Latest News from Brussels - 16 November 2011
My last blog post mentioned quite a few things I had coming up – the Concours Assessment Centre and a new post in the European Commission in Brussels. I've now done the Concours Assessment Centre so I thought I'd blog again while it was fresh in my mind. It was a full day consisting of an interview, a presentation and a group exercise in your second official EU language – French in my case. The interview centres on 'structured' questions, designed to ...Read More
Concours progress, Assessment Centre tips and more... - 31 August 2011
I can’t believe six months have flown by since my last blog post! So much has happened in that time – I’ve been working hard preparing UK negotiating positions for my EU and international policy areas, including a couple of impact assessments. Impact assessments are needed for all new policies, so that policy officials can advise ministers of the various costs and benefits attached to a range of recommended options. Our starting point for EU product ...Read More
EU Opportunities - 15 February 2011
Continuing the theme of my first blog post and, indeed, the Fast Stream as a whole, I’ve been thinking about how much I’m learning. We’ve hit the four month review stage in my department (Defra), which has given me the opportunity to sit down and discuss whether I’m meeting my objectives with the my two managers. I have an ‘Activity Manager’, who is a senior member of my team with a good understanding of what I should achieve in my current post, and a ...Read More
Telling MPs from Ministers and other learning - 24 December 2010
Looking back to an open day I attended in April, I remember a second year Fast Streamer from the Home Office chatting to a group of us about how, though the Fast Stream learning curve is steep, it’s extremely supportive. We all laughed along when she told us how she’d asked, ‘what’s the difference between an MP and a minister?’ on her first day in the job. Once we’d stopped laughing, I made a mental note to do the same, realising that as a languages ...Read More