Bonum Certa Men Certa

The European Patent Office's Central Staff Committee: Office Cannot Recruit Fit-for-Purpose Patent Examiners Anymore

"The EPO is an organization in a severe crisis, due to the destructive actions of the Battistelli Administration, and the inertia of the current one in mending what was broken. The dismal state of the recruitment process is yet another indicator pointing, like all indicators, in this very same direction."

The Glassdoor EPO overview



Summary: One third of EPO recruits are 'locals' (Germans), 0.2% are Swiss, 1% Scandinavian; the EPO as an employer became unattractive and it's unable to attract the staff it needs (as was projected and planned when the EPC was agreed upon)

THE António Campinos-led EPO is a disaster. Their 'news' section is all fluff and noise, which boils down to little but dumb photo ops (showing that Team Campinos is unable to comply with social distancing regulations).



"Europeans need to know what's going on, in 'their name' so to speak, inside the EPO."Looking behind the curtain, we're seeing the staff representation repeatedly warning about the demise of the EPO -- contrary to what Campinos and his loyalists love to claim. A year ago, staff representatives released a paper on this subject, stating:

In this paper, we consider that the recruitment process at the EPO today, especially for examiner posts, is not fit for the purpose of carrying out this task.

The EPO wants to recruit examiners with technically-suited profiles, who are able to work in our official languages – yet at the same time reduces exactly the evaluation of those components to below the bare minimum.

On top, potential candidates are kept far away from their actual future working environment and colleagues, and cannot evaluate us as a future employer – and so they can only rely on what they find online, a picture that has become severely tainted in the last few years.


We have decided to publish this paper in full; Europeans need to know what's going on, in 'their name' so to speak, inside the EPO.

Central Staff Committee

Munich, 04.12.2019 sc19177cp – 0.2.1/1.3.3

Examiner Recruitment - Not fit for purpose



EPO – Quo vadis?

Dear colleagues,

One of the most important human resources functions in any organization is the process of recruiting and selecting the right staff. For the EPO the definition of “right” is crucial, as the bulk of our recruitment is focused on Patent Examiners needing highly specialized technical and language skills.

We consider that the recruitment process at the EPO today, especially for examiner posts is simply not fit for the purpose of carrying out this task.

The current process is as follows: With HR in the driving seat and carrying out the pre-selection, the DG1 managers are essentially told who to interview with minimal input from their side. For potential Examiners, technical and language knowledge assessment is now limited to a single 45-minute Skype interview with a Senior Expert, often together with a Team Manager. This is the only occasion when staff are able to briefly meet their potential new colleague. Follow-up Skype interviews are exceptional, and only planned following a reasoned request. Face-to-face technical interviews – which used to form the backbone of our recruitment process – are a big “no-no” today.

Successful candidates are then invited to one of our recruitment events, where the hiring manager is present. However, the HR partner is still in the driver’s seat.

Staff Representatives, which used to be participating throughout the entire process, are now “optional” – read: we have not been invited anymore since staff were recruited under the 5-year contracts.

It seems that the EPO wants to recruit examiners with technically-suited profiles, who are able to work in our official languages – yet at the same time reduces exactly the evaluation of those components to below the bare minimum.

The procedure has become entirely opaque, there is no independent oversight ensuring fairness to both candidates and the Office.

By limiting the effort and involvement of examiners – the future colleagues, coaches, team members of a new recruit - in the recruitment process, the Office saves money in the short term. Yet what is the cost when we then encounter more problems during the probation year? Not only have we been paying our new recruits salary, removal expenses etc., we also organised training courses, and had one or more coaches at their disposal. On top, we have also potentially burdened them with the financial and human cost of having to move their lives, families and career for an unsuccessful experience.

Something else the Administration continues to overlook: Recruitment is a bi-directional process. Candidates are evaluating us just as we evaluate them. Do they feel at home with us? Is this the job they want? Is this the place they want to transfer their lives to, and to do so for a 5-year contract? The Examiners we seek are highly experienced and qualified, often with a PhD, they are internationally mobile, and are able to work in multiple languages. They already have a job or could quite easily get one. If we want to recruit the top candidates, we should positively stand out. Yet, potential recruits do not get to see our ‘normal working environment’. They do not get to see what our job actually consists of, they do not get to sit down and talk with an examiner, to see a patent application up close, they do not get the chance to sniff the social environment.

By keeping the candidates far away from their actual future working environment and colleagues, we deprive them from this all-important element in their evaluation of us – and so they can only rely on what they find online, a picture that has become severely tainted in the last few years.

No wonder the number of candidates for examiner posts is dwindling1, now less than one third of what we had just 3 years ago.

No wonder we see a lot of candidates drop out somewhere along the recruitment process – something which virtually did not exist a few years ago.

No wonder we see one in three, sometimes more, examiner job offers being refused, the 5-year contract prominently featuring as the main reason why.

No wonder we are mainly limited to recruiting young, fresh from university or PhD, and local to the places of employment.

Today, we are in a situation of overcapacity in many technical areas, so recruitment of examiners can function at a minimal level. But soon we will inevitably need to ramp up recruitment again, with much larger cohorts leaving on retirement.

To repeat, the recruitment process for examiners we have today is not fit for purpose – and the offer we make to the candidates is subpar, to put it mildly2.

The EPO is an organization in a severe crisis, due to the destructive actions of the Battistelli Administration, and the inertia of the current one in mending what was broken. The dismal state of the recruitment process is yet another indicator pointing, like all indicators, in this very same direction.

Your Staff Committee

_____ 1 See the 2018 Social Report – table 12 on page 19 2 It is telling that from the last 1000 new recruits since 2014 only 11 were Scandinavian, 2 from Switzerland – yet 1 in 3 from Germany.



The Microsoft-EPO relationship reaffirmed in "technical and language knowledge assessment is now limited to a single 45-minute Skype interview"; so candidates must have a Microsoft (US) account?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
 
People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025