The EFTA Secretariat has two categories of staff: professional staff (officers) and general staff (coordinators/assistants).
- Standard employment contracts are normally for a fixed-term period of three years. Depending on the needs of the EFTA Secretariat, contracts may be renewed once, generally not exceeding another three years.
- In exceptional cases EFTA offers temporary contracts up to a maximum of 1 year to cover leaves of staff members or work on specific, limited projects.
- EFTA has various opportunities for traineeships and short term experts.
Nationality requirements
For the professional staff category, the EFTA Secretariat only accepts applications from nationals of the EFTA Member States (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). General staff may however be nationals from EU and EFTA Member States.
The Financial Mechanism Office (FMO), affiliated to the EFTA Secretariat, offers positions to nationals of the EEA EFTA States (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and extends it for certain positions to nationals of the EU Member States.
Equal opportunities
The EFTA Secretariat is a place of equality and mutual respect among employees, who shall be treated fairly and enjoy equal opportunities. The EFTA Secretariat has a Gender Equality Policy, which aims to ensure equal conditions and opportunities for employees at the Secretariat, free from gender bias, and to raise awareness of gender equality in all the work of the Secretariat.
Wellbeing in the workplace
At the EFTA Secretariat, safety, security and the wellbeing of staff is fundamental. The working environment is based on EFTA values: professionalism, cooperation, trust, responsibility and respect. People are treated fairly and respectfully, free from offensive behaviour.
Guidelines for applicants
All applications must be made via our online recruitment system and all our fixed-term, traineeship and short-term expert vacancies are announced under Current Vacancies.
The EFTA Secretariat does not consider unsolicited applications.
In order to apply, you will have to open the vacancy you are interested in and click on “Apply for this job”, you will be asked to create a profile which will allow you to modify and check the progress of your application.
Before submitting your application, please verify that all sections have been completed and that every single section of your application has been saved, the submit button will only show when all sections have been completed. The submission of your online application will be acknowledged by an automated email. Note that once your application has been submitted it can no longer be modified for that specific job opening.
In case of a technical problem with this system, please send an email to the HR team with a screenshot of the problem so that we can assist you (email: hr.support [at] efta.int (hr[dot]support[at]efta[dot]int)).
Documentary evidence should not be attached to initial applications but will be requested at the interview stage. Original copies of qualifications, references or testimonials should not be submitted unless they have been requested specifically by the Secretariat.
Every application is given the fullest consideration. Acknowledgement of receipt is sent to each applicant by email. Only those applicants who succeed at the shortlisting stage of the recruitment process will be called for interview. Those applicants who are unsuccessful at this stage will be informed by email at the end of the recruitment process.
