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

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?