The Young Cells project is funded by the European Union under IPA II 2020. It will give to 25 civil servants the opportunity to participate to a capacity-building scheme, including teaching and training, language classes, mentoring sessions, seminars, workshops, study visits (Autumn 2023) and a 10 week-long internship in one of the 5 participating EU member states’ public administrations (January-March 2024).
The project aims at supporting the Albanian Government in its public administration reform towards the development of a more professional, efficient, and transparent civil service. The selection of the Young Cells’ participants will be based on a competitive and merit-based procedure.
In collaboration with the Department of Public Administration (DoPA) and the Albanian School of Public Administration (ASPA), the implementing consortium is composed of the French National Institute of Public Service (INSP), the University of Kehl (UASK) in Germany, the University of Bologna (UNIBO) and the region Emilia-Romagna in Italy, the National Centre for Public Administration and Local Government of Greece (EKKDA), and the National School of Public Administration (NSPA) of Croatia.
This scheme will start in September 2023 and end in April 2024.
WHO CAN APPLY AND HOW ?
1) Eligibility criteria for application
- Albanian citizenship;
- Having the civil servant status;
- Currently working within civil service in state administration, independent institutions and local government ;
- Civil Servants belonging to Low Level Management (category III-a, IIIa/1) and Executive level (category III-b, IV-a, IV-b and IV-c);
- Having from 3 to 8 years of working experience in the public administration at the date of application (including the probation year for civil servants);
- Not to have benefited from similar schemes in the past;
- Complete and sent the application file to [email protected] before Tuesday 6th June 2023 at 23:59.
2) Content of the application file
- Letter of motivation in English, containing following information:
- What are your reasons to candidate in this program?
- How your working experiences relates with the key objectives of the Young Cells’ project (see Annexe 1)?
- Which benefit do you expect from the scheme (for yourself personally as well as for the administrative entity you work for)?
- How is this scheme related to your career development project? (if any)
- Act of appointment as civil servant and a copy of proof of work experience from 3-8 year in public administration (kopje te librezes se punes)
- CV in English, Europass template: https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv
3)Requirements for participation, in addition to eligibility criteria
- Command of English (mandatory), at least corresponding to C1 level of the https://europa.eu/europass/en/common-european-framework-reference-language-skills
- Command of French, German, Italian, Greek or Croatian language, at least at B1 level, is optional but is a strong asset;
- Making sure that you have informed your HR department and your hierarchy about your application and about the dates and content of the scheme;
- Making sure that you will be personally available during the scheme sessions (study visits, teaching and internship period);
- In case of he/she is selected to participate in the scheme, the candidate will be asked to sign a commitment letter. The Commitment letter will include attending totality of the scheme’s activities, and continuing to serve as a civil servant, at least during the 2 following years after the end of the scheme.
ORGANISATION OF THE SELECTION PROCEDURE
The selection will consist of three steps:
- Eligibility check, ie. application screening regarding the eligibility criteria
- Preselection: consists in a written examination to check the level of language proficiency in English, as well as in the optional language chosen (if any). The assessment is based on a synthesis and analysis of documents in English (and in the optional language if any), about public administration and the current context of EU accession process.
The written examination will last two hours for the English part (common to all candidates). The candidates who will take the written examination in either Croatian, German, Greek, French or Italian (optional languages) will have to stay for two additional hours (after a break of at least 30 minutes).
All candidates having reached the threshold corresponding to C1 level in English will be invited to the next selection step.
The score obtained for the optional language (if any) will be communicated to the jury members to be considered for the final decision as an asset for a successful internship in one of the 5 EU member states administrations.
- Interviews: All preselected candidates will meet for an individual interview with the jury (duration: 45 minutes)
TIME FRAME
June 6th (23:59 local time): Deadline for submission of application files
June 19th : Written foreign language examination
June 28th: Publication of list of preselected candidates + invitations for interviews to be sent to pre-selected candidates
July 3rd-12th: Interviews
July 21st : Final participants list published on DOPA and the project websites
For more information:
- Young Cells project website: ycsalbania.eu
- Annex 1: Project description and aims (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TLpJWKmYeVa301M-bHJBFv0Vos3mNSCR/view?usp=share_link)
- Annex 2: Scheme content (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TLpJWKmYeVa301M-bHJBFv0Vos3mNSCR/view?usp=share_link)
For any query please contact: [email protected]
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