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Third Secretary Competition - 2024

Stranger Things

This Friday, July 19th, 2024, marks the opening of the Third Secretary competition in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Diplomatic officers will have the opportunity to work at headquarters in Dublin or Limerick, as well as at various Irish embassies, consulates, and multilateral missions around the world.

Applicants must hold a first or second class honours degree (minimum Level 8 on the National Framework of Qualifications) or be qualified as a Solicitor or Barrister by the closing date of August 8th, 2024.

Will throw my name into the hat for this! Only a CO so wouldn’t fancy my chances!

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lucat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122701553#Comment_122701553

There are a lot of free websites that you can use to detect AI in a given piece of text though.

zorro37

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122701553#Comment_122701553

This is definitely a very valid point. I wondered was the text so specific and so full of complex jargon and abbreviations that AI assisted versions may make clearly identifiable errors or introduce concepts which weren't specifically there, but with right amount of additional prompting and rewording a Chat GPT version could easily have been rehashed. No easy solution there!

Desfol88

Anyone else have concerns about how they will police use of AI for the precis? AI use can be very hard to detect and unless someone literally copy and pasted their answer direct from Chat GPT I cannot see public jobs accusing people of cheating.

I also find it very strange that the earlier testing was so heavily monitored and this stage is basically a 'we take your word for it' approach with regards to honesty when completing it.

TheLukeFella

Anyone know what the timeline for the next steps will be? When roughly will I find out how much I missed out on the next stage?

boardsenthusiast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122700822#Comment_122700822

No idea of marking but a good example (and other helpful info) can be found at this link: https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/precis-writing

CMC96

Just finished mine there. Agree that it was quite jargon-y in places but otherwise felt alright. It definitely does help to practice a few beforehand so that you've an idea going into it of what you should be doing (and what you can cut out).

MarloStanfield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122700490#Comment_122700490

I didn't do so but I did paste it into word afterwards to see how long it was, so it is possible.

Scondol

anyone have an idea how the précis is marked? based on previous years maybe, like is there an example of a good précis test somewhere.

boardsenthusiast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122700375#Comment_122700375

Were you able to paste the main text into a document in order to move bits around and highlight important info?

domel

Me too, used Docs for the word-count then pasted it into email.

domel

I would say the text was very information dense, full of IR jargon, acronyms and long sentences, meaning that summarizing it all neatly without omitting anything important took a good bit of effort. Content-wise, it was very smilar to the type of texts I had been practicing for the last week, so no real shocks there.

MarloStanfield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122700112#Comment_122700112

wrote in word so I could see word count, pasted it after

boardsenthusiast

Did people write the whole thing in their email text box or put the text in a document and summarise it there before pasting the summary into the email?

2024thirdsec

Me too! I definitely didn’t expect the text to be that long. Got it in with a minute to spare.

MarloStanfield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122698066#Comment_122698066

Sat mine earlier today, definitely found it more difficult to read than I was hoping for/expecting. Was able to submit in time and within the word limit at least.

boardsenthusiast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122696594#Comment_122696594

Thanks for letting me know! Was the text particularly challenging to read? That's been a frequent complaint in past years as far as I can see.

domel

Had my précis today and found the time limit to be challenging. Managed to submit it just in time and just under the maximum word count, so hope I didn't leave out any important info!

coolmomjeans

Did mine today. Overall was okay, little more tight for time than I anticipated. Went slightly over the word count which I wish I had time to change.

boardsenthusiast

Anyone taken it yet? Wonder how it went!

MarloStanfield

Précis info is out - seems v strict… no flexibility in when you can sit it and clock starts when you receive the message on publicjobs message board!

M.Diggums

Are all the test slots in the middle of the workday?

MarloStanfield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122648269#Comment_122648269

generally every 2 years but it depends entirely on the needs of the dept. That said, I am pretty sure it has consistently run now 2018 - 2020 - 2022 - 2024.

MarloStanfield

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122641237#Comment_122641237

655 in verbal, 518 in AQ for ~160 in OOM

CMC96

Every two years, the last competition opened in 2022.

Best of luck for next time!

sanktrangelov

Any idea when this competition will come around again?

I really wanted to do it but somehow missed the window!

coolmomjeans

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122641237#Comment_122641237

I scored 683 in Verbal and 534 in the questionnaire

Firstnamebunchofnumbers

The last time around in 2022 each one was marked out of 800. I don't know if that's still the case this time though.

boardsenthusiast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122641237#Comment_122641237

Hi! I scored 660 on Verbal and 490 on the questionnaire. No idea whether or not its marked out of 1000 though.

Happydays3

For those who made it through (congrats!) how did you score for verbal and the questionnaire? Trying to get an idea of how above average we need to score, I assume it is marked out of 1000?

Stranger Things

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122637580#Comment_122637580

my colleague came from a specialist role at HEO equivalent and could not. (Sorry doesn’t answer your question properly!)