Foreign Service Exam Explained

[aggienaut]

   A number of you asked what passing the Foreign Service Exam meant. Since you all asked the same question I figured I'd answer it once in an entry rather than make the same comment response over and over again.

   Having passed the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT), my application proceeds to the "Qualifications Evaluation Panel" (QEP) where they'll put it in a pile and look at it in mid-November and decide if I'm awesome or not. If they decide I seem suitably kickass they will then call me in for a Oral Assessment. And then... they'll probably spend months doign a background check.
   So there's certainly a lot of steps still to go, but the FSOT weeds out like 98% of the applicants and I haven't gotten past it before, so I am quite pleased.

   All this is for a position as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO), ie someone who works in a US embassy abroad. Specifically I've applied to the Political Division (as opposed to things like Economics, Public Diplomacy, Consular, or Management), so I'd be analyzing local politics where posted and reporting on it and such.
   My dream is to be in Tblisi right now (=


Totally Unrelated Picture of the Day

I'm amassing a collection of beach photos

Comments

[stunman.livejournal.com]

hey man, congratulations. i'm not sure if i already told you this, but my dad passed the exam back in the 70s and got called in for an interview. he says he recalls two questions they asked and blacked out for the rest. he was in there for two hours he said. just keep your head on a swivel, know what you said you know and you'll do just fine!

obviously, he didn't get the job, having spent 95 percent of the interview in what i can only assume was a deer in the headlights look.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Good times. Yeah other people have also said they totally fuck with your mind. Its gonna be interesting /=

[guabili.livejournal.com]

god fucking dammit, i should really start paying attention to stuff before i go asking questions. okay, so you haven't done the oral assessment. every single person i've ever talked to about this has said the exact same thing: stay calm, and use your common sense. also, the woman i told you about earlier got some points knocked off for saying "you guys" in one of her answers, so apparently don't do that.

she also got a 2 instead of a 3 on her spanish assessment, despite the fact that spanish is her first language, because she used too many venezuelan colloquialisms in her interview. you get three guesses where she's from and the first two don't count.

do you speak russian already? i always forget that. i know it's critical needs so if you do, even a lil bit, that is sweetness to the extreme for you.

so expect all kinds of shenanigans! weird, unruly government shenanigans!

--

congratulations!

[maria-sputnik.livejournal.com]

so you'd ditch your bees for a bunch of georgians?

what kind of stuff do they test for?

yesterday i was fantasizing about applying for an internship at "stratfor"...

Re: congratulations!

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Maybe I could talk them into installing some beehives next to the embassy? haha

The written test is basically a broad range of all kinds of random stuff. Its a lot of high school senior level civics and economics and math really, and then they ask you seven different ways if you've ever had a job that involved answering the phone and stuff like that. Really kind of weird. From what I'm hearing in the oral examination they totally fuck with your mind.

What is this "stratfor" of which you speak?

[memeworrywort.livejournal.com]

TBLISI?

haha. are you serious?

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hellz yeah! Life is too short to not be where the action is. (=