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the_chavi posted:I wouldn't look at what you think your resume prepares you best for but for what interests you the most. You manage people, money, and programs a lot sooner in PD work, and there's a lot of outward-facing events to attend. In POL, academic writing actually isn't usually a good training ground for the written work; it's more about meeting people, asking the right questions, and synthesizing disparate sources into a coherent, short, relevant narrative. Have you spoken to the DIR who covers the region where you live? S/he can probably give you more detailed info. For me, as a closeted introvert, while POL work at the entry/lower mid levels is all about outward facing engagement with people, I still find it much less emotionally taxing than PD work can be. As I'm moving up the ranks, I've found that I enjoy the management side of POL work - managing people and processes, policy recommendations rather than straight information gathering - to be more enjoyable than what I did for my first decade as a poloff. Thanks! I didn’t even know diplomats in residence were a resource—I will contact mine for sure. Is there a track that is more suited to people with experience in academic writing? I wouldn’t say that maintaining the tone and style of academic writing is a high priority for me, but I guess I would be curious to know (truth be told, all the tracks are of some interest to me, but PD and POL are probably drawing me the most at this point). I can do coherent and short in addition to bloviating and verbose. TheLemonOfIchabod fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 04:04
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TheLemonOfIchabod posted:Thanks! I didn’t even know diplomats in residence were a resource—I will contact mine for sure. Is there a track that is more suited to people with experience in academic writing? I wouldn’t say that maintaining the tone and style of academic writing is a high priority for me, but I guess I would be curious to know (truth be told, all the tracks are of some interest to me, but PD and POL are probably drawing me the most at this point). I can do coherent and short in addition to bloviating and verbose. https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ I'm not in the FS but I imagine it's the same within any agency once you start writing decision or policy memos that have to go through multiple levels of clearance. Your writing will get ripped apart if it is not direct, brief, and clear.
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Jun 25, 2021 14:00
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I have nowhere near the_Chavi's and others' experience but I did a detail as a POL officer and a background in journalism felt like it would have been really applicable. Get a general assignment, make and follow up with contacts, gather info, write an interesting/persuasive/informative story in a cable. There was more to it than that, but it would have been a good skillset to have. Not as much research/academic analysis, although I wouldn't let that scare you off the work. You pull whatever is useful from your background and learn the rest.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:22
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laxbro posted:https://www.plainlanguage.gov/ Precisely - though it will get ripped apart even if it is direct, brief, and clear. It's just how clearances work in an idiosyncratic organization. My all-time record is explaining the significance of the ruined church where the Nicean Creed was promulgated for contemporary U.S. foreign policy in 2 sentences.
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Jun 25, 2021 20:19
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the_chavi posted:Precisely - though it will get ripped apart even if it is direct, brief, and clear. It's just how clearances work in an idiosyncratic organization. My all-time record is explaining the significance of the ruined church where the Nicean Creed was promulgated for contemporary U.S. foreign policy in 2 sentences. I realize you maybe can't (or at least shouldn't) go into detail, but that begs for an explanation. What was or is the significance to contemporary foreign policy?
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Jun 25, 2021 20:32
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Spacewolf posted:I realize you maybe can't (or at least shouldn't) go into detail, but that begs for an explanation. What was or is the significance to contemporary foreign policy? This was several years ago, so nothing surprising here. Upshot is that the church was turned into a mosque in the 1400s, abandoned following the 1922 population exchange between Turkey/Greece, then turned into a museum in the middle twentieth century. The government at the time wanted to turn it back into a mosque as a political statement for domestic consumption, which was relevant for how the Turkish republic dealt with the country's ethnic and religious minority communities and major cultural sites built previously, which ties in to the U.S. foreign policy objectives of promoting religious freedom and human rights overseas, as well as the activities and interests of organized lobbying groups in the United States (in this case, the Greek-American diaspora population). It also affected Greek-Turkish relations, unsurprisingly, which causes a major headache inside NATO and in the Eastern Mediterranean more broadly. I had predicted at the time that turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque would be a bridge too far, even if this specific site were re-mosqued, but in the ensuing decade, two economic crises, one wave of terrorism on civilian sites in major cities, one failed coup, and one pandemic all put the government on such delicate political footing that a grand gesture such as that was deemed politically beneficial. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The cable itself described this much more succinctly. Took me drat near two hours to get that right. TL;DR: writing in the Foreign Service is an intellectually fun exercise that also can be maddeningly difficult.
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Jun 27, 2021 02:13
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Why are all these sweet jobs popping up after I accepted my handshake? Grrrr...
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Jun 27, 2021 07:44
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State HR ain't great
Slaan fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jul 8, 2021 |
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Jul 8, 2021 14:40
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Slaan posted:State HR ain't great Global talent manglement.
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Jul 8, 2021 15:49
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Should you or any of your partners ever contemplate pregnancy during a post-to-post PCS, kindly reach out to me so I can dissuade you from this terrible idea. I am currently unable to procure any obstetric care on home leave because the American healthcare system is trash.
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Jul 8, 2021 22:47
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zzonkmiles posted:Why are all these sweet jobs popping up after I accepted my handshake? Grrrr... Holy poo poo we have a lot of bad bidders, but we just found this position/curtailment/vacancy/etc. let's not advertise until the first few wave of bidders get handshakes and then our pick swoops in and gets it.
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Jul 12, 2021 02:52
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I've yet to receive a handshake on handshake day and have always found something great afterwards.
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Aug 3, 2021 18:30
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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/the-state-department-and-3-other-us-agencies-earn-a-d-for-cybersecurity/
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Aug 4, 2021 20:32
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The State badging office at SA-9 is straight-up evil. I said it. They yelled at me for 15 minutes today because I... followed their instructions which had changed but they hadn't distributed new instructions?
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Aug 4, 2021 23:58
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Y'all know anything about the availability of the next generation passports? I read that some diplomats had already been getting the new ones, but I assume it won't be till next year that the fees increase and you can expect to receive one if applying for a renewal? https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/passport-help/next-generation-passport.html
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Aug 9, 2021 19:48
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The printers are installed in most places now from what I've been told. Agencies are switching over to ngp once their stock of old books runs out
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Aug 9, 2021 19:59
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Magic City Monday posted:Y'all know anything about the availability of the next generation passports? I read that some diplomats had already been getting the new ones, but I assume it won't be till next year that the fees increase and you can expect to receive one if applying for a renewal? I got next-gen ones for our new dip passports - we applied in March and got three-digit passport numbers in May! Our consular chief asked if she could keep them for a week to show them around to everyone in the embassy. They're pretty cool!
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Aug 10, 2021 00:34
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the_chavi posted:I got next-gen ones for our new dip passports - we applied in March and got three-digit passport numbers in May! Our consular chief asked if she could keep them for a week to show them around to everyone in the embassy. They're pretty cool! I saw one in Panama - pretty cool looking.
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Aug 10, 2021 02:44
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How do Consulor Fellow jobs work? When I see it on USAJobs it shows "many vacancies" but I'm trying to target a specific (niche) country where I have language skills.
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Aug 19, 2021 15:39
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Howard Phillips posted:How do Consulor Fellow jobs work? When I see it on USAJobs it shows "many vacancies" but I'm trying to target a specific (niche) country where I have language skills. I don't think it works like that - I think you have your own flag day once you come on board, so it's not a guarantee that you get a given country or not. However, if you're coming in under a targeted language, chances are good you'd get that flag... I'm not a consular officer though, so I defer to people who actually know more about this program.
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Aug 22, 2021 12:21
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Magic City Monday posted:Y'all know anything about the availability of the next generation passports? I read that some diplomats had already been getting the new ones, but I assume it won't be till next year that the fees increase and you can expect to receive one if applying for a renewal? My daughter got one of the new ones in March. Somehow hers got separated from ours by a few weeks & so we got the old ones and she got the new ones. I assume they are all the new style now.
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Aug 29, 2021 19:46
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Howard Phillips posted:How do Consulor Fellow jobs work? When I see it on USAJobs it shows "many vacancies" but I'm trying to target a specific (niche) country where I have language skills. There are two kinds of Consular Fellows: 1) Those who were hired because of their ability to speak a specific language (Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish) 2) Those who made it to the FSO register, but were extended a Consular Fellows job offer (which they did not have to accept). Many people with relatively low register rankings took the CF offers since that was preferable to expiring from the register. They may speak some foreign languages or they may speak only English. If you are in the first group, you will spend your one or two tours serving in consular positions where you can use your foreign language skills. Additionally, these positions are typically in countries that are less popular destinations that speak the same language you speak. In other words, if you're a Spanish speaker, don't think of the CF program as a shortcut to getting that consular job in Barcelona. You'll be more likely to get assigned to Santo Domingo or some other "less nice" spot in Latin America. If you are in the second group, you'll be assigned to English-speaking consular positions anywhere in the world. These positions are usually in hardship locations. If you have a valid language score, that may help you be assigned to a location where you can use that language. Nigeria, India, and the Philippines were popular destinations for CFs in this group pre-COVID. You will do two tours at most as a CF for a maximum of five years. There may be an option to extend for a sixth year, but I am not sure about that. Once the five-year term is up, your contract is finished. Also the CF positions only deal with consular jobs. You won't see CFs working in the embassy's political section, for example. But anyone in any career track (people in the second group) can serve as a CF. And even though consular work is varied, you can expect to be dealing primarily with visa adjudications as a CF. The CF program can be a nice way to give the Foreign Service lifestyle a test drive. It can also be a decent consolation prize if you wanted to be an FSO, but your register score is not competitive. Of course, if you put in five years as a CF and then get hired as a non-consular FSO, you may end up doing nine years (four tours) of consular work before you can branch out and do the work you enjoy.
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Sep 3, 2021 13:01
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I imagine people in that second group are continuing to apply as an FSO while working as a CF. So I bet a lot of them become FSOs before the end of the 5 years. They’ve already made the register so I imagine they only become more competitive as CFs.
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Sep 3, 2021 13:51
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Shoot blues buddy.
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Sep 12, 2021 02:22
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Hoping everybody subject to it's whims had good luck with experimental bid robot
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Oct 21, 2021 00:22
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AKA Pseudonym posted:Hoping everybody subject to it's whims had good luck with experimental bid robot Seriously, I am super curious to hear how this went, it seems like a good idea which I assume means we will implement it poorly and all the bureaus will try to fight it
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Oct 21, 2021 00:34
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I hope the bidding gods were good to everyone this year!
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Nov 2, 2021 15:37
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Merry Christmas, goons - hope Santa found your DPO boxes and the Chicago sorting office didn't beat them all to hell!
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Dec 24, 2021 19:52
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Wow, this thread has been slow recently. Hope everyone is doing well. If anyone comes thru FACT in the next 2 years or so, hit me up and we can get lunch or coffee or something.
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Dec 30, 2021 00:32
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Tyro posted:Wow, this thread has been slow recently. Hope everyone is doing well. I'm hoping to finish the remainder of my career without going down there...Drop me a line if you are in DC, though!
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Dec 30, 2021 01:40
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Ummm...asking for a friend. How bad is it to break a handshake maybe 6-9 months before you are supposed to arrive at post? Would the handshake breaker's corridor reputation take a fatal hit?
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Jan 12, 2022 01:38
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zzonkmiles posted:Ummm...asking for a friend. If I’ve learned anything in my 20 years of federal service, it’s that nothing short of being tried and convicted of a felony is “fatal” career wise. It’s never great or convenient when handshakes get broken but 1) you haven’t been paneled yet, so the deal wasn’t done, for whatever reason and 2) unless you’re in a super small or tight job field, the world is big and people move on. Having a good reason to break the handshake goes a long way, too. But people break handshakes (and assignments) all the time, and I can only think of two times I know of where the department forced the person to complete their assignment, and those were egregious cases.
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Jan 12, 2022 11:04
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Business of Ferrets posted:If I’ve learned anything in my 20 years of federal service, it’s that nothing short of being tried and convicted of a felony is “fatal” career wise. This is encouraging. Unfortunately "my friend" has already been paneled and has travel orders and is studying a language for a job that he will no longer be going to.
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Jan 12, 2022 15:19
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zzonkmiles posted:This is encouraging. People will be pissed, but it's unlikely to be the end of the world, especially if your friend has compelling reasons. And if it's for a good reason, who cares what people think? Life happens.
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Jan 12, 2022 21:17
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I'm finally in a unicorn Western Europe post and wondering why half my office is bitching about the food here. "They don't have good northeastern Chinese food!" "Ugh I can't get a taco anywhere!" *stares in NEA lifer*
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Feb 1, 2022 16:12
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the_chavi posted:I'm finally in a unicorn Western Europe post and wondering why half my office is bitching about the food here. "They don't have good northeastern Chinese food!" "Ugh I can't get a taco anywhere!" You see a lot of these kinds of complaints and questions on Failing Houses. "Does anyone know where I can buy cranberries in London?" People just wanna humble brag, I guess. But yeah, you won't be seeing me in EUR for that very reason.
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Feb 3, 2022 13:59
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It’s also easy to become a food snob in this line of work. Case in point: I only eat Peking Duck in . . . Peking.
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Feb 10, 2022 01:02
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So fun question for you all. I happen to know the professor who is setting up the Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution MA program at Liberty U, and he reached out to ask for my recommendations on books on those topics he could include in the curriculum. Any suggestions?
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Apr 12, 2022 20:44
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the_chavi posted:So fun question for you all. I happen to know the professor who is setting up the Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution MA program at Liberty U, and he reached out to ask for my recommendations on books on those topics he could include in the curriculum. Any suggestions? The Ugly American. Completely different era, but it still feels relevant.
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Apr 13, 2022 18:10
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Hey Goons - happy to review EERs if of interest. I am but a lowly senior 02, but I don't suck as a writer...
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Apr 29, 2022 22:38
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