The Foreign Service Journal, April 2019

20 APRIL 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Paul Poletes is deputy chief of mission at U.S. Embassy Riga. He joined the Foreign Service in 1998, and has served in Athens, Dhaka, Bishkek, Tirana and Ashgabat, as well as three tours in Washington, D.C. The views expressed here are his own. I n every bidding cycle, many hun- dreds of FSOs and specialists spend untold hours chasing after heavily bid jobs. I’m talking about those vacan- cies in every cone and specialty that attract 20, 30, sometimes more than 40 bidders. A few years ago, I bid on a job against 80 other hungry FS-1s. (I didn’t even make the short list.) Most of the time, these bidders’ hopes are misplaced. For many, their dreams of working in Rome or Singa- pore are doomed even before bidding season begins, a victim of unrealistic expectations and not understanding how assignment decisions are made. Think you’ve got what it takes to land one of those “dream jobs”? Here’s what you need to know. The Truth About Heavily Bid Jobs At some of the places I’ve worked, all it took to get on the short list was a pulse and a lack of any recent felony convic- tions. But that’s not the case in Riga, where for the summer 2019 cycle we had 144 bidders on seven positions, including one job with more than 40 bids. And it’s definitely not the case across the Euro- pean Union and at lots of other “nice” or “important” places. If you fancy landing a heavily bid job, first consider the odds you face. If 30 people bid on a position, you’ve got only a 3.33 percent chance of landing on top. And that assumes every bidder has an equal shot, which they don’t. In reality, on even the most heav- ily bid jobs, no more than about 10 people have a realistic chance at getting selected, and only about half of those will get on the short list. In other words, you had better odds of getting into the Foreign Service than you do of getting that assignment in Australia. Second, and what few bidders who have never been in a position to decide understand, is that the people who get these jobs almost always have a com- parative advantage that sets them apart. Either they have a high-level patron, or they are known favorably by the deciders. Or they have skills or experi- ence that sets them apart. Maybe they work at the country desk (or, if bidding on the country desk, are coming from the country itself ). Or they have a 4/4 in the language or prior regional experi- ence. In some cases, they have all of the above. For heavily bid jobs, you need to do everything right, have the right qualifi- cations and be a little lucky—and that’s just to get on the short list. So the next SPEAKING OUT time you find yourself thinking about joining 30+ other people vying for a job, ask yourself: What’s my comparative advantage, and how will I leverage it to get this job? What do I have that most of the other bidders don’t? If you can’t answer those questions, you should probably look elsewhere. How to Get on the Short List On heavily bid jobs, deciders feel like they own the world. We have so many candidates to choose from that we can afford to be ultra-picky, especially when making the first cut. This is what you face when you take on 40 other people for a job. Unless you have a backer with lots of pull, your resumé, 360s and everything else need to sparkle. Are you a diamond in the rough? You’ll prob- ably stay there, because, at least in the beginning of the season, no one has the need to dive into the weeds looking for you. But should you decide to forge ahead anyway, here’s how to do it: Details matter. More than once this year I received an introductory email in which someone either listed the wrong position or misspelled my name. Had there been only four bidders on these jobs, I would have been more forgiving. But when there are 20+, I’m looking for any excuse to trim the list. As carpenters like to say, “measure twice, cut once.” Translated into FS-speak, that means “proofread three times, send once.” Straight Talk on Bidding: What You Need to Know Before Trying for that Heavily Bid Job BY PAUL POL ETES