The Foreign Service Journal, December 2015

50 DECEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL STATE VP VOICE | BY MARGARET “NINI” HAWTHORNE AFSA NEWS Views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author. Contact: HawthorneMD@state.gov or (703) 302-7369 This issue’s State VP Voice is by guest columnist and AFSA Governing Board State Rep- resentative Margaret “Nini” Hawthorne. If you have been in the Foreign Service for three tours or more, you have been through the stress and complexities of bidding and lobbying for your onward assignment. If you’ve been in more than 20 years, as I have, you’ve done this many, many times—and it just doesn’t get any easier. I’ve been impressed by the number of people who have weighed in on the Oct. 6 Sounding Board post “Bid- ding is Bad Enough Without the Bureaus Breaking the Rules” and by the cogent arguments that many have made. Clearly, this issue has hit a nerve. Both bidders and bureaus face enormous challenges during the bidding process. Bidders are trying to get a job that interests them and will help further their careers and/or meet family and per- sonal needs. The bureaus are trying to fill all their jobs with the best people they can find. In an ideal world, every person would be slotted into the right job for him or her and for the bureau. But we don’t live in an ideal world and the Foreign Service bidding and lobbying process has gotten so convoluted and complicated that almost nobody is The frustration that people feel and the thousands of hours taken away from our work are hard for bidders, burdensome for the decision-makers and people providing references, and bad for the Service. Get a Job! The Challenges and Frustrations of Bidding satisfied. The bidding season is beginning to look like the U.S. election cycle—it seems to start earlier every year, drag on forever, and generate a great deal of stress. The frustration and anxiety that people feel and the thousands of hours taken away from our work for the department and the American people are hard for bidders, burdensome for the decision-makers and people providing references and endorsements, and bad for the Service. The system we have today was perhaps more effec- tive when the Service was smaller and there were fewer distortions (e.g. Priority Staffing Posts linked assign- ments). Now, thanks to staffing challenges like the “pig in the python,” competi- tion is greater and extensive lobbying has become the norm. A seriously flawed 360 process has made the effort even more stressful (See William Bent’s article in the September FSJ ). Not all of these problems can be fully eliminated. We all know that people are inclined to hire people they know are good from per- sonal experience, bureaus want to “take care of their own,” and plum jobs will be heavily bid. We also know that if we want to serve in Paris, Sydney or Cape Town, we probably should serve in another position in those bureaus to become known first (though not always). There have been a number of interesting proposals from colleagues and those commenting on the Sounding Board such as: Do directed assignments for all jobs; shorten the time between issuance of the list of available positions, promotion lists, bid deadlines and handshakes; identify one point of contact for compiling the short lists and collecting bidders resumes and employee profiles; and go back to a “reference” system whereby three to five people are asked about the suitability of the bidder for the particular job instead of using generic “360 centers.” Others propose discouraging the practice of asking additional “heavy hitters” to weigh in on a person’s behalf; compelling bureaus to do a better job of identifying up front the skills and characteristics they want for a particular position, so as not to waste bidders’ time on jobs they have very little chance of getting; and giving the Bureau of Human Resources a stronger role in matching bidders and jobs. These ideas merit discus- sion. It’s a condition of our Service that we rotate every two to three years. That’s how we build the deep bench of experienced Foreign Ser- vice leaders we need. At AFSA, we are focused on ways to make the Foreign Service stronger. To that end, we welcome a continuing dialogue with the Director General and our members about how, collectively, we can revamp this process. Please send your ideas to afsa@state.gov. n Margaret “Nini” Haw- thorne is a career Foreign Service officer, currently serving as the director of the Crisis Management Train- ing Division at the Foreign Service Institute. She was formerly the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Belize.