From July 1, 2025, how will the new regulations on civil servant recruitment exams apply?

Decree 170/2025/ND-CP stipulates that civil servant recruitment exams for positions in the employee category will only include specialized professional exams.

a) Exam format: oral or practical.

b) Exam content:

For the oral exam: Assess thinking ability, ability to apply knowledge into practice; ability to carry out tasks and work of the job position; candidate's understanding of the job position.

For practical exam: Perform specific tasks as required by the job position.

Exam score (oral or practical): 100 points.

c) Exam time 30 minutes.

Civil servant recruitment exam for positions of specialist and equivalent, officer and equivalent

Follow the 2 rounds as follows:

a) Round 1: Conditional exam to test general knowledge and abilities

Exam format: Multiple choice test on computer.

Exam content: 60 questions assess thinking ability, ability to apply knowledge into practice; general, basic understanding of candidates about the political system; state administrative management; rights and obligations of civil servants, public ethics; knowledge about society, culture, history.

Exam time: 60 minutes.

Candidates who answer 50% or more of the questions correctly will be allowed to participate in round 2.

b) Round 2: Professional exam

Exam format: Written or a combination of written and interview.

Exam content:

For the written test: The test content tests knowledge of the Party's guidelines and policies, laws on the recruitment sector and field; professional and technical capacity; and public service performance skills of candidates according to the requirements of the job position to be recruited. The test duration is 180 minutes (excluding the time for copying questions). Based on the characteristics of the agency, organization, unit, the competent recruiting agency can organize the written test in the form of a computer-based test, and at the same time decide on the appropriate number of questions, ensuring a minimum of 60 questions and a maximum of 120 questions (in the form of multiple-choice questions). The test duration corresponds to the total number of questions, ensuring a minimum of 90 minutes and a maximum of 180 minutes.

For the interview test: The interview test focuses on assessing the following competencies: thinking, communication, situational judgment, learning, development, expression, attitude, personality and other competencies as required by the job position. The maximum test time is 30 minutes.

Written test score: 100 points; interview test score: 100 points.

In case of written exams on computers, the Recruitment Council (Exam Board) will develop groups of questions with different levels of complexity and decide on the corresponding score for each question.

In case of choosing the combined written and interview test format, the total score of the written test and the interview test will be converted to a 100-point scale with the score ratio of 70% for the written test and 30% for the interview test (rounded to 2 decimal places).

The civil servant recruitment exam for specialist positions will be conducted in 2 rounds: a qualifying exam to test general knowledge and abilities and a specialized professional exam. Illustrative photos

Recruitment exam for the position of senior specialist and equivalent

Take the professional exam as prescribed for round 2 above.

Recruitment exam for senior specialist and equivalent positions, senior expert

For recruitment exams for senior specialist and equivalent positions, senior experts, the Decree also stipulates specialized professional exams as follows:

a) Project Test;

b) The content and form of the Project exam are decided by the competent recruitment authority, ensuring that they are consistent with the requirements of the job position and must be determined in the Recruitment Plan and made public in the Recruitment Notice.

c) Project exam score: 100 points;

d) The maximum time for preparing and taking the Project for 01 candidate is 90 minutes, decided by the head of the competent recruiting agency based on the requirements and characteristics of the recruited job position.

In case of recruitment with higher requirements on professional skills and foreign languages

In addition, Decree 170/2025/ND-CP also stipulates: In case the authorized recruitment authority has specific requirements on the content and time of the specialized professional exam higher than those prescribed in this Article or has specific requirements on foreign languages, it must be specifically identified in the Recruitment Plan and made public in the Recruitment Notice.

The competent recruitment authority decides on the foreign language test, content, format, time, and determines the passing score. The foreign language test score is a conditional score and is not counted towards the professional test score.

The foreign language exam must be completed before the professional exam. If you pass the foreign language exam, you will be allowed to take the professional exam.

Determining the winners of the civil service exam

Decree 170/2025/ND-CP stipulates that candidates passing the civil service exam must meet the following conditions:

a) Have a professional exam score of 50 points or higher. In case of a combined written and interview exam, the applicant must take both exams (written and interview) and have a score of 50% or higher of the maximum score for each exam;

b) The results of the professional exam plus the priority points specified in Article 6 of this Decree (if any) are higher, taken in descending order of points in the recruitment quota of each job position, including for job positions recruited jointly by many different civil servant employing agencies.

The Decree also clearly states: In case there are 2 or more people with the same total score in the final quota, the determination of the successful candidate will be carried out in the following order of priority:

a) People with higher professional exam scores;

b) The person with a higher score in the written test in round 2 in case of choosing the combined form of writing and interview.

In case the successful candidate in order of priority has not been determined, the head of the competent recruiting agency shall decide on the successful candidate.

Also according to Decree 170/2025/ND-CP, for job positions recruited jointly by many different civil service agencies, the determination of the agency that will employ the successful civil service will be carried out according to the order of priority in the application form of the successful candidate. In case the number of successful candidates applying for recruitment to a civil service agency is greater than the recruitment quota of that civil service agency, priority will be given to the candidate with the higher recruitment result. In case there are 2 or more candidates with equal recruitment results in the last quota of that civil service agency, the selection will be made according to the order of priority specified in Clause 2 of this Article.

Those who fail the civil service exam will not have their exam results retained for future exams.

Source: https://baothainguyen.vn/xa-hoi/202507/tu-172025-quy-dinh-moi-ve-thi-tuyen-cong-chuc-ap-dung-nhu-nao-4051d9a/