One million people competition: the nationwide Brazilian civil servants selection Draft – please do not quote or distribute without author's permission Fernando Fontainha * Pedro Heitor Geraldo ** Alexandre Veronese *** Camila Alves **** Brief note for foreign readers Brazilian public administration is hugely based on the continental model. Each position in the civil service depends on a recruitment process based on examinations, mostly multiple-choices ones. Most of public bodies and government agencies do not directly recruit, not before the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management, authorizes it. Therefore, most of them hire private institutions, specialized in planning and applying mass examinations. Each recruitment is legally attached to a public notice, a document that expresses the rules that bind candidates and the State; it is published in Brazilian Official Journal. Introduction This paper is the result of a research conducted by FGV Law School and Fluminense Federal University (UFF). It is a response to the Ministry of Justice’s Legislative Affairs Secretariat (SAL/MJ) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) call for the study of Brazilian selection processes for civil service positions. It is high time legal institutional researches included on their agenda the issue of the recruitment of people for civil service positions, since Law careers are greatly impacted by this phenomenon. Brazilian media harmonically announced 2013 as the year in which our State would provide a large number of civil service positions and, therefore, would promote a * Professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas, PhD in Political Science at Université de Montpellier 1 ** Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense, PhD in Political Science at Université de Montpellier 1 *** Professor at Universidade de Brasília, PhD in Sociology at IESP-UERJ. **** Research Assistant at Fundação Getulio Vargas, Master in Sociology and Law at Universidade Federal Fluminense.