Hanoi has been urged to reconsider the way it organizes exams to employ civil servants. 

Analysts have pointed out that the failure of tens of candidates with high education degrees could only be attributed to the unreasonable recruitment scheme. 

Tran Thi Quoc Khanh, permanent member of the National Assembly’s Committee for Science, Technology and the Environment, noted that in fact, Hanoi is not the only locality which fails candidates with high degrees.

“This is because our civil service exam scheme consists of systematic errors,” Khanh said in an interview given to Dai Doan Ket.

“People say that with the current recruitment scheme, even Professor Ngo Bao Chau may also fail the exam to become a civil servant in Hanoi,” she said.

Ngo Bao Chau is a Hanoi-born worldwide renowned mathematician. He received the Fields Medal, the most honorable award in math in 2010.

“With the current recruitment scheme, state agencies can only find civil servants who are good at learning by heart,” she said.

“At the exam, they (candidates) were asked about the functions and the tasks of state agencies and the way the agencies operate in provinces and cities. How can they, especially those who finish foreign universities, understand know these?” she said. “And they surely failed.”

“The employers should have raised questions to find out the candidates’ abilities, not to find their understanding about state management regulations,” she said.

Professor Dr. Vu Minh Giang, chair of the Hanoi National University’s Science & Training Council, noted that it was very easy to recruit civil servants if Hanoi just needs those who know civil service regulations, because it takes only one week to learn by heart all the civil service laws. However, the easy way will not find talented civil servants.

“I don’t believe that so many candidates, many of whom were valedictorians and top graduates of overseas and domestic schools, could be so bad that they failed the exam,” Giang said.

A report of the Hanoi Department of Interior Affairs showed that half of the candidates applying for posts at Hanoi state agencies did not have to attend the entrance exams, but had to sit the test to show their abilities.

Dr. Nguyen Tung Lam, chair of the Hanoi Educational Psychology Association, noted that the recruiter demanded professional knowledge from the candidates that may not be necessary in reality.

Giang denied that training establishments produced bad valedictorians, and that is why they failed the exam. “They are not from one training establishment. So we cannot say the training quality is bad,” he said. 

Thanh Lich