. “There are so many candidates that I have no chance.” This is absolutely not true: look at all those 40,000 EU officials who have passed the competition at one point or another, and the large number of people placed on reserve lists every year. Keep this in mind: only a fraction of people who signed up online actually show up at the exam, and only a fraction of these people had actually spent more than two weeks preparing for the competition. So if you take things seriously, you are “only” competing with 20% of all those who have applied.

By: Gabor Mikes

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Hassan Bawab is the author of this article on European Union Jobs. Find more information about EU Job Opportunities here.