The Foreign Service Journal, October 2012

36 OCTOBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Into the Unknown: Bidding and Entry-Level Assignments We asked new hires for their impressions of the bidding and assignments system. Everyone has strong opinions on this criti- cal element of an FS career! The most common words describ- ing the bidding system, from State and USAID new hires alike, are: non-transparent, opaque, obscure, arbitrary, frustrating, confusing, random, archaic and unfair. Several call it “fair” or “fine/good;” one calls it “exciting;” and another says it is “transparent.” Most of the respondents have so far only dealt with entry-level directed assignments. One first-tour management officer states: “Transparency International would give it a low rating.” A consular officer in a high-volume post describes how the system works this way: “A stack of posts gets dropped on the floor, and one at a time a post gets picked up and given to the next name on the list.” “The entry-level officer bidding process is archaic and inef- fective,” says first-tour FSO Bob Perls. “Plus, we are wasting language talent all the time. Why send a Mandarin speaker to Spanish class to serve in Ciudad Juarez when China is a top priority? This is happening over and over again in many A-100 classes. It makes no sense. In my case, I struggled to get a 3/3 in German and, after two years in Frankfurt, I will probably never use it again. This does not make sense in an era of limited resources.” Perls continues: “There is no flexibility, no bridge assign- ments, no taking into account performance on the job, inter- ests, previous life experience. When it is so hard to get in and there is such a good talent pool, why treat them as fungible assets?” As for the bidding and assignment system at USAID, the DLIs who responded to this question do not seem impressed, either. Words used to describe it included: broken, inefficient, backward and disorganized. “Bidding has been the worst experience of my FS career so far,” writes a USAID democracy officer serving in Central Asia. And another USAID officer says: “There is one system on paper and there is another, very influential, informal system FOCUS THE NEW FS GENERATION Foreign Service Officer Tressa Weyer in Moscow.