What a graduatoria is and how scorrimento works

A graduatoria is the ranked list of every candidate who passed all the required stages of a concorso pubblico, ordered from the highest final score to the lowest. Scorrimento is the mechanism that lets the administration go back to that same list later and offer a post to the next candidate in line, without running a new competition, when a vacancy opens after the initial round of hiring is complete or when a winner declines or drops out.

Who ends up on the graduatoria and in what order?

Everyone who cleared every threshold the bando set, including the written test, any oral exam, and any physical or medical stage, is placed on the graduatoria in order of final score. Ties are broken using titoli di preferenza, a fixed hierarchy of legal preference categories such as war invalidity, number of dependent children, or prior meritorious public service, and only after those, by the candidate’s age. The full logic of that tie-break ladder is in titoli di preferenza in a concorso pubblico.

Does reaching the graduatoria guarantee a job?

No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about concorsi. Only the candidates ranked within the number of posts advertised in the bando are immediately offered a position as vincitori. Everyone else on the list is idoneo, eligible but not yet hired, and their fate depends entirely on whether further vacancies open later, either at the same administration or, in some competitions, at others covered by the same procedure.

What exactly is scorrimento?

Scorrimento is the administrative act of drawing further names from an already-approved graduatoria to fill new or leftover vacancies, instead of opening an entirely new concorso. It exists because running a full competition from scratch every time a single post opens up would be slow and expensive, and because the law generally favours using a graduatoria that is still valid over starting a fresh procedure. When a winner declines an offer, resigns shortly after starting, or fails the required probationary period, the administration typically scorre, moving to the next idoneo in rank.

How long does a graduatoria stay valid for scorrimento?

The validity period is set by the applicable regulation and can vary depending on the type of administration and the period in which the competition was run, so there is no single fixed duration that applies to every concorso. What matters practically is that a graduatoria does not remain open indefinitely, and once it expires, any remaining idonei lose their claim to a scorrimento from that specific list. Checking the bando and any subsequent official notice for that competition’s stated validity is the only reliable way to know your own standing.

Can I improve my position after the graduatoria is published?

No. Once approved, the ranking is fixed for that procedure, and it can only be altered through a successful legal challenge before the administrative judge (TAR), typically over an error in scoring or in the application of the preference rules, not by submitting new qualifications afterward. This is one of the reasons the written and oral stages, where they exist, matter so much: your final position is locked in based on what you scored at the time. For how those scores are built up in the first place, see minimum passing scores in a concorso pubblico.

Frequently asked questions

What does idoneo mean on a graduatoria? It means the candidate passed every required stage and is eligible for hiring, but was not ranked high enough to be an immediate vincitore when the list was approved.

Can an idoneo be hired later through scorrimento? Yes, if a vacancy opens while the graduatoria remains valid and the administration chooses to draw from it rather than launch a new competition.

Does scorrimento apply automatically whenever a vacancy opens? No. The administration decides whether to use scorrimento or open a new concorso, subject to the rules governing that specific type of post and administration.

Can I be removed from a graduatoria after being placed on it? Yes, in specific cases: if a candidate is found not to meet a stated requirement, declines a role and the rules treat that as forfeiture, or a legal challenge successfully alters the ranking.

Is the graduatoria for a national concorso the same for every region? Not necessarily. Many national competitions, including regionally allocated procedures, publish separate graduatorie per region or per administration, so idoneo status in one does not carry over to another.