Foreign Service

I'll admit that I'm a cynic, but I see no good coming of this: Foreign Service Hiring Gets A Re-Exam

For generations, the United States has selected its diplomats through a two-stage test seen as a model of merit-based rigor. Pass hundreds of questions in a dozen subject areas and a day-long oral grilling by Foreign Service officers, and join the ranks. Fail, and find a different line of work.

No more. In a proposed overhaul of its hiring process slated for next year and to be announced to employees in coming days, the State Department would weigh resumes, references and intangibles such as "team-building skills" in choosing who represents the United States abroad, according to three people involved in the process. The written test would survive, but in a shortened form that would not be treated as the key first hurdle it has been for more than 70 years.

snip

The new approach would cut the hiring process roughly in half, to about six months, to better compete with companies that can offer promising candidates a job on the spot. The number of applicants is expected to decline, but to attract a greater range of experience and skills.

McKinsey acknowledged that the current hiring process is a proven predictor of candidate success. And for Foreign Service officers, the written test is a rite of passage, and source of pride. (my emphasis added)

"The sense that everybody passed this exam is important," said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who brokered the Dayton peace accords, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service fresh out of Brown University, in 1962.

Holbrooke recalled that in addressing his Foreign Service class, then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk "made a big point of telling us that we had come in on our merit, and neither he nor anyone else could influence the process."

Set against that backdrop, "this looks like a lowering of the standards for entry . . . at a time when their focus ought to be on training diplomats for the real challenges of the 21st century," Holbrooke said.

The Foreign Service has always been the place where you actually did find the best and the brightest- the exam is a bitch, and has always been useful in weeding out the light weights.

But no more. My guess in that Condi and Karen Hughes took a look around the State Department and said, "Oh my!! there just aren't enough of our kind around here. What to do?" Gee, I guess making entrance more dependent on "resumes" and "experience" and "team building skills" will make it easier for wingnuts and other assorted idiots to apply. Trust the bushies to take something that works and break it.

Just one more way the Bush administration is fucking up the country. This issue doesn't get much attention, but the damage that Bush and Co. have done to the professional government services will cause damage we'll be paying for for a generation.

Feh.