`titrebFrom the Planned Management of Staff, Jobs and Competencies towards a New Statutory Framework : The Gradual Emergence of a job approch (métier) in the French civil service `/titreb The term métier sums up a project of gradual reform in French civil service staffing policy. The term was introduced along with methods aiming to plan ahead for changes in staff and professional know-how through the use of “referentials” listing the totality of “job types” necessary to fulfil all administrative needs and the competencies associated with them. An analysis of the actual uses of these methods shows the failure of a plan to develop a tool that could serve as a basis for all human resource management functions. However, the procedure turned out to be operational so far as meeting the more precise and strategic needs of various ministries was concerned : aid in the requalification of civil servants whose posts might become unnecessary due to new technologies or institutional change, aid in the career management or in favouring the mobility of civil servants with support functions for several ministries ; in addition, it served as a basis for discussion between those receiving allocations and those responsible for a particular unit, with a view to management control. On the whole, the main point is the recognition of the importance of skills and professionalism over and above membership in a corps, or the “profession”. The same idea can be found in a recent report of the Conseil d’État, suggesting that those in charge of a particular unit be given the means to choose staff according to individuals’professional background and acquired competencies rather than according to the status of their original corps. Thus the idea of métier is used to create a link between two moving entities : on one hand the changing missions of public organizations, on the other the changing missions of individuals in the course of a career. Reference to métier thus consists more in renewing the model of a civil service career than in questioning its relevance.