Hey folks, it’s another busy week here in Arlington,
but Sarah and I are doing our best to stay on top of things, including watching
our quota of 12 hours of Olympics coverage per day. I’m also trying to stay ahead of the summer
movie schedule in anticipation of my annual summer movie roundup (SPOILER: The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises are in a race for first place). So, obviously, we have our priorities in
place.
Lately, Sarah and I have been perusing other Foreign
Service blogs, of which there are many, and noticed a common attribute. Everyone seems to take the time to explain
the entire timeline of the Foreign Service (FS) hiring process. Since it is somewhat exhaustive and some of
you may be interested, I thought I would provide a breakdown as well. The hiring process can take up to three
years, so we are pleasantly surprised at how quickly we made it through all of
the steps.
The process consists of three exams: (1) the Foreign
Service Officer Test (FSOT), a multiple-choice exam; (2) the Essay Exam,
submitted online; and (2) the Oral Assessment, a grueling full-day interview at
the State Department with various activities and writing assignments sprinkled
throughout. If you fail any one of these
steps, you have to go back to the very beginning and start over. The FSOT is perhaps the greatest barrier to
entry, with a passage rate of about 20%.
From start to finish, only about 3-6% of applicants ever receive an
offer to join the Foreign Service.
So here’s what our timeline looks like:
JUNE 2011 TEST 1: Foreign Service Officer Test
SEPTEMBER 2011 TEST 2: Essay Exam
JANUARY 2012 TEST 3: Oral
Assessment (5.30)
FEBRUARY 2012 Medical Clearance
APRIL 2012 Security Clearance (Register)
APRIL 2012 Language Testing (PASS –
5.47)
JULY 2012 OFFER TO JOIN!
SEPTEMBER 10, 2012 Entrance
into 168th A-100 Class
Alright, let’s take a look at that a bit more in
depth. If you pass the first two exams,
you are invited to take the Oral Assessment, where you are given a score on a
scale of 0 to 7. The cutoff score is
5.25. If you score lower than that, you
have to go all the way back to the beginning.
As you can see, I scored a 5.30, meaning I just barely passed.
After that, you must go through a somewhat rigorous
medical and security clearance process, which involved visits to the doctor,
chest x-rays, and visits at home and work from State Department investigators. To give you an idea of how exhaustive this
process is, I got a call from an investigator in Provo, UT, who was on his way
to Brick Oven Restaurant to check on my employment records from five years
ago!
We received our clearances surprisingly quickly, and
were placed on the “Register.” The
Register is the list of all eligible FS candidates, ranked by Oral Assessment
score. Needless to say, Sarah and I were
pretty excited about this development, until I called to find out my ranking,
only to discover of all the Consular candidates, I was ranked #78 out of 78
people. Perhaps I would have to go back
through the entire process again.
My only real chance at improvement was to get a
bonus added to my raw score based on language testing. After some deliberation, I decided to test in
Romanian instead of Spanish. I performed
horribly, or so I thought, as I found out a couple weeks later that I actually
passed. My new score was a 5.47, and my
new ranking was #13!
After that, we spent a few anxious weeks waiting for
the next class to be called, praying to make sure we were doing the right
thing, and watching in agony as my ranking slowly slipped from #13 down into
the twenties. Amazingly, I received an offer to join the September
class, and the rest of the story I suppose you already know. We are still just as excited as ever to be
joining the Foreign Service, and can’t wait until we find out about our first
post (probably mid-October). And, of course, we will be sure to keep you all posted.
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