Introduction

Today, Russia is enduring a difficult stage of the development which is characterized by the strengthening of the government, an increased role of the state in running the economy, intensified measures against corruption and other offenses in the economic sphere as a real threat to economic security of the country. In the conditions of insufficient economic stability and economic growth, uncoordinated functioning of executive bodies and management, creating an effective system of public administration of the customs policy is one of the main solutions to the urgent problems of the Russian state.

Customs directly influence international business in the Russian Federation, tackling not only economic issues, but also the issues concerning the state in general. Today, the situation in the world causes an increased importance of power blocks of the countries, which, for example, has resulted in imposing the sanctions against the Russian Federation recently.

The reasons for sanctions against the Russian Federation, despite their complexity in terms of their basis and chronology, are of financial and economic, rather than political character.

An analysis of the economic essence of sanctions against Russia shows that the sanctions are directed against the key (i.e., competitive) branches of the Russian economy: the oil, gas, nuclear and defense industries of the Russian Federation, as well as against the Russian banking
capital.

Being an integral part of the economic and foreign trade policy, the customs are actively engaged in providing for the economic security aimed at reaching a sufficient level of social and political development and defense, as well as at encouraging the progress of the Russian Federation based on its invulnerability and independence of its economic interests of any possible external and internal threats or influences.

A systematic and purposeful incorporation of Russia in the international business system in order to form a common security system has led to some essential changes in the structure of the Russian customs, predetermined their further development, encouraged a wide introduction of modern information technologies and also effective use of mechanisms of customs control and the coordination of commodity exchange on the customs area of the Customs Union. The above-mentioned tendencies have made the issue of developing the customs personnel potential in the Russian Federation of vital importance.

Main part

Of particular interest are the studies by
A.I. Isaenko, M.B. Kurbatov, M.I. Magura,
K.O. Staroverova, and S.M. Chukorova on the important problems of the theory and practice of administrative activity in customs and some specifics of competitive selection, including the formation of personnel.

J. Grayson, C. O'Dell, M. Mescon, M. Albert, F. Khedouri studied both theoretical and practical aspects of administrative activity taking into account the present realities and gave some administrative recipes of how to select personnel and improve the quality of personnel training.

These works make an essential contribution to the development of methodical bases aimed at improvement of competitive staffing the customs. However, the issues of improving the competitive staff for positions in the Federal State Civil Service are of vital importance and require further studying.

Discussion

To date, according to customs statistics, the foreign trade turnover of the Russian Federation in 2016 reached $ 471.2 billion, which was a 11.2% decrease in comparison with that of 2015, including exports which made up $287.6 billion (a 17.0% reduction) and imports amounting to $183.6 billion (a 0.4%reduction).

Despite the difficult conditions of economic sanctions and the crisis in the world economy, the customs activity is aimed at providing the maximum assistance to trade, collecting revenues for the federal budget, and also improving the quality of state services.

It should be noted that improving the quality of customs services, raising the level of professional qualification of customs personnel, and in general, ensuring the effectiveness of the national system of customs require in many respects a systematic approach to improving the staffing technologies used in the customs service today. At the same time, of vital importance is the staffing process, including a set of measures to attract and assess candidates to hold vacancies in the customs, which in turn provides an assessment of their compliance with the qualification requirements to positions of civil service in the customs (verification of the documents submitted by candidates, running tests to check their compliance with the basic qualification requirements and assessment of candidates for compliance with the functional and special qualification requirements by means of other evaluation methods) and assessment of consistency with job when performing one's duties. In this regard, the activity of customs personnel units is concentrated on strengthening the personnel potential, the improvement of vocational training and office discipline.

By now, the number of customs positions has been brought into accord with a load of officials. As a result of the work carried out in 2015 by customs personnel units, the customs were 94.8% staffed (in 2014 the figure was 93.9%), including 93.3% of employees (in 2014 – 92.6%), and 95.3% of state civil officers (in 2014 – 94.4%).

To improve the quality of vocational training of the staff and to improve their expertise in 2015, 19,600 officials of the customs took some training courses, 18,202 officials of whom took additional vocational training courses in additional vocational programs (in 2014 – the figures were 19,362 and 17,988 officials respectively).

However, it is necessary to admit that despite understanding the problems connected with HR- technologies, in many regions of Russia, the selection of personnel is often quite unsystematic: there is no thought-over algorithm of personnel rotation; besides, there are no long-term prospects to prepare and retrain personnel of the public service, including those working in the customs.

Thus, in order to form a high-quality and highly qualified staff of civil servants in customs bodies, it is necessary to improve the procedure of competitive selection.

The procedure of selecting personnel to work in the customs is based on the requirements of a uniform system of customs, the main objective of which is to meet the demand in terms of quality and quantity.

By selection we mean a procedure established only for public officials and ensuring a constitutional right of the citizens of the Russian Federation to have equal access to public service, as well as the right of public servants to be officially promoted on a competitive basis.

The work with candidates to fill vacancies at the first stage begins with accepting and studying their documents, psychological testing, carrying out a special check concerning the data provided by candidates, and scrutinizing the applications by heads of the units.

The second stage involves checking the theoretical knowledge and professional skills through computer testing and conducting an oral examination at a meeting of a competition committee. Following the results of the competition, the candidate who has demonstrated the highest level of knowledge is hired for the vacancy by a customs order, and the candidates (officials and employees of the customs public sector) who have demonstrated a good qualification level, but have not been selected in the competition form a lab our pool to fill vacancies.

A thorough examination of the competitive selection technology reveals some positive tendencies. The competitive selection allows keeping rather objective requirements to the candidate for a vacant position, at the same time reducing a chance of a casual person winning in the competition, as the procedures of the competition are stable.

Despite some positive tendencies in the competitive selection to fill vacancies in the Federal Civil Service in the customs, there are some issues to be solved. One of them is a lack of a uniform technique to assess candidates entering the state civil service in the customs. A uniform approach to create such a technique involves an assessment of candidates for all the vacancies (not only for those obtained through competition); a uniform system of assessment procedures; and uniform criteria to assess candidates through different procedures.

Results

In order to increase the efficiency of the customs performance in general and to improve the ways of assessing candidates entering the state civil services in the customs, the following technique it is offered.

The system of assessment procedures consisting of two stages will have to include the following (Fig.):

1. The first stage:

- assessment of professional experience;

- assessment of basic competences;

- assessment of special competences.

2. The second stage:

- assessment of personal qualities;

-a job interview.

The assessment of basic competences can be carried out in the form of tests or a practical task. This assessment shows the level of proficiency in the skills increasing the overall effectiveness of professional performance (computer literacy, general literacy, foreign language skills, etc.).

The assessment of special competences will allow showing the level of candidates' special professional competence in the respective sphere, which will allow them to perform their duties effectively, and also their readiness for self-development, constant aspiration to improve their knowledge and skills, to acquire new knowledge and experience in adjacent professional areas. This assessment can be carried out in the following forms: doing tests; writing a paper (essay); solving practical tasks; an interview, etc.

The assessment of personal qualities will allow estimating analytical skills, communicative competence, responsibility and organizing abilities of candidates entering the state civil service.

The creation of a uniform technique of assessing candidates will allow solving a number of the following problems:

• to increase the quality of candidates’ selection for a federal vacancy when entering the state civil service, as well as the customs;
• to increase transparency and objectivity of the assessment procedures throughout the competitive selection;
• to create an effective system of assessing candidates entering the state civil service;
• to provide equal access for citizens to fill vacancies of the civil service.

Such an approach will ensure implementation of the principle of applying modern HR technologies when hiring employees for the civil service and will make this process uniform for all regional customs offices (RCO). Subsequently, the use of uniform techniques will become an excellent database for updating qualification requirements to fill vacancies in the civil service and training programs of the higher educational institutions (HEI) and colleges.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the quality of the selected personnel influences the overall performance of the organization and the use of all of its resources, thus any mistakes when selecting the staff can be costly to any organization. The choice of selection criteria is determined in each concrete situation, depending on the vacancy, its importance for customs service, traditions, and also the qualification of the employees engaged in the selection process. The success of selection equally depends on the overall performance when implementing each stage separately and on the ability to manage it as a single process.