Decree 170/2025/ND-CP regulating the recruitment, use and management of civil servants officially takes effect from July 1, 2025.
Clause 2, Article 9 of the Decree stipulates the form, content, and time of the civil servant recruitment exam for job positions of specialist and equivalent, cadre and equivalent, which are conducted in 2 rounds:
a) Round 1: Exam subjects requiring testing general knowledge and abilities
Exam format: Test on a computer.
The contestants will have 60 questions to assess their thinking ability and ability to apply knowledge into practice; general and basic understanding of the candidates about the political system; state administrative management; rights and obligations of civil servants, public ethics; knowledge of society, culture, and history.
Exam time: 60 minutes.
Candidates who answered 50% or more of the questions correctly will be allowed to participate in round 2.
b) Round 2: Specialized professional competition
Exam form: Writ or combine writing and interviewing.
Exam content:
For the written exam: The exam testens knowledge about the Party's guidelines and policies, policies and laws on recruitment sectors and fields; professional competence and skills; civil service skills of candidates according to the requirements of the job position to be recruited. Exam time is 180 minutes (excluding exam writing time). Based on the characteristics of the recruiting agency, organization, unit, or competent agency, it is possible to organize a written exam in the form of a computer exam, and at the same time decide on the appropriate number of questions, ensuring a minimum of 60 questions, a maximum of 120 questions (in the form of multiple-choice questions). The exam time corresponds to the total number of questions, ensuring a minimum of 90 minutes, a maximum of 180 minutes.
For the interview: The interview focuses on assessing the ability to: think, communicate, judge situations, learn, develop, express, attitude, personality and other abilities according to the requirements of the job position. Maximum exam time is 30 minutes.
Score scale for the written exam: 100 points; interview exam: 100 points.
In case the exam is written in the form of a computer exam, the Recruitment Council (Exam Board) will build groups of questions with different levels of complexity and decide on the corresponding scores for each question.
In case of choosing the form of a combination of writing and interviewing, the total score of the written exam and the interview exam will be converted to a scale of 100 according to the score ratio of the written exam of 70%, of the interview exam of 30% (rounded up to 2 decimals).
