The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

tion than with previous genera- tions. Knowing how many employ- ees hired in a given year have left and when they departed is simply good business: State could predict employee attrition and better anticipate staffing gaps if it had additional information. Some key questions the depart- ment should ask when an employ- ee departs include: Were there specific actions that State could have taken to prevent the employee from depart- ing? Did the employee depart to become a Civil Service employee with the department, to work for another fed- eral government agency, or to work for a corporation? If he or she left to work for a corporation, was it one that contracts with the State Department? The scope of the research should be expanded to include all Generation X employees at State, including generalists, concentrating on ways to optimize the talents of this often misunderstood gener- ation. Future inquiries should seek answers to the following questions: In what ways do State’s Foreign Service and other groups differ, and in what ways are they alike? Are employees who are married to foreign-born spouses more or less likely to remain with State? How many employees have at least 10 years of military experience? Do naturalized Americans tend to remain a longer or shorter time than U.S.-born Americans? By gathering answers to questions like these, the department will be able to identify the salient character- istics of the employees it wants to retain. This informa- tion would also be invaluable for future recruiting, con- ducting strategic and long-range planning, and integrat- ing these employees more effectively into the Foreign Service. n F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 49 The newest generation of workers, the Millennials — those born since 1981 — are also job hoppers.