Straight from the Source is the FSJ space for the foreign affairs agencies to inform the FS community about new policies or innovations in operations. What are your thoughts about moving U.S. Foreign Service assessments to a virtual platform? Please send your feedback as letters to journal@afsa.org or comment on FSJ LinkedIn. locations. It also modernizes the FSOA to align with best current evaluation practices. The State Department competes with the private sector and other government agencies to attract candidates with the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to represent the U.S. government and its citizens overseas. To keep an edge in this competition, the Foreign Service Board of Examiners (BEX) must continuously modernize and improve Foreign Service candidate assessment processes and materials while maintaining the State Department’s reputation as a gold standard in employee hiring assessments. During the last two years, BEX has shifted that modernization into overdrive. The Transition in Detail BEX previewed the change from the in-person FSOA to a virtual platform in the October 2022 edition of The Foreign Service Journal. In the interim, BEX leadership, assessors, contracted industrial and organizational psychologists (IOPs), and other testing experts evaluated each step in the progression toward a virtual platform. Experience with the Foreign Service Specialist Assessment (FSSA)—which has been virtual since 2020, an innovation that was prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic—was important. The successful transition of the FSSA from an in-person assessment to a virtual platform demonstrated that interruptions to the process were rare and the virtual platform worked reliably. Correspondingly, specialist candidates voiced approval of the change in anonymous surveys, and their scoring patterns remained comparable to those in in-person settings. The feedback from the nearly 3,000 specialist candidates BEX assessed virtually has been overwhelmingly positive, including on the perceptions of fairness in the virtual process and the clarity of its presentation. Building on the success of conducting thousands of FSSAs in a virtual environment, BEX endeavored to provide a similar experience for FSOA candidates. The FSOA comprises three exercises. Candidates complete the first part of the test, the case management exercise, separately, several weeks in advance of the second and third parts. The group exercise and the structured interview are completed later, both on the same day. Details for each exercise are available at careers.state.gov/ downloads/FSOA. BEX takes a data-centered approach to its regular review of assessment materials, procedures, and candidate accessibility. Preparing for the FSOA’s move to a virtual platform gave BEX further opportunity to review materials and procedures to determine how they would mesh with a virtual platform and still fulfill their rigorous standards and best practices. To achieve this modernization, BEX sought the vital feedback of current and retired Foreign Service Officer (FSO) and Specialist (FSS) assessors to review the “dimensions” (criteria) used to rate candidate performance. Since 2001, BEX had utilized 13 dimensions to evaluate the performance of FSO candidates and 12 dimensions to evaluate the performance of FSS candidates. New, Common Dimensions In October 2023, assessors began evaluating both FSOA and FSSA candidates using 11 dimensions, the same for both generalists and specialists. The current Foreign Service dimensions are critical thinking, cultural adaptability, experience and motivation, information integration and analysis, leadership, negotiation, objectivity and integrity, planning and organizing, presentation skills, teamwork, and written communication. BEX modernized the dimensions to measure candidate performance on the three exercises based on comprehensive job analyses. The group exercise (in which candidates discuss the planning of various projects) is largely a measure of social/ interaction skills, and candidate effectiveness is assessed based on the teamwork, leadership, and negotiation dimensions. The case management exercise (where candidates read a hypothetical case study, integrate information, and write their recommendations) is measured with dimensions such as critical thinking, information integration and analysis, and written communication. Expanding access to the Foreign Service career was the primary driver in moving the FSOA online. THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY AUGUST 2024 47
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