What is a concurso de merito in Colombia?

A concurso de merito is the process Colombia’s public administration is constitutionally required to use to fill a career job: candidates are tested and ranked, and the entity has to hire from the top of that ranking rather than choosing whoever it prefers. Article 130 of the Constitucion Politica created the Comision Nacional del Servicio Civil, the CNSC, specifically to administer this process across the state. If you have seen a job posted by a gobernacion, alcaldia or the Ministerio de Educacion with an OPEC number attached, you were looking at a concurso de merito in progress.

Why does Colombia use concurso de merito instead of direct appointment?

Because the Constitution says career jobs cannot be filled any other way. Article 125 states that entry into carrera administrativa happens “previo cumplimiento de los requisitos y condiciones que fije la ley para determinar los meritos y calidades de los aspirantes.” Free appointment, by contrast, is reserved for a narrow set of jobs the law explicitly classifies as de libre nombramiento y remocion, mostly advisory or trust positions. Everything else that is career, which is most of the state’s technical and administrative workforce, has to go through a concurso.

Who runs a concurso de merito?

The Comision Nacional del Servicio Civil, an autonomous body that belongs to none of the three branches of government. The CNSC does not apply the exams itself for most processes; it contracts a universidad operadora to design and administer the written tests, while the Comision retains control of the acuerdo de convocatoria, the rules document that governs the whole process, and of SIMO, the platform where aspirants register.

What are the stages of a concurso de merito?

Five, in order: convocatoria (the announcement and the acuerdo that fixes the rules), reclutamiento (registration and requirement verification), aplicacion de pruebas (the tests), conformacion de listas de elegibles (the ranked results), and periodo de prueba (a probation period once the winner is actually named to the job). The exact tests inside the aplicacion de pruebas stage vary by process. The CNSC Territorial 12 process, for example, runs a prueba de competencias basicas y funcionales, a prueba comportamental and a valoracion de antecedentes; the Concurso Docente adds a prueba psicotecnica and an entrevista on top of that structure. Our breakdown of a full concurso’s stages walks through each one.

What do you get if you win?

A place on the lista de elegibles for the specific empleo, ranked against every other aspirant who applied to that same OPEC number. The entity is legally obligated to appoint from that list, in order, before it can use any other mechanism. That is the practical difference between a concurso winner and someone appointed provisionally, which we cover in our comparison of carrera administrativa against provisionalidad.

Does every public job in Colombia go through a concurso?

No. Jobs classified as de libre nombramiento y remocion, elected positions, and a handful of other categories fixed by law are excluded. Career jobs, which make up most of the technical and administrative workforce in entities like ministries, superintendencias, gobernaciones and public schools, are the ones that require it.

FAQ

Is a concurso de merito the same thing as a job application? No. A regular job application is decided by the hiring manager. A concurso de merito is decided by a ranked score from standardized tests administered under rules the CNSC fixes in advance, and the entity has no discretion to skip the ranking.

Who can take a concurso de merito? Any Colombian citizen who meets the specific requisitos published for that empleo in the OPEC, generally a minimum age of 18 and the formal education and experience the manual de funciones requires for that job.

How do I find out which concursos are open right now? Through SIMO, the CNSC’s registration platform, and through the acuerdos de convocatoria the CNSC publishes on its own portal. Our page on the CNSC Territorial 12 process and the Concurso Docente track two of the largest current processes.

Does winning a concurso guarantee a job immediately? It guarantees a place on the lista de elegibles, which the entity must draw from as vacancies open. It does not guarantee an immediate appointment if the specific vacancy you competed for is not yet ready to be filled, though the list has to be used before any provisional appointment continues.

What is the CNSC exactly? It is explained in full in what is the CNSC, but in short it is the constitutional body that administers and oversees merit-based selection for public jobs across Colombia.