The process

After the contract with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been signed, the first step was to determine the employee target group in order for us to create an effective advertising campaign aimed at the target group. In the advertising campaign, execute.dk emphasised the importance of the positions and due to this strategy, the positions attracted great interest. The campaign took its starting point in execute.dk’s COP15 website where those interested could find specific job descriptions as well as general information about COP15. The candidates also had to apply through this website which had the advantage that the candidates were registered directly in execute.dk’s COP15 database.

In order for the campaign to be as precise and targeted as possible, we primarily focused on selected candidates from our own database and through our network of, among others, educational institutions and similar. We only used regular job ads to a very limited extent and when we did, the main purpose was general marketing.

execute.dk found that it would be uneconomical to conduct individual interviews with all candidates, partly because it would demand considerable resources and partly for quality reasons. Since the employees were going to be part of and work in large groups during their employment at COP15, it seemed more practical and effective to conduct group interviews in groups of approximately six candidates. In this way, the recruitment officers were able to try the candidates’ ability to get on in a large group and thereby find those candidates who most successfully emphasised their qualities. execute.dk applied a very efficient and successful recruitment technique, which included relevant role plays for the purpose of clarifying linguistic skills and knowledge about COP15. The interview process lasted for about six weeks, from the beginning of August to mid-September.

When all interviews had been conducted, the selection process started. In this process, the database system proved a significant help as the system was designed to automatically select the most qualified candidates based on the interviewer’s comments and assessments.

The selected candidates were presented to the Foreign Ministry on 1 October 2009.

A particular group of the employees - who had stood out from the rest during the group interviews - were called in for a second interview. This was a personal one-to-one interview which mainly focused on the employee’s background and interest in management and co-ordination of large employee groups. The aim of these interviews was to find those ten team leaders, the so-called D’s, who were going to have the overall responsibility for groups of employees at the airport, the hotels and the Bella Center.

When the candidates had been selected, they had to pass a security clearance by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service as well as an additional screening by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After this, a mandatory introductory course was held for all the employees with the aim of preparing them for their work during COP15.

You can read more about the types of candidates we were looking for under Profiles.

After the convention, execute.dk found that it was important to evaluate the whole project and for this purpose, we draw up questionnaires for all employees. You can read more about the results of the evaluation under Evaluation.