The Recruitment and Selection Framework Policy is intended to provide UNDP Country Offices (COs) and headquarters hiring units with the principles governing recruitment and selection and specific guidance for filling vacant posts at the local and international levels in accordance with the United Nations Charter, the Staff Regulations and the Staff Rules.

UNDP staff recruitment and selection are guided by the following five principles:

Competition: Selection follows a visible and fair competitive process for all vacancies, regardless of post, contractual modality or hiring unit, except when such a competitive process is not considered practicable.

Objectivity: Screening is conducted with professional rigour, with candidates measured against clearly articulated criteria, job skills and competencies, and corporate priorities.

Transparency: The recruitment and selection criteria and all phases of recruitment processes are transparent to staff and candidates to the fullest extent possible.

Diversity: UNDP’s workforce reflects diversity and strives to include equal numbers of men and women, staff members representing as wide a geographic distribution as possible and individuals from under-represented groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities.

Accountability: Hiring managers are held accountable both for their selection proposals and the manner in which they have followed the processes leading up to them.

Each recruitment and selection process should include the basic steps:

• An approved, budgeted and classified post
• An up-to-date job description describing the key functions, competencies, impact and requirements of the post, responsibilities, academic qualifications, work experience and language requirements
• A recruitment strategy
• A vacancy announcement uploaded on to the UNDP job website
• A competitive job-specific assessment of skills, demonstrated competencies, relevant qualifications and performance of candidates in relation to the predefined requirement for the post
• A technical assessment against the key functions, competencies, impact and requirements of the post
• A competency-based interview for which the panel comprises a minimum of three panellists, one of which is from outside the Hiring Unit

The recruitment and selection process varies when Fast Track Procedures (FTP) are formally triggered. As most Fast Track measures have been mainstreamed into relevant policies and streamlined into the required processes, this should enable COs to work quickly to implement crisis response programming. Mainstreaming of the Fast Track measures has allowed COs to avail certain flexibilities in policies and procedures. However, some provisions were delegated to the Regional Bureau level and, therefore, the CO will still need to seek approval for these. The Fast Track provisions can be found in the Standard Operating Procedure for Immediate Crisis Response in the UNDP Programme and Operations Policies and Procedures (POPP) for more information.

The UNDP Global Fund Partnership and Health Systems Team (GFPHST) has developed a Project Management Unit (PMU) recruitment tracking template as a tool to monitor the progress of the PMU recruitment process.