Third Time's the Charm?

At least for me and the QEP, it is! I learned yesterday that I passed the QEP and can sign up for the FSOA next week. I've taken the FSWE the past three years now and got around a 165-175 and 6 or 8 on the essay each time. No significant life experience change since the last two years either except for another year of work under my belt.

But this time, I really went to town on my personal narratives to make sure they hit exactly what was asked. I also had tremendous help from an old friend who's familiar with HR questions. Let me just add to the general consensus that impressive PNQ stories are NOT a guarantee to pass the QEP. If there's a spectrum with one end representing an incredibly impressive story that kind of addresses the PNQ asked, and the other end representing a mundane story that adequately reflects the characteristics sought, I would choose the answer closer to the latter end. There's a girl who published her successful PNQs on the Yahoo FSWE group, and her intellectual skills PNQ answer discusses how she went about following a set of instructions to fix her bed. You can't really get more mundane than that, but she did showcase intellectual skills in her response and she passed. Of course there are other factors like her background, test score, other PNQ responses, and the fact that State was hiring more during her candidacy, but at least you can say the mundane response wasn't fatal to her application.

The Oral Assessment for my group will be offered between mid-November to early March, and I hope to have some new posts between now and then that highlight some study materials that I've found to be helpful in prepping for the interview. I hope it'll be helpful to someone!

Reset

In case anyone is still following this blog, I was not invited to the oral assessment last year. Even after passing the Farsi language test. So my PNQ responses must have been really poor. I needed to be humbled.

I registered to take the test again, this time in the Econ track, and passed the June 2010 test. I also e-mailed State asking if my SCNL test results carry over, and apparently they do for five years. When you re-register, you have to do everything from square one, but I guess for the language test you don't.

I'm now working on my PNQ responses. The buzz I've picked up from the Yahoo messageboards (FSWE; FSOA [registration required for both]) and other blogs is that you really need to address State's "13 Dimensions" in those responses, so this time I will sit down and make sure each response highlights as many as possible. This was something I kind of glossed over last year, (mistakenly) thinking that my academic background, SCNL result, and decently-written PNQ responses would be enough to get me through. Again, needed to be humbled.

Updates posted as they occur...

Which Career Track is Right for Me?

The State Department website has an online test that tells you what career tracks you're likely to be interested in. You have to choose which track you want when you register to take the written exam, and they say it is very hard to change once you are selected. Fortunately, I chose political.

Post One

Salutations! I am in the process of applying to join the Foreign Service. I'll briefly go through the process so anyone who is unfamiliar can get caught up.

So far, I've passed the written exam (FSWE), passed the Super Critical Needs Language (SCNL) telephone test, and have submitted my Personal Narrative Questions (PNQ). Right now, my application is being reviewed by the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP), which considers my resume, FSWE score, and PNQ responses to determine if I'll be invited to an oral interview. Passing the SCNL telephone test gives bonus points at this stage, but if I failed that test, I wouldn't be docked anything. The examining committee told all of us who passed the FSWE that the QEP results should be out by mid-October, but I'm guessing it'll be late September based on the way the last few test cycles have gone.

There are many excellent blogs written by current Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). But a lot of them include details about their political views, family life, and other information that makes the blogs more personal and less about the foreign service.

This blog will be about the foreign service.

The Yahoo group is an excellent resource, but also heavily bogged down with questions that a quick search of the State Department website would have answered.

I currently work as an attorney in a civil litigation firm. I am very happy with my job, but I'm also very interested in the foreign service. And there's no guarantee that I'll get hired by State. If I don't, this blog will end. But if I end up on the FS path, this will be a nice way to keep track of my experiences and how I felt at the different stages. And if some passerby who's looking for FS information gets something out of it along the way, all the better.

So thanks for reading, and here I go publishing my first post...