The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2022 41 score of 5.25 on the oral assessment. Given their relatively weak scores, it is not clear that any of them will be hired. But what about the 1,047 candidates we would have seen instead? On further analysis, including examining the FSOT scores of these candidates, we found that we would likely have advanced strong candidates to the assessor-QEP who were also more diverse ethnically and racially, and included more women. Why not get rid of the FSOT entirely and just use the computer-QEP? The FSOT provides insight into elements and skills the State Department seeks for future diplomats, characteristics that themselves are determined through extensive job analysis and surveys. But on its own, the FSOT was a poor predictor of success as a Foreign Service officer, as evidenced by the abysmal FSOA pass rate before 2007. Far from “lowering standards” or “dumbing down the FS,” as some have claimed, the new process still factors a candidate’s performance on the FSOT into the decision to advance them to the FSOA, but adds consideration of additional qualifying factors through the QEP, including work, volunteering, language knowledge, and experience. In fact, while under the previous system a candidate’s FSOT score played no further role in the assessment process beyond pass/fail, now a candidate’s numerical FSOT score is combined with the computer-QEP score to create one overall score. Based on that combined score, top candidates advance to the assessor- QEP, where assessors determine who will be invited to the FSOA. The FSOA itself remains unchanged and is the final, rigorous stage of the assessment process. There are many reasons why a candidate might not do well on the FSOT that do not reflect their potential to serve effec- tively in the Foreign Service. Continuing to rely on it as a pass/ fail gateway to Foreign Service hiring erected an unnecessary barrier to entry when the QEP process has proven over the past 15 years to be highly effective at identifying strong candidates for the FSOA. Combining these two processes, rather than running them consecutively, will give us the most holistic look possible at candidates.