EPO interview questions

The EPO selection process has 3 stages. Online test for personality and logic. Apparently personality does not really matter at this stage. Then skype meeting to discuss patent with your future coworker. Then you skype with an external worker which test your personality. Beware if you are a little bit creative of have a little bit too much of personality. They are looking for malleable people to follow their direction. Finally you get to meet the people in persons. This is when they almost harassed me and I was saved by another person who was in charge to check the interview process was fair. This job has nothing to do with innovation, you will get to scroll down and read a certain number of patents per day. They also are looking for very diligent people who will stay forever with them and follow whatever direction they are told. In my case I was applying for a certain technical field for which I got accepted and got the technical interview in another technical field. I had prepared the technical interview for weeks by learning the relevant vocabulary in the 3 languages and had a technical interview which had nothing to do with that. They suddenly to change the field without letting me know in advance. To me this was truly unprofessional. I had the same feeling of lack of professionalism when they invite me to come to the interview a week in advance but gave me half of the money to pay a plane ticket. I had to request more money and it worked and I can imagine some shy individual would not do so. Please ask for them to reimburse the full cost of the interview. In my case I would have paid about 1000euros out of pocket to come. Finally the real live interview was shocking with references to slavery as a joke about the job and pushy personal comments.

You will first have to fill in the application form on the EPO Website. Be aware that there is a lot of information needed and that you need to take your time to fill all the relevant sections. This is not your traditional "I send my CV with a cover letter" process. Once you have sent your application, you might be invited (I was) to take some online tests. This is probably where I was under-prepared, the tests are, per se, not that difficult but there is a time limit and you need to train for this so I would advise to look for similar tests on the internet and train as much as possible. Reserve some time to perform the test where you know you will not be disturbed and have a calculator as well as a notepad. The nest step of the process is a skype interview but I did not make it to that stage so would be unable to give advice.