General discussion for October 2012

HI all,

congrats to the pre-selected too! I was pre-selected and I am going through the lobbying process, which I find very baffling as many of you do, given we did make any DG choices! Anybody here up for DGHOME? Anybody know if we can contact the HR to know if they are taking on trainees?

Just realized: Mails to the general mailadress of the EAS are bouncing off...Anyone else having troubles?

edit: And there is no automatic reply for Devco... damn it! I was hoping for at least some information...

Did somebody already started lobbying to EAC or EACEA? Because I'm thinking to write directly to the HoU of the one i'm most interested in, but the thing is, i'm interested in 3 of them. Do you think it will seem unprofessional if i write to all three of them?

I have one annoying technical question.
How do i send e-mails to people with two last names?
For example mister Piter Pedro Luis. I was trying all sorts of combinations and I always get an email saying that I am sending my letters to non-existent addresses

Piter.PEDRO-LUIS@ec.europa.eu if pedro is his first last name...

thanks marcanum

fibica wrote:Did somebody already started lobbying to EAC or EACEA? Because I'm thinking to write directly to the HoU of the one i'm most interested in, but the thing is, i'm interested in 3 of them. Do you think it will seem unprofessional if i write to all three of them?

if you read the previous posts from october 2011, topic: lobbying - answers from DGs, you will see that some people did lobbying there, and they are not happy...at least then they weren't....it's you choice

Just got a reply from EAS:they're forwarding my message to whoever selects the interns. Decisions will be taken by mid-June and we will be informed by mid-july. Seems as if at least they are doing no phone interviews or sending mails...

Does anyone have any advice regarding calling HoU's up? Is this advised? How is this generally approached? etc. I would be happy to know!

i think you should definitely NOT call any head of unit! you can e-mail your lobbying letter to them and they will probably forward it to the person in charge of selecting trainees at the given unit.
btw, it's also quite useless to call/e-mail the HR. at each unit there is one person in charge of the selection. you can't find out who he/she is. so you can try to e-mail some people and hope that they will forward it to the person. what i did is e-mailing heads of units and then putting a few people in CC. preferably the ones that work on things that you would like to work on. (yes, quite a bit of googling but worth it)
as for lobbying, i would say you MUST lobby. i already got 3 offers in the last 2 days. for two of these units i lobbied, for the third one i did not. so they can find you also in the bluebook but now that we didnt even rank our preferred dg-s, it is a lot harder. they should have to search through that massive 2500-profile database. so you make their life a lot easier if you lobby. otherwise they have no idea where you wanna go.
oh, and of course do it asap. you dont have much time to waste, it is going very quickly. (at least at my DG)
as for the content of the letter: make sure you have a section in it where you highlight why you wanna join that specific unit. (no, not dg, UNIT) they need to see you have a particular interest in their work. and of course you should have some demonstrated experience in that field and some knowledge. one of the people who called me asked very specific questions in order to find out how deep my understanding is. and well, had i not worked in the area/studied the things that i have, i would have had no clue what the bloody hell the guy was talking about. so you gotta make sure you apply to those few places where it won't take you 4 months at the beginning to understand what they do but you do have some previous knowledge, experience, you wrote papers, did research in the area, etc. i suppose at other units your chances are very low. because 5 months is a short period and they dont wanna teach you the whole time, they also need to get something out of you. so this will probably reduce the number of units you should lobby to very few (5 in my case, all in the same dg)
hope this helps

Congrats on getting 3 offers already! I am quite jealous! But thanks for the info, I've already contacted quite a few HoU's of units that interested me, considering whether I should continue contacting others or not. What DG/unit did you eventually go for?

how did you find the names of the people working in one specific unit? I can only see the heads of units

you click on the different positions in the list (like policy officer, etc.) one by one. then you get the surname. then you google to find out the person's full name or e-mail address. sounds terribly tiresome but it's doable. i spent an afternoon on the different mails but i guess it was worth it

Hey guys,

congratulations to everyone who has been preselected. Has anyone tried to contact EEAS? Because every time I try to send an email to the address given in our preselection email, I receive a mail stating that the delivery failed. Plus, I tried to contact heads of units but I always get the same mail. I've no idea what to do...

Hi everyone, I looked at the organigram for a particular DG to find the Head of Unit. I found the yellow boxes containing A1, B2 etc with a name (for example Middle East I) and a surname. Is that the name of Head of Unit? Is Head of Unit the same as Head of Division?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.

A link or more specific reference to the DG would be more helpful if you want us to help.

@ grr: Congrats! My lobbying attempts have not yet been successful. May I ask which DG you wrote to?

@ dori: Same here. Mails from EEAS all come back.... no idea why that is.

oh and edit: Just received a mail from Devco. They will give prereference to people whose first choices in the blue book was Devco... no clue what is that supposed to mean... did theyexpect us to put Devco in our motivation letters?

Hi guys , congratulation to all. This is the second time i have been preselected. Did not lobby any time. Thinking about to lobby this time, do you guys think it is already late to lobby ? would they still open new emails as i think DG,s email inbox is already stuffed with emails ?

hey! I have been pre-selected as well. for the second time.. has anyone heard anything from DG Communication?

Thanks a lot for the information Tally! Was it the area of External Relations that you chose as your preference in your application file? Cause it was mine too, and it's quite annoying that we can't contact anybody in the DG that was our main choice. Any idea what to do about it? Does anybody know any other email address for EEAS or somebody within EEAS?

I tried it with @eeas.europa.eu as well, but mails are still coming back. I also indicated external relations as main choice and i am particularly interested in devco and eeas. Did you also go for devco? Did you here sth back from them?

Yes, I sent them an email yesterday and I received the same automatic reply as you. But, at least a reply...I guess we should try to contact heads of unit at devco.
Maybe they didn't want to get too many emails at EEAS that's why they're blocking their system...:-)

Haha might be! Also, their organization chart does not seem right to me or at least it does not relate to the info on who's who.

What do you make of the text that we should have indicated our preference for devco in the vbb? Did you mention anything like that? I am considering sending a message back...

Yes, about the organizational chart: have you seen the document called "The official directory of the European Union - European External Action Service"? I think this is the most recent list of the heads of unit at EEAS. You can find it on Google and there are all the names we need. It doesn't help much though, since the emails are coming back.

Well, I don't know what they mean, but I didn't mention them in my application file. And I don't understand the following sentence: "we give a strong due consideration to candidates who indicated Devco among their choices in the Blue Book."
Choices? We could mention only one area as our preference. So, I really don't get it...
What do you want to write them? :-)

Just asking what that sentence is supposed to mean and probably mentioning one or two units of interest. I think they asked sth along those lines, no?

Will you keep me posted on any developments regarding your application? I am extremely curious

Yes, maybe they did. Good idea! We have to try everything we can.
Of course, I will let you know if anything happens. I hope, you will too...:-)

Did send you * private message

I think we've been receiving generic e-mails from other application periods, hence the reference to prioritising candidates who have selected certain units within the application.