The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

M A Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 cause we didn’t want to clear all these people and have them ‘die’ on the register.” When the program started, HR adjusted its scoring and now has over 1,000 people on the list. Moreover, when the hiring surge began, HR extended the maximum time candidates can spend on the register from the normal 18 months to 24 months, so it wouldn’t lose qualified indi- viduals. Ever since then, the hiring process has been going full throttle. In FY 2009, despite a late start, 766 Foreign Serv- ice generalists and 589 specialists were hired, meeting the department’s goal. Says Lussier, “We’re now hiring against a target of 1,368 (878 generalists and 490 specialists) in 2010,” though he cautions that “these numbers change on a weekly basis.” It was originally expected that 500 of those hires would be to replace attrition. However, attrition has slowed to about 400, probably due to the recession. That means hir- ing 1,425 people this year will probably yield net growth of at least 1,000. It’s likely, Lussier says, that combined hir- ing for Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010 will be 1,800 positions above attrition. The hiring surge is expected to continue into FY 2011, albeit at a slower pace. The tentative goal is hiring 522 FSOs and 308 specialists — 830 in all. Whether that goal is achieved depends in large part on congressional funding decisions. It’s All in the Timing State decided to boost recruitment at an opportune mo- ment. An experienced Foreign Service recruiter who asked not to be identified says, “The interest [in State De- partment jobs] is incredible. They are signing up in droves. The biggest reason is that there are no jobs in the private sector. People are also looking for second careers.” However, the FSO adds, “Civil Service recruiting is very difficult. Most don’t even get a response when they apply.” For those who’ve been around State for more than six years, the story of Diplomacy 3.0 may inspire a sense of déjà vu. Between 2001 and 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell put in place the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative, which brought in 1,069 Foreign Service specialists and generalists above attrition, as well as about 60 Civil Serv- ice staffers. That surge was intended to fill the gap left by a severe hiring drought during the 1990s. At the beginning of the DRI, re- calls FSO Neils Marquardt — a special coordinator for diplomatic readiness at the time, now ambas- sador toMadagascar — “We started out with numerous bottlenecks: se- curity, medical, training. But there was a strong sense of leadership from the top, from Sec. Powell, so some of those problems yielded to pressure.” So why is another big hiring push needed so soon? Be- cause the United States began military action in Afghan- istan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and new staffing demands ballooned before the initative could alleviate the previous personnel shortages. “We didn’t compete too well for resources, so we’ve had a return to the problems we experienced,” Amb. Mar- quardt observes. He notes that HR “didn’t abolish any po- sitions in my embassy, even as they created new ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Because positions were simply left vacant, he says, “there’s been a hollowing out [of the Serv- ice].” During DRI, says Marquardt, “Our thought was, never again would we hire below attrition. But that’s not how it turned out. We’ve got to get out of this business of doing it cyclically. It’s like the bulge in the python. It’s no way to run a railway.” Says one career development officer about the 2004- 2008 period, “When it came to the bidding cycles, we had many more positions than people to bid on them.” In one cycle, “we had 600 jobs and only 300 bidders,” so that HR felt a need to direct FSOs to the places where need was the greatest. In those years, Lussier explains, “we staffed Iraq at 100 percent, [so] there weren’t enough bodies to staff all the other positions.” In response, HR levied what came to be known as “the Iraq tax” on bureaus, forcing them to iden- tify positions that could be eliminated or left vacant. It also came up with a system it called “rolling gaps,” which meant that when an entry-level officer left post, there was often a gap of three to six months before they could place another ELO in the job. Taking the Long View Unlike DRI, Diplomacy 3.0 is envisioned as a more comprehensive, long-term solution to State Department F O C U S State decided to boost Foreign Service recruitment at an opportune moment.