18 JUNE 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT Eric Bernau is a management officer who most recently served in New Delhi. He joined the Foreign Service in 2019 and currently serves as a program analyst with the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Unit. Hogwarts students and Foreign Service officers (FSOs) both begin their adventures with a pathdefining event at the beginning of their journey. Hogwarts students place the sorting hat on their head; close their eyes; whisper “not Slytherin, not Slytherin, not Slytherin”; and wait for a magical hat to shout out their assigned house in front of the entire wizarding school. FSOs receive their first assignments in an equally anxiety-inducing, albeit much less magical, fashion. One would be hard-pressed to find an FSO who couldn’t recall seeing tears of disappointment during their flag ceremony. But does it truly need to be that way? The current assignment process is time-consuming, and the high/medium/ low selection system, which requires new FSOs to rank potential posts by preference, is imprecise. Tasking career development officers (CDOs) to find the optimal assignment distribution for each new class of generalists requires significant effort and is vulnerable to human error and unconscious bias. Just as computers aid accountants to rapidly perform their duties with reduced error, technology can, and should, play a larger role in helping CDOs to assign new hires. Improving the Assignment Process I proposed one possible solution at the department’s 2023 inaugural “Innovation Shark Tank,” a contest to get innovative ideas in front of department leaders that was modeled after the reality television show “Shark Tank.” My “Post Optimization Sorting Tool” (POST) would use an algorithm to match new FSOs with their preferred assignments while still prioritizing the needs of the Foreign Service. POST works by asking all new FSOs to allocate a finite number of points across all the available assignments to represent their lack of interest—not their interest—in each post. That’s an important distinction to note, one that golfers will recognize. By using the “lower is better” scoring system, POST minimizes gamesmanship by preventing an officer from assigning all their points to one assignment, thus trying to force POST to match them to that specific option. Instead, POST presumes the new FSOs are truly “worldwide deployable” and happy with every assignment. This is represented by a default “zero” baseline score. FSOs distribute their finite points across all the assignments to express which assignments are of least interest. POST then optimizes for the lowest possible score among the cohort. Before running POST’s optimization program, CDOs can prioritize the needs of the Foreign Service by setting POST’s constraints to either prevent or force the algorithm to make certain assignments. The CDOs can exclude FSOs from certain assignments, such as out-of-cone assignments or those with a language training requirement where the FSO already speaks that language. CDOs can also force POST to assign an officer to a specific assignment, such as a “fill now” position with a language requirement where only one FSO speaks that language. Thus, while POST would enable FSOs to be more precise with their assignment preferences, CDOs retain control of the process. In just seconds, with the click of a button, CDOs can find the optimal assignThe Foreign Service Deserves Its Own Sorting Hat BY ERIC BERNAU In just seconds, with the click of a button, CDOs can find the optimal assignment distribution for the entire cohort using POST.
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