Junior Diplomat/Third Secretary

ezra_pound

The_Conductor wrote: »

So- 100 EOs, 40 Third Secretaries, and an indeterminate number of specialist AO posts. In total- almost certainly less than 200 positions- and most candidates going for all 3 competitions.

I don't see how this is going to make one iota of difference to the stated government policy of making a noticeable reduction in the average age of the civil service- 200 recruits in a pool of 30,000 simply isn't enough. If there was some sort of an incentivised retirement scheme- and greater recruitment perhaps- however, simply bringing in less than 1% of the current staff numbers- simply is a drop in the ocean.

Its welcome that there are new people coming in- but the numbers- in the context of the civil service and public sector- are insufficient.

There HAS ALREADY BEEN 2 incentivised early retirement schemes.

But yes agree that 200 insufficient. Problem is necessity to reduce numbers.

athtrasna

I got to the second last round last time, and the second round the time before. Truth be told I couldn't afford to apply for it now, the pay is poor.

What really annoyed me about the process is that you're just a number for the first two phases, the exams and then the group assessment if you get that far. Experience, degree studied, all meant nothing.

My advice for the round 1 exam, if it's the same this time. The last section is to write a summary of a fact file, using different language. Concentrate on the summary, the first time I did the exam I worried too much about paraphrasing it. Read the file, highlight the key points and summarise.

The_Conductor

Are you automatically brought in at the bottom of the scale? If so- I may as well just pull my application- I've a mortgage, a wife and two children. With the best of will in the world- its not possible to run a family on the bottom of the scale. Perhaps there are other benefits that aren't immediately obvious/apparent? I'd love some of the opportunities- such as the language classes- and I'd love my munchkins to be multilingual too- but we still need a salary to live on.

Dave!

The_Conductor wrote: »

Are you automatically brought in at the bottom of the scale? If so- I may as well just pull my application- I've a mortgage, a wife and two children. With the best of will in the world- its not possible to run a family on the bottom of the scale. Perhaps there are other benefits that aren't immediately obvious/apparent? I'd love some of the opportunities- such as the language classes- and I'd love my munchkins to be multilingual too- but we still need a salary to live on.

The post involves lots of travelling and being stationed abroad for years at a time. I wouldn't have thought this would be a job that would suit somebody with a young family.

Would probably be very interesting though

The_Conductor

Dave! wrote: »

The post involves lots of travelling and being stationed abroad for years at a time. I wouldn't have thought this would be a job that would suit somebody with a young family.

Would probably be very interesting though

I've lived abroad a lot already- and have explored the possibility of moving abroad before- I'd be more than happy to bring my family with me and to move around. There are some places that would be more conducive to bringing up a young family than others- but I wouldn't rule anything in or out.

RiseToMe

The_Conductor wrote: »

Are you automatically brought in at the bottom of the scale? If so- I may as well just pull my application- I've a mortgage, a wife and two children. With the best of will in the world- its not possible to run a family on the bottom of the scale. Perhaps there are other benefits that aren't immediately obvious/apparent? I'd love some of the opportunities- such as the language classes- and I'd love my munchkins to be multilingual too- but we still need a salary to live on.

The better half is familiar with the recruitment process so I've just asked her and yes you are brought in at the bottom of the scale. You're based in Ireland for the first three years while you get experience and on moving to your allocated post there *may* a moving package in terms of transportation of your belongings but that's it. Salary is as stated.

ezra_pound

The_Conductor wrote: »

Are you automatically brought in at the bottom of the scale? If so- I may as well just pull my application- I've a mortgage, a wife and two children. With the best of will in the world- its not possible to run a family on the bottom of the scale. Perhaps there are other benefits that aren't immediately obvious/apparent? I'd love some of the opportunities- such as the language classes- and I'd love my munchkins to be multilingual too- but we still need a salary to live on.

You move one point up the scale each year. So within two years and a bit you'd be up about six grand. Haddington road agreement would delay first progression by 3 months so you'd be in job on first point for 15 months - then one increment a year.

ezra_pound

The_Conductor wrote: »

Are you automatically brought in at the bottom of the scale? If so- I may as well just pull my application- I've a mortgage, a wife and two children. With the best of will in the world- its not possible to run a family on the bottom of the scale. Perhaps there are other benefits that aren't immediately obvious/apparent? I'd love some of the opportunities- such as the language classes- and I'd love my munchkins to be multilingual too- but we still need a salary to live on.

Worth noting as well that pension levy and pension deductions will be made from pay. These would amount to about 100-140 euro a month at that rate of pay (off the top of my head ) on top of the deductions which a private sector worker would be familiar with.

sarkozy

God, all of you people are talking as if there's actually a chance of getting these positions. The chance is remote at best. While it's a fine excuse to get yourself thinking about moving your family abroad for opportunities, don't get too excited about this competition. Be realistic. And rotating every four years or so comes with serious cons as well as pros. You'd do your fair share of sh1tholes before you're even in the running for the nice places. On the other hand, Japan is considered a 'hardship' posting. Go figure.

ezra_pound

sarkozy wrote: »

God, all of you people are talking as if there's actually a chance of getting these positions. The chance is remote at best. While it's a fine excuse to get yourself thinking about moving your family abroad for opportunities, don't get too excited about this competition. Be realistic. And rotating every four years or so comes with serious cons as well as pros. You'd do your fair share of sh1tholes before you're even in the running for the nice places. On the other hand, Japan is considered a 'hardship' posting. Go figure.

We're realistic. We know the odds and the competition. Once you apply you stand no chance if you don't address these issues. That's what we're doing. So in the interview -if you're lucky enough to get that far- you can say that you've spoken to your wife about travel, or have worked out that you can afford to live on the first few years of low pay etc. Etc. Nobody thinks that they re guaranteed a place however if you're bothered enough to apply you should really address the reality of the job or you'll never have any hope. Some people have been planning on this job for years.

We know how many positions there are and can only guess at the number of applications but you can presume that there'll be at least 2,000 applications for each position.

salmon1

Anyone know roughly when we should know if we have passed the application stage??

El Sid

salmon1 wrote: »

Anyone know roughly when we should know if we have passed the application stage??

As far as I am aware all applicants go through to the online assessment stage, with your application only taken into account if you pass that.

Just as a matter of interest ezra, is that 2,000 applicants per position figure a rough guess? Surely it's a tad high! It was mentioned earlier in the thread that the previous campaign had somewhere north of 7,000 applicants. Obviously given the current climate we can expect that figure to be well passed, but if there's 40 openings...

sarkozy

Just a reality check.

ezra_pound

El Sid wrote: »

As far as I am aware all applicants go through to the online assessment stage, with your application only taken into account if you pass that.

Just as a matter of interest ezra, is that 2,000 applicants per position figure a rough guess? Surely it's a tad high! It was mentioned earlier in the thread that the previous campaign had somewhere north of 7,000 applicants. Obviously given the current climate we can expect that figure to be well passed, but if there's 40 openings...

Apologies. Decimal point error. More like 1 in 200.

delricyo

Hard to know how many applications there will be.

Just from my experience:
11000 applied for the general EO positions in the civil service back in 2006.

More recently -
About 650 applied for the AO Revenue position in 2012
About 850 applied for the AO Revenue position in 2013

Id say a few thousand will apply for this. The thought of leaving everything behind, coupled with a (sort of) low starting salary - might keep the numbers from climbing to crazy high numbers.

Looking forward to giving the tests a good go at the end of the month.

I got through to the second round the last time in 2008. I remember having to summarise an article about Brazil. I actually did ok on that. It was the group exercise that I didnt pass on ....

TheCruiser

Gosh, reading back over the threads from 2007, 2008 on the 3rd Sec competition makes for stressful reading. This is gonna be a brutal process...

I missed out by about 5 places on getting to stage 2 in 2008 and submitted my app for this year last week. I think my experience from the intervening years is pretty relevant but it counts for nought really unless I'm fortunate enough to get to the final stages.

Has anyone found any particularly useful practice books/material for the aptitude tests? There are lots of books out there but hard to see what's most useful for 3rd sec aptitude exams.

In previous years the numerical reasoning was on a pass/fail basis and didn't count towards the ranking. I wonder if it will be the same this time around.

sureitsgrand

Similar situation here: Was about ten out from reaching stage 2 last time around but have put together some decent and relevant experience in the intervening period.

Doing well in stage 1 is just so vital. So I'd like to echo what The Crusier said, if anyone has any good resources on relevant aptitude tests let us know!

cee_jay

Sample aptitude tests can be found here:
http://www.shldirect.com/practice_tests.html

JohnMearsheimer

delricyo wrote: »

Hard to know how many applications there will be.

Just from my experience:
11000 applied for the general EO positions in the civil service back in 2006.

More recently -
About 650 applied for the AO Revenue position in 2012
About 850 applied for the AO Revenue position in 2013

Id say a few thousand will apply for this.

Agreed, applications will still be in the thousands for the 3rd Sec competition. The recent AO competitions required specific qualifications from applicants which probably kept the numbers down. Until recently I believe for AO competitions all you needed was a level 8 degree in anything. You just need a level 8 degree to apply for the 3rd Sec so I'd imagine the number of applicants will be huge.

I applied for the 3rd Sec twice before but I didn't this time as I felt I'd get nowhere with it. I know it's a defeatist attitude on my part and if you're not in you can't win etc... I have a degree in politics and a masters in international relations but that doesn't matter unless you manage to make it to interview stage and only a very small percentage of applicants will make it that far. I sort of feel like an accountant who's accounting qualification is no good to him when applying for jobs.

I wonder if the government will tighten up on the types of graduates in future who can apply for 3rd Sec like they have done with the AO. Politics, history, languages, development studies, international relations, peace studies all seem like cognate areas of study for DFA empoyees. I don't know. Maybe they just want people with a bit of old fashioned common sense no matter what you study.

As for the argument on working in the foreign service and having a family, I'm not sure it would be for me. If you asked me a few years ago I would have said I wouldn't have cared but now I'm older the prospect of bring up kids in a potentially dangerous or volatile country is not appealing. I believe the divorce rate for members of the foreign service from countries all over the world is quite high as well.

Good luck to all applying for 3rd Sec.

sarkozy

I hear ya. I applied previously. I've applied, will do what I can, but doubt I stand a chance. Like you, I've a BA, a MSc in Development Studies and even worked in the Development Co-operation Division of DFAT in a mission in Africa for two years. But, like you, I know it counts for nothing until interview stage. If at all. It's good for everyone else as no special knowledge/training is required, but it sucks for people who dedicated themselves to this specialism.

The NGO sector is dead to me now. So I'm unemployed and looking for somewhere to make my apparently useless, albeit specialist knowledge and work experience meaningful in a totally new, as yet unidentified and probably non-existent career. Outside of the development NGO sector, I'm not sure any employer in Ireland needs what I have to offer.

So, whatever, like ...

Glinda

I have a close relative who went in as Third Secretary (has moved up the ranks a little since). Something to bear in mind is the lack of stability - my relative's spouse has had to sacrifice their career completely for the sake of following their other half around the world, taking on bits of temporary jobs where they can get them (or sitting at home doing nothing for years at a time - no kids yet). It is glamorous in certain respects, but you really will have to relocate to a different country (or to/from Dublin) every three years or so, and this will go on forever, there is no 'settled' position at the end of it.

I think this is why it is hard on marriages/partnerships - you can never settle down in one place unless you resign. Your kids will have to move schools/friends every three years or so and you can be sent anywhere. OK for a few years, but I'd imagine it gets old after a few years.

TheCruiser

I'm a bit puzzled as to why they didn't make the entry requirements more specialist - relevant degree/masters, etc (like for the AO Competition).

Surely it would mean that people like sarkozy with directly-applicable training and skills would have a better chance of getting to interview AND it would make it cheaper and easier for them to whittle the applicants down?

Or is the really depressing answer that they think specialist degrees add no value to a potential recruit's profile? :-/

sarkozy

It's because of the history of our civil service being a generalist civil service - it goes with the territory. Other European civil services have gone down the specialisation route in certain quarters, but there remains in any bureaucracy a need to be flexible, and this means ensuring the skills available are transferable across departments/divisions. Perhaps there's a balance to be struck here, and some efforts have been made. It's also frowned upon in terms of career progression, and many don't wish to specialise. Being a generalist is its own skill set.

But the consequences of not having in-house specialists are clear. The Department of Finance did not have any in-house economists, banking experts, etc. in order to conduct high quality analysis and briefings independent of banks before the crisis. This was a decision that was made. Had they been there, we may not be in the crippling debt crisis we're in now. This is, as I can see it, the reason for the recent specialist AO recruitments.

I have a close relative who went in as Third Secretary (has moved up the ranks a little since). Something to bear in mind is the lack of stability - my relative's spouse has had to sacrifice their career completely for the sake of following their other half around the world, taking on bits of temporary jobs where they can get them (or sitting at home doing nothing for years at a time - no kids yet). It is glamorous in certain respects, but you really will have to relocate to a different country (or to/from Dublin) every three years or so, and this will go on forever, there is no 'settled' position at the end of it.

I think this is why it is hard on marriages/partnerships - you can never settle down in one place unless you resign. Your kids will have to move schools/friends every three years or so and you can be sent anywhere. OK for a few years, but I'd imagine it gets old after a few years.

This is well worth considering. I left my partner behind for those two years, meeting up occasionally for a week or two every three or four months. It was really tough. I saw around me many casualties of the diplomat/development aid circuit - break-ups, affairs, alcoholism, bizarre marriages, difficult teenage children. I spoke to many diplomats whose older children were in boarding school or, at least, saw very little of their parents. Younger ones were with their parents, but every few years would end up in an international school of varying quality. And on top of that is the very bizarre world of the diplomatic ex-pat bubble. It's interesting for a while, but it's vacuous and strange, full of lonely people pining for home, distracting themselves with things they'd never normally do, all the time feeling like their life at home is moving on without them and every year it slips further and further away.

Think about it.

JohnMearsheimer

TheCruiser wrote: »

I'm a bit puzzled as to why they didn't make the entry requirements more specialist - relevant degree/masters, etc (like for the AO Competition).

Surely it would mean that people like sarkozy with directly-applicable training and skills would have a better chance of getting to interview AND it would make it cheaper and easier for them to whittle the applicants down?

Or is the really depressing answer that they think specialist degrees add any value to a potential recruit's profile? :-/

The stage 1 aptitude test will just be a mass culling of numbers, no matter what you studied, to make things more manageable for the Public Appointments Service. Before PAS hired out halls around the country and people turned up and sat the exams. Now I think it's all online testing so PAS have probably eliminated a nice chunk of the cost of the recruitment process.

I think the specialisms were brought in at AO level because you had a lot of senior civil servants (who would have started out at AO level), especially in departments like Finance, who had no academic background relating to the jobs they were doing. The beginnings/warning signs of the financial crisis really caught these kinds of civil servants out.

As it currently stands with the 3rd Sec competition, an engineering graduate can out perform a politics, IR, development, peace studies graduate in a maths/reading exam and move forward in the selection process. As sarkozy said, maybe there's a balance to be struck here.

hopefullegal

Anyone have a rough idea of career progression, i.e. approximately how long from 3rd Sec to 1st Sec to Counsellor etc? Is it definitely three years in Ireland at the beginning?

athtrasna

delricyo wrote: »

I got through to the second round the last time in 2008. I remember having to summarise an article about Brazil. I actually did ok on that. It was the group exercise that I didnt pass on ....

The trick to the group task is in reading all the info and working it out for yourself. Did it twice, like that didn't get through once and did the second. First time we didn't get the task done, second time we finished it with time to spare. There's no harm in being quiet for a few minutes and then in taking a lead in the task, be proactive not reactive.

TheCruiser

How did you prepare for the Stage One tests athtrasna?

athtrasna

I didn't do anything to prepare at all, not until I got to interview stage which happened on my second time applying. Got through stage 1 twice, but did much better second time. I got the feedback from the first time and used that, as I've already posted in this thread, the final summary section is something I really improved on second time.

james987

Just saw a tweet regarding this from public jobs

Thanks to all who applied for Junior Diplomat, approx 1700 applications received. Expect to hear by Fri, 25 Oct regarding the online test.

https://twitter.com/Publicjobs_ie

ezra_pound

Wow. That means 1 in 42.5 odds. Nice one.