The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2014 23 On the careers.state.gov website, specialists are grouped into the following broad categories: Administration, Construc- tion Engineering, Facility Management, Information Technol- ogy, International Information/English Language Programs, Medical/Health, Office Management and Security. However, these groupings don’t tell a complete story and, in the case of “Administration,” for example, can further muddy the waters. The 19 job titles are more telling (see p. 25). For example, management counselors at missions can be generalists or specialists. General Services Officers can be specialists or generalists, but Financial Management Officers are always specialists. Facility Managers go through the same training as GSOs and act as GSO at some posts. Information Managers are called IM Specialists until they reach the grade of FS-2; then are considered IM Officers—managers, but still specialists. Similarly, Office Management Specialists become Office Managers, or OMs, when they reach FS-3 or FS-4 or are assigned to chiefs of mission, but cannot be promoted any higher. Confused? Well, this is the State Department, after all. So let’s clear the air. It’s time to review who the new special- ists are and how their jobs have evolved along with our chang- ing times. Expertise and Education Are Essential “Generalists and specialists each make up roughly 50 per- cent of the Foreign Service,” says Terry Davidson, who served, until recently, as Recruitment Outreach Division Chief for the Bureau of Human Resources. “We like to say that general- ists tend to be outwardly focused, in work engaging the host country; and that specialists tend to be focused on making the embassy platform work.” Davidson, who is currently diplomat- in-residence for the Washington, D.C., metro region, adds: “Information Resources Officers and Regional English Lan- guage Officers are the exceptions.” (These two positions, origi- nally part of the former United States Information Agency, are focused on outreach to the host country’s local population.) That doesn’t mean, however, that specialists do not interact with local citizens. All specialist tracks require good commu- nications skills, which often include foreign language ability. Since the Career Development Program for specialists was launched in 2005 by the Director General of the Foreign Service, foreign language and job-specific training are now require- ments for promotion within the ranks of many specialties. Unlike generalists, specialists cannot enter the Foreign Service without expertise in their field. With a few excep- tions, specialists hold undergraduate degrees, and quite often, advanced degrees or certification(s), along with years of expe- rience. There’s a saying that’s gone around the specialist ranks for years: Specialists are hired on experience; generalists are hired on potential. There is some truth to that statement: Gen- eralists, who are selected via the multitiered Foreign Service exam, do not, technically, need a college degree or specific expertise to enter the Foreign Service, while most specialists must have a bachelor’s degree and relevant experience even to apply. For instance, the Office of Medical Services. “Many of our psychiatrists have had additional training, or are double- boarded in subspecialty fields such as child/adolescent psy- chiatry, geriatric psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, consult-liai- son psychiatry and forensic psychiatry,” says Kenneth Dekleva, director of the Office of Medical Services’ Mental Health Department. “Several have MBA, Ph.D. and MPH degrees, as well. Languages spoken by our psychiatrists include Spanish, French, German, Russian, Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, Japa- nese, Chinese, Turkish, Dutch, Greek and Hindi.” Or take Diplomatic Security. As Supervisory Special Agent Ronnie Catipon, regional director for Afghanistan and Iraq in DS’s Directorate for High Threat Programs, notes: “There are lots of agents who are former military and former law enforce- ment. Their skill sets and experience are just tremendous. They’ve often served overseas and speak foreign languages.” In recent years, most FS specialties have seen an upswing in both numbers and qualifications of applicants. This change was mentioned by almost every specialist we spoke with. And yet, these qualifications rarely lead to the very top levels of the Service. It is unusual for a specialist to become chief of mission, a fact that engenders some resentment. Some specialists, upon reaching the highest grade attainable, have then made the switch to generalist. What’s In a Name? If people do not know what specialists do, acronyms might be partly to blame. Saying you are a “political officer” or a “press attaché” is fairly comprehensible to the general public, whereas calling yourself an OMS, an IMS or an RELO con- veys very little. Even longtime members of the FS community sometimes have to ask what these acronyms stand for. It wasn’t always this way. Titles such as Foreign Service Librarian or Embassy Doctor—the terms of several decades ago—are dated, but at least they give us a better idea of spe- cialists’ work than, say, IRO and RMO (Information Resource