|
Periscope Get ready for knockout competition by Carrie Lok Wong Chun-ting, a year-three student at the University of Hong Kong, has worked hard to prepare himself for the government administrative officer recruitment examination in February. The competition is stiff, with thousands of candidates fighting for 40 openings this year. Since he made the application for the job last October the physics student had been reading two newspapers religiously every day. He also attended workshops and talks organised by his university for advice and tips. "I spent a lot of time in reviewing the past papers, and I even slept much earlier than usual on the day before I took the written examination," Mr Wong said. Despite his effort, he has not been chosen for the interview. Mr Wong said although he knew his chance of success was not high, he still tried his best to prepare for the test because the job was his preference. "I am interested in serving the public," he said.
But the civil service recruitment process is tough. This year, just about 7,000 of the 13,457 applicants could pass the government's common recruitment test on languages and aptitude and got into the next level of written examination, of which Mr Wong was one of the candidates. "We are quite choosy in a sense that even though we set a maximum target of 40, we do not recruit to the maximum merely because we want to fill the number. We only recruit the very bst, those qualified," Winnie Ng Ching-ching, principal assistant secretary for the civil service, said. Last year, just 36 out of 17,065 applicants were picked and appointed to be administrative officers. To help their students prepare for the recruitment examinations and interviews, the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong every year organise different workshops and provide practical information about the assessment for those who want to apply to the administrative service. |
OTHER STORIES IN PERISCOPE |