06/10/2024 – 5:32
With more than 500,000 public servants active in the civil Federal Executive alone, Brazil sees a growing number of public servants who also act as digital influencers in the public service. As soon as she finished her degree in control and automation engineering, Laura Amorim, aged 31, found vacancies in the area. As she always considered herself good at taking tests, she decided to study for public exams. The objective was to be a tax auditor, whose initial remuneration could reach R$22,000.
About two years later, approval came. However, when she was asked to take over the position, Laura gave up. Between starting to study, passing the competition and being nominated, another career caught the engineer: that of a digital influencer for competitions.
“When the appointment arrived, it no longer made sense, I was already engaged in work on the internet”, says Amorim, who has 320 thousand followers on Instagram, 260 thousand on YouTube and opened a company where he sells study materials.
She is not the only one taking this path. More and more public candidates, aspiring civil servants and civil servants have been using social media to share their study routine, sell materials and publicize learning and test-taking methods.
Given the success of these pages, some end up giving up when the vacancy arrives, others remain on double duty. This movement has forced government institutions to establish rules on how employees can use social networks while occupying a position in government services.
At the end of last year, for example, the Federal Highway Police (PRF) published a normative instruction in which it regulates the use of symbols and the institutional image of the agency, by employees, on social networks. The body says it has already acted in cases of non-compliance with regulations, removed and punished employees, but did not disclose a number of cases.
The Federal Police is another body that has issued normative instructions on the subject since last year. For the PF, “coaching and similar activities, aimed at providing individual or collective assistance to people, including in the preparation of candidates for public competitions, are prohibited”. The only exception is when this occurs in government schools.
Both the PRF and the PF prohibit employees from using symbols, weapons, equipment, the name or any image of the body in their personal accounts to obtain a commercial, financial or electoral advantage. Since 2019, the National Council of Justice (CNJ) has also had a regulation regulating the use of networks by judges, which prohibits the use of the institution’s brand or logo as a form of personal identification.
The Espírito Santo Criminal Police is another institution that created rules this year, which prohibits employees from disclosing images collected during investigations or information obtained during their professional practice. Last year, the Military Police Secretariat of the State of Rio de Janeiro (PMERJ) also created standards, after the Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU) and the Federal Public Ministry (MPF) identified corporation agents giving interviews on podcasts and channels YouTuber confessing to criminal conduct.
Despite this, it is not difficult to find employees from state and federal police agencies who publish content about competitions and wear uniforms and badges in these posts. Searching for hashtags on Instagram and YouTube, DW found several profiles of agents from the Civil Police of the Federal District, Federal Highway, Penal of Minas Gerais and Military of São Paulo who publish content for competitions using uniforms and images of badges.
The contestant’s new dream
The first public competition held in Brazil was in 1937, for the Industrial Retirement and Pension Institute (IAPI). With the Federal Constitution of 1988 and the expansion of public services, interest in filling one of these vacancies grew, driven by the arguments of career stability and routine predictability, in addition to attractive salaries compared to the national average.
“Brazilian competitions have many problems, but Brazil managed to create a culture of impersonality. So, with specific exceptions, the competition is seen as an instrument of reasonable meritocracy”, explains Felipe Fonte, professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Direito Rio.
Not surprisingly, more than 2.1 million people signed up to participate in the Unified National Public Competition (CPNU). The so-called “Enem dos Concursos” has 6,600 vacancies in 21 Federal Government bodies and will publish the results of the objective tests on October 8th. Half of the registered candidates are people who earn up to three minimum wages.
The civil federal executive branch alone, including public security employees of the Federal District government, currently has around 1.1 million employees, of which 573 thousand are active. In 2024, according to the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services, 12 competitions were authorized at the federal level, with 1,400 vacancies in total.
On the other hand, says Fonte, competitions are considered more difficult than in the past. “There is a large number of people entering the job market, there are no longer as many positions as before, nor vacancies. And there are more mechanisms for studying on the internet”, he says.
The difficulty of getting into a vacancy is a reason that strengthens the influencer market, both because people need greater dedication and often time to spend, and because any help from those who have already lived the experience is considered welcome.
“When you embark on this, it’s a very lonely thing. And at the end of the day, you don’t have much to deliver. It’s different from a job where you present something to the boss or the client”, recalls Amorim.
Profiles pay for trips to take exams
Not feeling alone while studying was Amorim’s motivation for opening her Instagram profile. But avoiding loneliness is not the only motivation for influencer contestants. The other is to save money to take the tests in other states and have income while they wait for the appointment.
Amorim, for example, gave up another public position to dedicate herself to the studies that made her pass the tax audit exam. When she passed, she had to wait around two years before being appointed. During this time, he continued selling mind maps to other candidates.
Graduated in mechanical engineering, Renan Cristofori, aged 33, started studying for competitions in 2017 and found a way on the internet to finance his trips to take the tests. He started selling spreadsheets to organize schedules and content after hitting the goal post in a competition in which he had to travel to São Paulo.
“I didn’t get into the starting spots and that caused me frustration. Then I thought: I’m going to sell my spreadsheet on the internet, to raise money and do other tests”, he says. In 2019, he left his studies aside, as sales were proving successful.
In 2022, Cristofori was called to the position of tax auditor in Guarulhos, spent three months in the position and then decided to leave. “I switched from water to wine during this period. I realized that the vacancy in the public service no longer suited my profile”, he says, and started to value flexible working hours and geographical freedom.
Cristofori says that when he started producing content for the internet, in 2017, influencer candidates were rare. “Today it’s almost a prerequisite, you’re going to study for the exam and you’ll open a competitive Instagram, you’ll post your day to day life. There are people who have a personal profile and abandon it, because they want to focus only on the competition. Sometimes, they don’t even include a photo, so family members don’t know that the person is studying,” he says.
Limits and possibilities of double shifts
Currently, Amorim and Cristofori have a company together, Estudei, a platform for organizing and monitoring studies for competitions. Through it, they also recruit other influencers and digital content creators to promote their products. This is how many influencers in the area start to earn money and make their profiles stand out on the networks.
This is the case of Taís Militão, 30 years old, who aims to pass a competition in the area of labor law. When she started studying for the competition, she created an Instagram profile dedicated just to following some influencers and posting rants and book tips.
“That same year, the first partnership emerged. A course contacted me to provide me with material and pay for tickets for competitions. That turned a key in my head”, he says. Today, this is his main job, while he continues studying for competitive exams.
Hugo Freitas, 31 years old, tried a double routine as a civil servant at the São Paulo Court of Justice and a digital influencer. He started studying for competitive exams in 2018 and has had a YouTube channel ever since. When he got the job, he kept posting.
“It was difficult, because I had a normal routine, from nine to five in the afternoon, spent the whole day in court and lived far away. When I got home, around 8pm, I would prepare the contents”, he says. Hugo left the public seat about a year later and, because of this, he suffered hate from his followers.
“There came a time when it became irreconcilable, and I saw more potential for growth in digital, but it wasn’t an easy decision,” he says, who today runs a company, 123 Passe, to sell study materials.
The decision was also guided by the limitations imposed by the public service, as there are rules on what can be shared in the public service routine, as well as what type of server can maintain parallel professional activities.
According to Felipe Fonte, from FGV, employees must observe the legal regime and internal rules of each corporate entity, as they may vary according to the public body and administrative instance. “But normally server laws and statutes are old, so they don’t clearly say what happens in relation to the internet”, he says.
Source also warns that some careers, such as judiciary and Public Ministry, are activities subject to special regimes and bodies such as the CNJ and the National Council of the Public Ministry.
“Article 296 of the Penal Code also provides limits on the use of public and distinctive symbols. But I have never seen this rule being applied in a specific case”, he says. Some bodies also prohibit civil servants from opening companies and participating in societies.
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