In my search for work, I have looked a lot of different places. One place I’m going to work real hard to work for is the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer. I’ll give a nutshell of what a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is and how one become one in a little bit. The really important parts of this, though, are that you get to see new places, meet new people, and explore the world with a diplomatic passport. That’s right, a diplomatic passport. There’s a whole list of benefits that go along with being a FSO, but it’s really hard to get to.
So, what is a FSO anyway?
FSOs are the people who work in the embassies who manage the embassy; work with people on lost passports, new visas, and other consular matters; promote trade with US companies in foreign countries; inform people and governments of other countries on US values and policies; help advise the ambassador and other US dignitaries on the goings-on in a country to help dictate policy; and so much more. With that, there are five FSO tracks: Management, Consular, Economic, Public Diplomacy, and Political. Each FSO is considered a US Diplomat with all the rights and privileges thereof. FSOs are, of course, US Government employees and receive all the benefits that implies, including pension, medical, cost of living adjustment (which is special for FSOs), and so on. See the appropriate page on State’s site for more info.
Okay, so how does someone become on?
This is a basic distillation of the page “Becoming a Foreign Officer.” Basically, you pick a career path, then register for the Foreign Service Officer Test. The registration for the FSOT is essentially the job application. You fill out pretty the same information you would if you were applying for any other job. You’ll get an e-mail that tells you you’re registered and about when you’ll get an e-mail for when you can reserve a seat for the exam. The FSOT is administered by ACT, the same guys who write the university entrance exam of the same name. Once you take the exam, you send in a written narrative. A few months later, you find out if you’ve passed to this point, and then you go to an oral assessment. If you pass that, it’s on to medical and security screenings. Past that, you’re pretty well in, and ready for orientation, training, and assignment (or so the web site leads one to believe). Oh, and, most important, you MUST be a US citizen to be a FSO.
More about the test.
The rough guess out there is that 30% pass the FSOT, and 10% pass the Oral Assessment. For those that are fuzzy with statistics, that’s a 3% total pass rate. Yikes! I’ve done some reading, and there are some really good resources for studying out there. ACT offers a study guide for $23 on their web site. Test Prep Review offers a practice test series for tons of different tests, including FSOT. The best advice I’ve heard is to be well read. There are some magazines, journals, and newspapers that could be invaluable. Standard advice is to check out the print versions, as well as any RSS feeds or Podcasts available. Below is a list of publications with any web stie links I can come up with.
- Foreign Affairs — http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
- Foreign Policy — http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
- U.S. News & World Report — http://www.usnews.com/
- Newsweek — http://www.newsweek.com/
- Council on Foreign Relations — http://www.cfr.org/
- The Economist — http://www.economist.com/
- BBC World News — http://www.bbc.co.uk/
- The New York Times — http://www.nytimes.com/
- Washington Post — http://www.washingtonpost.com/
- Reuters News Service — http://www.reuters.com/
- St. Petersburg Times (Russia) — http://www.sptimes.ru/
- The Guardian — http://www.guardian.co.uk/
- Al Jazeera (English) — http://english.aljazeera.net/
- Deutsche Welle — http://www.dw-world.de/
- USA Today — http://www.usatoday.com/
- The Associated Press — http://www.ap.org/
- Local newspapers — Check the papers for URLs.
And there are many more news sources to explore. While the others cover the world, the local papers will help keep you informed on local news and events. It’s important to get your news from more than one source so that you can get a full view of the situation. Above lists independent, US, UK, Germany, Russia, and Arab news sources as well as international opinion sources.
So, that’s what I’ve got, and that’s what I know. Hopefully, I can pass the exam, narratives, and assessment. And, now, for a late warning. If you’re looking for something by someone who knows what they’re doing, you came to the wrong place. On the other hand, why not see if we can work this through together?
Cheers,
Red Wolf.
