The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2016

18 JULY-AUGUST 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Take AFSA With You! Change your address online, visit us at www.afsa.org/ address Or Send changes to: AFSAMembership Department 2101 E Street NW Washington, DC 20037 Moving? Maintaining Career Prospects This system manages to address structural staffing imbalances without negatively affecting the career prospects of Army officers who spend their first three years “out-of-cone.” That it is able to do so is primarily due to the Army’s more regimented training and assign- ments process. Practically, it isn’t hugely important whether an Army officer served in their assigned branch as a lieutenant. This is because on promotion to captain all officers must attend the comprehen- sive Captains Career Course of their assigned branch. As a result, any advantage the non-detailed officers may have had in job experience is ameliorated by the uniform education all officers receive at the career course. It also helps that there is widespread acceptance that serving in the combat arms is excellent preparation for service in any branch of the Army. There is an obvious parallel between the view that the combat arms are central to the Army’s mission and that consular work lies at the heart of ours. In extremis all Foreign Service officers become American Citizen Services officers, and a strong argument can be made that an out-of-cone consular tour is the best way of satisfying visa demand, introducing new officers to the Service and building esprit de corps. The important role a consular tour plays in the last two points is of par- ticular importance given our Service’s dearth of lengthy professional training. However, in the same way that some Army officers think the branch detail program exists because infantrymen make better intelligence officers, some in the Foreign Service consider the consular requirement a policy that was adopted because it makes for better officers in the other cones. Eating Our Seed Corn This may often prove true, but the underlying thinking is specious. Both programs were developed to address a staffing challenge and not primarily as a professional development tool. While the experience of serving out-of-cone or out-of-branch may be positive, it is incidental to the primary purpose of such assignments. This is an important point to keep in mind when considering how the Foreign Service handles entry-level consular assignments. Skyrocketing demand for consular adjudicators has led to officers entering the mid-level ranks without in-cone experience, something our assignment process (and arguably our promotion process) penalizes. More importantly, a new mid-level officer ought to be able to perform at the mid-level. For a tenured FS-4 or new FS-3 (the rank equivalents of an Army captain and major) this entails many cone-specific tasks and may include supervising locally employed staff and direct-hire employees, or managing a small section. It goes without saying that in an ideal world officers would first gain exposure to their cone prior to entering a man- agement position. In fact, if there is to be a prerequisite in our current model of officer development, this should be it. By denying officers a chance to learn their trade at the entry-level we retard their professional development and undermine the distinction between the entry and mid-level ranks. It is the human resources equivalent of eating our seed corn.