22 JULY-AUGUST 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT Jason Rubin is a management-coned FSO who has served in consular, management, and economic positions in Guangzhou, Yaoundé, and Beijing. He served 21 years in the Marine Corps prior to joining the Foreign Service in 2016. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the Department of State. The State Department’s employee evaluation report (EER) fails to achieve two key objectives of any effective performance evaluation system: identifying candidates for promotion and providing constructive feedback to employees. Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly undermining what little value our narrative-focused format provides, as the technology turns even benign accomplishments into compelling texts that algorithmically maximize scoring rubrics. It is past time to imagine a more quantitative framework that reduces reliance on employee-written narratives, combats rating inflation through a weighted scoring system, and emphasizes core competencies over circumstantial accounts of achievements. Recent calls from leadership to reform the department’s recruiting, performance, and retention standards present a unique opportunity to design an evaluation system that fosters real leadership, enhances accountability, and recognizes employee potential. Evaluating a Memoir We often joke that the EER process is little more than a “writing contest,” but that’s a remarkably accurate description. Even in its ideal form, where supervisors determine the content for the rater and reviewer sections, the narratives still frequently fail to distinguish candidates for promotion and provide zero constructive feedback to employees. Problem 1: Failure to distinguish between candidates. Lacking discrete performance measures or context of an employee’s relative performance, promotion boards must intuit how an employee’s character, interpersonal skills, and intellect compare to peers based on wildly differing personal accounts. It goes beyond comparing apples to oranges: It’s as if the board is comparing each fruit’s taste and appearance based solely on the fruit seller’s written account. Because the department has identified core precepts that FSOs should demonstrate, we should skip the obfuscation step and simply rate each employee directly against those criteria. This would not only eliminate the selfaggrandizing narratives that paint every FSO as a savior of American interests but would also force supervisors to take ownership of observing, mentoring, and shaping their employees’ work—areas where too many of our leaders fall short. Problem 2: Failure to provide meaningful feedback. The current narratives, often written by rated employees themselves, undermine a leader’s ability (and responsibility) to provide constructive and actionable feedback to subordinates. To avoid hurt feelings, we accept wildly exaggerated descriptions of accomplishments that paint even poor performers as heroes. This meaningless flattery diminishes the accomplishments of our top employees and, more importantly, fails to address problematic (yet often correctable) performance issues. Instead of giving everyone a participation trophy and lauding every new spreadsheet as a “revolutionary tracking system,” we should force leaders to provide honest and constructive feedback to employees on their strengths and weaknesses. Problem 3: The emerging AI challenge. One might argue that with its rapid adoption, AI would level the playing field for mediocre writers who struggle to make their EERs stand out, but it will likely just shift the advantage from prolific writers to technically savvy prompt engineers who can optimize content for grading rubrics. Regardless, as AI capabilities inevitably improve, promotion boards will find it even harder to meaningfully distinguish between candidates. The Solution: A Quantitative Evaluation Framework A proven solution to our dysfunctional EER already exists. Facing similar irrelevance of its performance evaluation system, the U.S. Marine Corps completely revamped its rating system in 1999, eliminating rampant grade inflation and bringing accountability to rating and reviewing officers. Marines initially resisted the dramatic overhaul, doubting its ability to change Reimagining the Foreign Service EER BY JASON RUBIN
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