The Foreign Service Journal, March 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2017 55 agonizing. Says one agent who is currently on his third overseas tour, “This is the first year of the ‘new shortened bidding season.’ Yeah, right. The department apparently forgot to tell the DS seniors, because it seems to be business as usual on the bidding front.” Kurt Rice has an explanation: Foreign Service officers “are writers. They talk to people.” They can do that at any post, whereas “specialists have to bring specific backgrounds to each post. We have to put people in who have the right skills. We need to put people where they can flourish.” Greg Batman agrees that DS leadership considers “where the need is, and where the person fits.” Batman thinks people need to look at “realistic bidding and the overall numbers.” There are “a finite number of jobs for people at the FS-3 level,” he says, and the process itself takes bidders out of DS. To become an RSO, for example, you have to lobby with the regional bureau. “You go outside of DS,” explains Batman. “If they’re bidding on RSO jobs, we have to wait for that regional input.” What holds the process up, explains Batman, is this: “Every- one is bidding on the same 10 positions. We had more than 60 bidders for Oslo, Skopje, Sydney. That’s not hard to fill.” But at some point, he adds, “you have to go to African posts, Mos- cow, headquarters. Right now we have over 30 jobs in Baghdad alone. We have jobs with a service need to fill, but we can’t make people bid on them.” Spend a few minutes talking to a DS employee or spouse about the job, and you’ll most likely get an earful about bidding.