Again, I'm aware of the particular case. The language profile of the position was downgraded to give the individual a job because he or she—again, I'm not sure whether it was a man or a woman—had quit their previous job on the basis that we had made them a job offer.
No, that should not happen. That said, I think all public service managers who've run competitions over the course of their careers have faced situations where they've posted a position with a particular linguistic profile and it's proven to be unsuccessful--i.e., nobody who meets the linguistic profile also meets all of the other merit criteria.
As managers we face that all the time, and sometimes what we have to do as managers is step back and have a look at the language profile. Sometimes we adjust it, ensuring that we can provide the level of language service in some other way.
In a circumstance like that, though, what we are also obliged to do is to re-post the position and re-run the competition from scratch, not just take the one person.
