The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2005

small posts, and perhaps non-existent at Special Embassy Program posts – exactly the places where they are most needed due to the lack of alter- native employers. Even where the supply does not outstrip demand, they frequently have to endure pro- longed waits while yet another agency completes its own (often redundant) independent security clearance pro- cess, with zero consideration for prior clearances granted. (One EFM had five separate clearances granted over 10 years by four different U.S. gov- ernment agencies, the last involving a nine-month wait in unpaid profes- sional limbo.) And the final insult: some posts have a policy of not hiring qualified EFMs when the tour of their sponsor has less than 12 months to go. So much for the “needs of the Service.” Undervalued and Underappreciated Of all the U.S. government agen- cies present abroad, the Department of State (which consistently benefits the most from the services of EFMs) should know, and do, better. The Bureau of Human Resources’ Recruit- ment Division is the office responsi- ble for staffing the core of the “diplo- matic platform.” HR, however, sys- tematically undervalues Eligible Family Members’ proven capabilities and documented experience when it selects from the universe of applicants for career positions. In fact, it is unclear whether HR — populated perhaps by too many Civil Service staff who have had little direct expo- sure to what working abroad entails — has established selection criteria that reflect the actual needs of State management abroad. Instead, its hir- ing criteria seem to focus on a set of skills more oriented towards a 1970s view of what, for instance, a secretary should do, than on what an FSO actu- ally needs from an Office Manage- ment Specialist today. Case in point: the recruitment page on State’s Web site (http://www. careers.state.gov/specialist/opportuni ties/officemgt.html) ta lks about an OMS applicant’s need to be familiar with “… databases, spreadsheets and word processing.” When was the last time an Information Management Officer allowed an OMS to create a database on a computer linked to the Intranet, or any FSO asked an OMS to do so? And why couldn’t the Foreign Service Institute teach this skill to a candidate if it is really so mis- sion-critical? In fact, while there ought to be a premium for evidence of proven abil- ity to function successfully amid all the stresses of life abroad, one OMS appli- cant was disqualified at the first stage of testing for not being able to initiate a macro in MS-Word — something that any IMO would prohibit for secu- rity reasons, if it weren’t already inhib- ited on any State computer. Let’s make the generous assump- tion that HR has analyzed correctly what an embassy needs. How does it then select from among its many applicants? Specifically, does it under- stand the unique potential embodied in EFMs? Sadly, the answer is “no.” When an EFM applies to become a Foreign Service OMS, HR actually discounts their work as cleared rovers, who are available to work “24/7” but might not actually be employed 40 hours a week. It also gives no credit for the months spent in suspense awaiting required security clearances (even though these clearances actual- ly facilitate DS’s own process). HR also fails to grasp the obvious economic benefits that EFMs offer, perversely preferring to bet substan- tial sums — the costs associated with recruitment (clearances, training, ini- tial posting) and retention — on applicants who have neither lived abroad nor dealt with culture shock; 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 5 S P E A K I N G O U T u