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ISSUES OF STAFF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION IN THE STATE SERVICE
1Candidate of Sciences (Economics) Bella Valeriy Gabrielyan, Applicant for PhD in Economics Marine Azat Chobanyan
Republic ofArmenia, M. Kotanyan Institute of Economics National Academy of Sciences; 1Associate Professor, Senior Research Associate
ABSTRACT_
Staff policy is one of the most important issues for any organization. The correct selection of staff, the optimal mechanism for salary, the problems of work efficiency have always been interesting for all aspects of activity including the system of the State Service which is not also an exception. The present article discusses the issues of the staff selection in the system of the State Service of RA. Within the framework of the article the following issues and questions have been raised, revealed and analyzed: the staff issue -from the stage of vacancy announcements to the stage of appointment to the position, the features that are specific for the Civil Service system and Armenia, advantages and disadvantages, as well as some measures were suggested to improve the efficiency of human resources management.
© 2017 The Authors.
The staff, the correct principles of work organization, the optimal systems and processes are essential for the implementation of each type of activity, moreover, the correct organization of all mentioned is also very important that depends mainly on certain people, their knowledge, awareness, level of qualifications, motivation, their ability to make decisions and learning receptivity. Consequently, the recruitment and election of the staff in each field of activity including the system of the Civil Serviceis very important, as the tasks and duties posed to the state are implemented by that selected staff, and their proper selection leads to their effective functioning.
This creates numerous problems related to the number of required staff, predicted as a result of supply and demand, and the definition of their qualification requirements.
It is impossible to make the correct section and distribution of the staff without a clear and complete picture of the requirements for it. It is quite difficult to choose among the candidates the most appropriate person who best meets all the necessary requirements and the nature of the problems. Therefore personnel election implies a unified, science-based and legally fixed personnel policy.
Such large-scale problems are possible to be implemented only by civil servants with certain qualities such as the morality, patriotism, loyalty to the nation and willingness to perform functions arising from common interests; they must have a high level of professionalism, the ability to keep secrets and to make decisions in favor of the society.
Moreover, besides the above-mentioned features, it is also important to take into consideration the individuality, social, cultural and psychological characteristics of the candidates.
Criteria for choosing the candidates are numerous and different and in each country the election of personnel is based on the specific requirements of the country.1
However, for a more effective choice, one should start with a detailed description of the position and then only present the professional requirements for the staff.
For these purposes, special official passports have been developed for each of the Civil Service positions in the Republic of Armenia. They are periodically upgraded and define the rights and obligations of the holder of the positions. Requirements for having the necessary professional knowledge, work skills and corresponding class degree are presented in order to qualify for the
'Salon S. Recrutement et formation // Cahiers français. Paris, 1980. № 197. P. 3-7
ARTICLE INFO_
Received 1 September 2017 Accepted 21 September 2017 Published 7 October 2017
KEYWORDS
Civil Service, wages,
effectiveness, staff policy, staff wastage, certification, knowledge, position,
working responsibility, professional skill
position. The official passports constantly undergo certain changes during the development of the system the purpose of which is further development and improvement. The official passport gives the possibility to assess easily the compliance of the candidate with the held position.
After the introduction of the Civil Service system in Armenia, the competition mechanism was first launched (which is crucial for the recruitment and election of personnel) to fill the vacancies of civil servants. Now the competition mechanism for the election of personnel, both in the world and in Armenia, is one of the typical public service characteristics.
The procedure for filling the vacancy position through non-competitive election is also applied in the RA and it ensures the order of promotion for civil servants. If there is a Civil Service vacancy in the structural subdivision, and there is a civil servant fully meeting all the requirements and with the corresponding rank, he can take up a position without competition.1
The process of recruitment and election of personnel is carried out in several stages. These stages are the following: job description, description of professional requirements for personnel, the announcement of a competition in the media, the formation of the competition committee, the receipt of applications from citizens, obtaining basic information about the candidate and the decision on whether the candidate meets the requirements, testing, interviews and appointment to the position in the case of a positive result.
Testing shows the general level of the candidate's knowledge in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia and the RA legislation that regulates the competence of the relevant body. In the course of the interview, it is possible to assess the general development of candidates, their intellectual and professional abilities, the logical expression of their thoughts and their moral and psychological qualities.
Since all Civil Servicepositions are divided into four groups, the highest, the chief, the leader and the junior, so their tests and interview questionnaires are different. Based on the general description of the positions, it is possible to determine what the candidate needs to occupy a given vacancy. Thereby,
in the competition for the highest position besides a diploma of higher education a candidate should have general and technical knowledge, sufficient intellect and a determined character, he/she should also be able to determine and evaluate the activities of the employees under his/her command;
- a high level of general and professional knowledge is also required for chief positions;
- competition for leader positions requires production and technical skills;
- it is not obligated for candidates of junior positions to have a special professional education, so the competition for them is limited by the assessment of the general knowledge.
The competitive commission is a group of experts, consisting of 6 members - two representatives from the Civil Service Council, two from the relevant organizations and the last two from scientific and educational institutions.
Apart from the election made by the commission members it is also important their participation in the competition. According to the current order, the competition commission must be formed not less than 24 hours before the start of the competition, and the commission members must be notified at least 6 hours before the start of the competition. It is necessary to take into consideration the fact that candidates for commission members participate in the process on a voluntary basis, and certainly they have permanent employment, therefore these terms are rather short from their point of view, however, they are justified from the point of the Commission's objectivity. On the other hand the participation in the competition is a moral issue and it is conditioned by the commission members' level of responsibility.
It should be noted that competitions for the Civil Servicepositions are held quite intensively and with the participation of many candidates, and as a rule, they tend to grow /Figure 1/.
It is interesting to note that the ratio of participants and winners of competitions is almost identical in the dynamics of different years both in the various position groups and in the same ones./Figure2/.
It should be noted that during the observed period 2010-2015 about 4500 competitions were announced, of which about 3900 were held, about 12000 citizens applied for the competitions, of which about 7500 citizens participated, 4457 citizens were not allowed or did not participate in competitions on their own volition, and in 522 out of announced competitions there were no winners.
1 "Civil Serviceagainst Corruption, 100 arguments'Handbook: M. Badalyan, A. Petrosyan, A.Nazaryan, Yerevan - 2005, p. 12 (Original in armenian- £iuniupiugjiiuliiu(i iirniiujnipjniM iidiptihü ïmmiujgJiiujJi. 100 ^luuuiiujili: dhnduxjili, U".Aimimj]iu(i, U.ähmpnujuid, U.üiuqmjLjiuG, bpUutd - 2005, tç 12)
Fig. 1. Number ofparticipants in competitionsheld in the relevant bodies to fill vacant positionsin the
Civil Service1
Fig. 2. The unit weight of competition winners from the number ofparticipants held for the vacant positions in the relevant bodies in the Civil Service2
Herein the information about the candidates who did not get permission to participate in the competition and about the candidates who applied but did not participate because of different reasons can also be interesting. Official data can be of any character, but we also think the danger is in certain corrupt mechanisms and all those who were not able to find opportunities to use those mechanisms didn't even participate in competitions. In general, corrupt mechanisms are almost inevitable in the Civil Servicesystem, and on the one hand reforms are aimed at increasing the efficiency of the system and, on the other hand, at the eliminating of possible manifestations of corrupt mechanisms.
In the system of the state service, naturally, not only these issues are actual. Another important issue is that in spite of the quite great number of candidates, there are many positions in the Civil Service system that remain vacant for a long time (in atomic engineering, health, civil aviation, and others); this is despite the fact that the size of the salary for those vacancies does not yield to the wage rate. No one either applies for these positions or candidates do not have the sufficient level of qualification. This number is quite evident in the dynamics of the competitions where nobody won. /Figure 3/
In contrast, there are such vacancies for which the number of applications reaches 30-50 per one position, and some times even more (this applies to those positions that carry out such activities as monitoring/controlling, licensing, inspection and certification). The majority of the candidates prefer the positions in Ministry of Justice of RA, the Government of RA or the Office of the RA President.
'By the data of http://csc.am/documents/statistics/16.pdf
2 By the data of http://csc.am/documents/statistics/16.pdf
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Leader Principal
Higher
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Fig. 3. Dynamics of the competitionswithont winners within 2010-20151
Generally it is evidence of the imbalance of the rights and responsibilities of employees who are in equal positions in different state bodies. And since many positions requiring high professionalism and specialized training remain vacant, consequently, it is possible to draw conclusions about serious human resource problems in the Civil Service system of the republic. On the one hand, there is a high level of unemployment in Armenia and, on the other hand, there is a serious shortage of staff for such kind of positions because of lack of candidates in some specialties or their insufficient level of qualifications.
In our opinion, these problems primarily come into existence because in the process of planning the personnel number, the ratio of supply and demand in the labor market is not taken into account. The list of the Civil Service positions should be drawn up in a mutually coordinated manner with the list of professions of the educational institutions, so it is necessary to reconsider the list of professions of the educational institutions and to match it with the actual demand for the Civil Service positions.
The current and long-term demand for civil servants is conditioned by the appropriate structure of state bodies, the degree of staffing of government positions and quality, as well as possible changes in the staff of civil servants for various reasons (for example, retirement, dismissal because of insufficient qualification, termination of service).2
There is also another important problem: as before, it is not defined by law what kind of education is required to take certain positions. The solution of this problem will facilitate the holding of a competition for filling vacanct positions.
An important issue for the development of the Civil Service system is the quality of questionnaires made up for testing and interview. It is necessary to improve the their quality according to the positions.
In order to ensure the principle of transparency and publicity of the Civil Service, the law provides to permit the representatives of public organizations to be present as an observer during the work of the competitive and certification commissions. This some what reduces public opinion that competitions are formal.
In order to ensure objectivity, certain amendments and additions must be made in the RA Law on the Civil Service. It has already been introduced and runs a computerized automated election software testing program, which prevents the possibility of passing the test successfully on the principle of preference for this or that candidate and other similar methods of corruption.
However, if in the Civil Service system transparency and publicity during the competitions is largely ensured, the same is not possible to say about the appointment to the position one of the winners. The next stage of recruitingis a stage of oral testing or interview which gives an opportunity to check the candidate's compliance, and in order to provide the objectivity the interview isrecorded.
1 http ://csc. am/documents/statistic s/15.pdf
2ОвсянкоД.М., ГосударственнаяслужбаРоссийскойФедерации: Учеб.пособие. - 3-еизд., перераб. идоп. - М.: Юристь, 2005. p.61
In addition after candidate's answer to each question the commission sayswhether the answer was correct or not, and in case of an incorrect answer the correct answer is read. In general, this is a pretty serious argument and actually it should ensure objectivity, but there is one important problem that is not controlled and contains a subjective aspect.
Eachasked question has some difficulty, which is not separated yet but at the same time there are questions responses to which are not necessary to know in order to take a certain position. From this point of view, the law does not and can not have separate regulations and it can not regulate the subjective opinion of the questioner. Here, the hope is only for honesty and objectivity of the competitive commission, which does not always inspire confidence in citizens.
The existence of such circumstance is related to the fact that there are no such quizzes that allow to reveal all the professional, human and psychological potential of the candidates. In our opinion, thisis not a logical method, because in that case, there will be required such criteria that will ensure the best choice. Therefore, it is necessary to create such scientific and research centers and laboratories whose activities will be aimed at analyzing and improving of methodological and functional issues.
Only in such case it can be possible to creat an objective basis for the election of effective civil servants in the Civil Service system.
In this case, the following issues are very important: they are the creation of a staff reserve, its efficient use, the proper allocation of the reserve personnel, especially when it has taken place from high competition positions.
As we can see, in 2009, the reserve staff was exhausted, which on the one hand happened because of the changes in 2008, when Serzh Sargsyan became the president of RA and Tigran Sargsyan became the Prime Minister; they changed the structure of the government, and as a result the most part of the long-term reserve staff was used /Figure 4/. It should be noted that in the same period, a relative increase was observed in a short-term reserve staff, however, the overall situation did not have significant changes. 800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2 0 0 3 2D04 2005 2006 2007 200S 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
♦ Short-term —■—Long-term
Fig. 4. Dynamics of the number ofstaff registered in the short-term and long-term reserve staff, 2003-20152
In fact, these changes and dynamics have a lot of positive aspects, but they also contain a little danger. Here, the danger can be expressed in the following way: the whole point of the Civil Service is that the change of authority should not lead to the changes of personnel and, as a consequence, the public should be provided with all essential services in time and in efficient manner. And it is very important in the system of the State Service and, in particular, for the Civil Service to develop such norms that will be common and independent from the change of authority and the heads of state bodies; the change of various officials would not lead to a change of employees and the public could receive the services for the implementation of which the relevant bodies were established, on time and efficiently.
'"Civil Service", weekly new spaper, No.8 (172), February 28, 2007 (Original in armenian - «£iuniupiugliuxliiu(I iiuniujnipjniG», 2iupipiupbpp, pM 8 (172), ^hmpilmiili 28, 2007p.)
2The number of people registered in Personnel Reserve of the Civil Service by years -http://csc.am/documents/statistics/02.pdf
