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An Inside Look at State Department Staffing
Inside information from someone who's been there ^ | 10 November 2001 | A Foreign Service Candidate invited to Washington, D.C.

Posted on 11/10/2001 12:48:56 AM PST by Rubber Duckie

An Inside Look at State Department Staffing

Author's Notes: After telling my story following to a few close friends and family, I was urged to publish it for a wider audience. At first, I resisted this notion because I didn't want to sound like I was crying "sour grapes". While I could easily be identified by the information given in this article, I have felt it better to pen this anonymously, not out of fear of retaliation, but because what I experienced and others whom I talked to leads me to believe my experience is more typical of State Department operating procedure rather than unique to my particular case. I would welcome comments by signing the guest book at the link directed at the end of this article or just leaving your comments on this forum.

In view of the events of September 11, I believe it is not only wise but also absolutely necessary for our diplomatic corps to start thinking about protecting American interests before engaging in politically correct public relations. Bringing a pit bull into a home to young children so they can experience interacting with an interesting animal is as foolish as routinely issuing visas to militant Islamists and other overseas visitors who harbor hostile feelings toward America. Likewise, forbidding your children to interact with a gentle guinea pig because you don't want to discriminate against or racially profile the pit bull is as foolish as confiscating knitting needles from grandmothers boarding airplanes because we have to "treat everybody equally." Of course people are not animals and many may find this analogy objectionable. But the average American can understand why the procedure to issue a young lady from Japan a visa to study English should be different from the procedure to issue a young man from the Saudi Arabia a visa to study flying. It is past time that our State Department understood the same thing.

Link to Recruitment SiteOfficial information on State Department Recruiting

About this time last year, I took the Foreign Service qualifying test. I was told that the test was extremely difficult and only a small number of people passed and went on to the next step of screening interviews. What would motivate a businessperson in mid career to do such a foolish thing? Even if successful, the pay would be less than I'm making now. There is a good chance I would be assigned to some armpit country of the world such as Pakistan rather than a pleasant garden spot such as Japan where I am now. It didn't make sense either economically or from a career advancement viewpoint. However, an unmistakable force pushed me to try out. Even now, I can't say for sure what it was other than an inner feeling of loyalty and sense of duty.

Much of the information I had gotten both from people who've I'd known who worked in the Foreign Service as well as secondary sources indicated that a large number of mid-level people were quitting the foreign service for reasons ranging from better opportunities in the private sector to demoralization resulting from eight years of control by Clintonista party hacks who put their career advancement ahead of American interests.

Having lived over half my adult life in Japan (including the last 12 years), worked in business in a variety of fields where the State Department indicated need of my particular skills, and being encouraged by my wife -- 'You are always complaining about what goes on inside our government, why don't you try to help out from the inside?'-- I decided to register for the exam and spend $15 or so on the study guide. She also said this could well be my chance to move as, no matter how the election turned out, I wouldn't be working under a Clinton administration and a lot of cleaner uppers would be needed. While we hoped for a clean break with that sorry administration, I told her I wouldn't start a government career under his protegee, Al Gore, even if I passed the test and, further, unless I scored in the top 5%, I wouldn't pursue it either.

In mid-September the study guide arrived and I took to reading it on the train to and from work. Some of the questions required me to dust off some long unused facts stored in my brain since my college days, but most of it for a news and history junkie like myself was fairly easy. The first Saturday in November, I took the train to the nearest U.S. Consulate to take a daylong exam with 20 some other hopefuls. After checking our identification and letting us in, the exam was passed out in various parts--essays, profiles, multiple choice (fill in the oval) type questions on history, geography, economics, international issues and a very few quantative type questions which were amazingly light-weight. The only parts of the exam I was pressed to finish were the profile portion and essay portion, both of which I was probably too thorough and introspectively honest about. In fact, most of the exam was so lightweight that I left remembering the three questions out of hundreds that I may have missed. Two of them I still remembered long enough when I got home two hours later to look up.-- "Who designed the Vietnam Memorial?" and "What are the Maghreb States?"

So, I figured I had passed the test, but couldn't guarantee to my wife it was in the top 5%. During lunch and after the exam several examinees mentioned they had taken the test several times and were still looking to pass, so I figured I had probably done well enough to be close. While my wife was quite excited when I told her about the test, I tried to pour cold water on her enthusiasm. She always dreamed about having an 8 to 5 working husband who'd come home by 6:30 p.m. every evening, rather than one who considered 8 p.m. early. More than that, she thought I would be well motivated to help clean house in Washington and overseas. I reminded her it was a long shot and the presidential election could indicate the country was satisfied with the last eight years of scandal and ignoring traditional allies such as Japan to cultivate politically expedient regimes such as China. My words nearly proved prophetic in the 6 weeks which followed the election in which I predicted Bush would end up with the short straw because his people would play by the rules, so forget about me pursuing the opportunity even if I scored in the top 5%. At length, she made me promise that if Bush pulled it out and I scored in the top 5%, I would go for the interviews

In early February, the test results came showing I'd scored in the top 1% in the job knowledge portion of the test. There was also a form to fill out return answering whether to accept an oral exam on April 2, decline or reschedule. Well, since April is the start of the new fiscal year in Japan and not a good time for someone in business to be away from the office, I asked to reschedule in June, when I would take my daughter to attend summer school in the U.S. While my wife said they wouldn't like this and I should go in April, I reminded her all travel was on our nickel and it would be a worthwhile test of interest to see if they would reschedule. A couple of weeks passed and there was no word on my rescheduling request. I called the number they gave, only to get a recording that the scheduling person was away on vacation. 'How typical of Washington, ' I thought, 'to schedule a vacation to coincide with the season of your responsibilities.' But finally, after some persistent pursuit, we got a rescheduled date close to our request.

We went a couple days early both to get over jetlag and show my daughter around Washington. When the test date came, I got up early and went to the evaluation office not far from the Foggy Bottom Metro stop in plenty of time for the 7 a.m. strict deadline to report. After waiting around until about 6:59 a.m., we were finally allowed to go through the metal detector, have our identification checked and bags examined and get a badge for the day. We all raced for the office figuring 7 a.m. was not far off. As we walked in and had our names checked off, we were invited to sit down and help ourselves to coffee. By 7:30, the room filled with the dozen people to have the big interview. The secretary broke the silence by telling us we were the quietest group she ever had and we weren't competing against each other but against a standard, so we might as well get acquainted. We introduced ourselves--an interesting group but not particularly diverse. There were two ladies and ten white guys. While I'm technically a minority, I can pass for a white guy, so I've never played the race card. The ladies appeared to be both of Asian extraction (Chinese and India, I'd guess from the names). There were two veterans--one who'd come from Florida and one from Iowa who worked at the Pentagon. I'm technically also a partial cripple and might have claimed disability points, but I'd gotten in early enough to hide my cane in the closet and refused to claim it and there was also nobody with else a visible disability, so it didn't appear our group would get a lot of diversity points. There was even less diversity on educational background-- everyone was a college graduate and only three were from outside the northeast and non-Ivy League-- the two veterans and myself.

So for the 45 minutes or so before we were called into the first exam, we exchanged quite a bit of banter. While I was not one to flaunt my political opinions, it soon became clear from the cracks about the president's intelligence and whether Colin Powell could pass the same security clearance we were required to pass that most of the group were from the left end of the spectrum. The only ones who clearly didnft fit this mold were--surprise--the two veterans, myself and a gentleman from Connecticut.

What was billed as a grueling day of exams and oral evaluations turned out to be, for the most part, light and fluffy. For every 30 minutes of work such as role playing, interviews and such, there were at least 60 minutes of break, including a staggered 2.5 to 3 hour lunch period. The three conservatives and one moderate (from Connecticut) in the group ended up having our lunchtime coincide, so we shared a table. A salad, cottage cheese and a vegetable drink in the State Department cafeteria set me back eight bucks--about what I generally paid for a full restaurant meal in Japan. We kidded the vet from Florida in the group that he would probably get the "Veteran's quota" since he had experience working in PR with the military. We also remarked about how the four of us seemed not only the oldest in the group, but the most politically balanced. The guy from Connecticut laughed and said the rest of the group was pretty typical of the know-it-alls you find in the Ivy League. We asked him how he managed to keep his head screwed on straight coming out of such a background. He remarked it was probably just real world experience.

During the long breaks, I and most of the examinees took turns going over a large three ring file with laminated profiles of the various examiners. Again, we couldn't find much diversity--unless one counts M&M's style diversity (different colors outside, same content inside). What few examiners were not from Ivy League colleges, were either from those one tier removed in the northeast or former journalists who had worked in various foreign countries (more than a few of these likely naturalized citizens judging from their names and birthplaces). There was one--exactly one--examiner in the profile pages who had worked in private industry outside journalism--he had a brief stint in the Peace Corps (which was not uncommon on other profiles) and then a couple of years teaching English in Japan. The questions we got overwhelmingly reflected this jaded eye view of the world and, when my turn came, I did my best not to show any hostility though I did challenge some of their assumptions reflected in their standardized views that America's duty overseas was to promote the D's?democracy, development and diversity. I pointed out that among the countries in Asia which most consistently supported American interests, one (Singapore) was not particularly democratic and two (Japan and Korea) were not particularly diverse, smiling when I said it.

For the most part, though, I tried to maintain a low profile like most of the group, speaking out when we were supposed to defend our position in the various role plays and keeping quiet when it was someone else's turn to speak. The final test took place shortly after lunch where we were asked to write a memo based on our role playing earlier in the day--and where I found an important page of my notes (from which we were to prepare the memo) was missing. Of course, nobody knew anything about it, so I prepared the memo the best I could without it, figuring (rightly as it turned out) that most of the decisions were already made and this was merely a smokescreen.

After filling out an evaluation form on what we thought about the validity of their lightweight tests and softball interview questions, we were all thanked and told to go back to the big room to wait. The guy from Connecticut was upset saying he had "blown it." I told him to relax because most of the day was more than likely just window dressing to cover decisions the examiners had already made before lunch or even before the evaluation started. From what I could observe, everyone in the room who had made it to that point was intelligent and qualified to be there. It would all boil down to the personal preferences of the examiners. By now it was 3 p.m. and the examiners begin calling in people before we had waited 30 minutes, hardly a proper time to carefully check or evaluate much of anything.

The first three called in were myself, the vet from Iowa who worked at the Pentagon and the guy from Connecticut. We each went to individual rooms. I was handed my evaluation score that showed I had missed their 5.25-point requirement by 0.35 points. They tried to put a happy face on it telling me how few people made it to that point and how close I'd come. I suspect everyone in that room was within half a point either above or below that magic number given what had happened that day with long breaks, softball questions and little tests of much of anything beyond the superficial. With my daughter alone in the hotel and more of Washington to see, I wasn't in much of a mood to listen to their bulls*** and they offered little to justify their reasoning. I thanked them politely and asked whether it was worth trying the process in the future, more out of curiosity to their reaction than any interest. "Oh," they said, "some candidates try several times before they are accepted into the Foreign Service." "Screw it," I thought, "I'm not going to make a career out of trying to brownnose a bunch of petty little bureaucrats from Ivy League academia with such shallow real world experience that won't accept such experience as mine if it is offered to them on a silver platter."

On my way out, the vet from Iowa and I noticed the vet from Florida was still in the room and not in the second shift of people being blown off. We gave him the thumbs up sign as we walked out and headed to the Metro stop, comparing notes along the way. Our conclusion was mutual-- with such a homogeneous group of people representing U.S. interests overseas and selecting their successors, we would be unlikely to accomplish much even if we got in and even if the administration had changed for the better. We were better off staying in our respective real worlds of Defense and business and hoping that an occasional guy like our new friend from Florida could slip through the political correctness net on the veteran's quota to ensure that at least somebody in the State Department might represent America's interests instead of those of the Globalists with their own warped interpretation of the 3 D's.

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To: Uncle Bill
Thanks for resurrecting this -- I'd missed it.
21 posted on 07/15/2002 6:57:02 PM PDT by Askel5
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To: Askel5
You're welcome my friend. Hope all is well with you. I've always thought the first hand account of the article to be interesting and illuminating.
22 posted on 07/15/2002 7:00:23 PM PDT by Uncle Bill
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To: Rubber Duckie
I went through the same process with the Foreign Service in the summer of '61.

Only the faces have changed. The backgrounds and attitudes obviously haven't.

23 posted on 07/15/2002 7:16:26 PM PDT by okie01
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To: waxhaw
In my opinion, the only way to repair the State Dept. would be to fire EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE and start over.

BTTT

24 posted on 07/15/2002 8:09:24 PM PDT by tictoc
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