The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

42 OCTOBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Our goal, as always, is to advance the most qualified candidates into the Foreign Service and to remove as many unnecessary barriers to entry as possible. Why now? We didn’t have the data before. Before 2020, QEP files were only collected for those who “passed” the FSOT. A procedural change requiring all applicants to provide QEP materials at the same time they signed up for the FSOT meant that we now had files for both “passers” and “non-passers” to analyze. As soon as we had amassed sufficient data and discovered that this tweak in our process would move forward stronger candidates, we moved to implement this change. The time from discovery to imple- mentation was six months. How do you protect the process from partisan influence and future politicization? Multiple safeguards are in place that make politicization or improper influence extremely unlikely, if not impossible. First, the assessment process is provided a safeguard against improper influence through regular review by the Board of Examiners for the Foreign Service, “the Board,” which comprises representa- tives of the foreign affairs agencies and qualified experts as outlined in the Foreign Service Act of 1980. The process itself is designed, reviewed, and continually tested by external industrial and organizational psychologists. And changes, like this most recent change, are approved by the Board. “BEX,” which constitutes the staff of “the Board,” invests in extensive training of its assessors to mitigate bias and to apply well-defined and objective rubrics to each assessment. Asses- sor scores are monitored and evaluated for unusual tendencies, such as scoring too easy or too hard, or identifying differences in how an assessor may score certain groups; and assessors receive regular quantitative feedback. The State Department makes public detailed information on the assessment process, including information on all required steps; the 13 Dimensions, which underpin all evaluations; and practice tests. We update our assessment materials to ensure they remain targeted to Foreign Service work based on the eval- uation of external experts who review the assessment process in light of actual job requirements. In this way, “validation,” as it is called, ensures that the hiring process is fair, objective, and accurate based on the job requirements. In the new process, the use of the FSOT score and a com- puter-QEP rank should further safeguard against politicization or undue influence on choosing the candidates who advance to the next stages of selection. The FSOT is a proctored standard- ized test. The use of the computer-QEP program, based on the raw data of thousands of applicants reflecting the judgments of a wide array of BEX assessors, is yet another safeguard. How does this affect aspiring FSOs? BEX recognizes that our decisions and processes affect people’s career opportunities, and we take that responsibility seriously. These changes were proposed and crafted by expe- rienced career Foreign Service officers and fully vetted by the Board and academic and private sector experts. This change is data-driven and will allow us to better identify and hire the best possible Foreign Service officer candidates. BEX will continue to track closely and validate the performance of the automated deep textual analytics tool and the revised assessment process. A virtual oral assessment? Our goal, as always, is to advance the most qualified candi- dates into the Foreign Service and to remove as many unneces- sary barriers to entry as possible. One major barrier to entry is the cost to the applicant to attend the oral assessments, be they specialists or generalists. To address this issue, in February 2022 all Foreign Service specialist oral assessments were permanently moved to virtual platforms. Now, applicants interested in more than 15 specialties can apply from anywhere in the United States and frommost parts of the world. As of July 2022, BEX has assessed 685 specialists across 15 specialties and customer satisfaction survey respondents have lauded this move. Moving forward, BEX is making plans to transition the gener- alist FSOA to a virtual platform, as well, with the first of several proposed changes anticipated in 2023. Together, we are modernizing the Foreign Service assess- ment process to better serve the State Department’s needs and mission. n