Reader Question on the Oral Assessment

Dear Vigg: "I have failed two attempts to get in the DOS as a IMS.  I have made it all they way to OA [the Oral Assessment] but keep falling just short of the cutoff... I wanted to know if you could give me some really detailed pointers on the Memo and face to face interview sessions..."

Honestly, I can't. It's not (just) because we sign a non-disclosure about the content of those tests... but also because they've undoubtedly changed since I took the oral in 2013... Similarly, different people do it every year. They look for what THEY think makes the best FS officer. One of my friends in Chennai spent some time on the interviewing board and he said his big push was to pick people that would handle living overseas well. Someone else may want to focus on people with technical excellence or people who enjoy diplomacy/public outreach. I'll give you some generic pointers for those sections though.

a) The writing exercise in the oral is most likely looking for two things. They know everyone can turn in good writing given unlimited time and resources (you already passed the essay portion of the application), but they want to see how well people write given a time limit and left to their own devices. I can't help you with the content, but you should focus on clear sentences, good grammar, and good paragraph structure. You can always debate how someone prioritizes tasks and/or the solutions they offer, but if there are grammar or spelling errors, it's an indisputable red flag.

b) For the face-to-face interview... I can just tell you what I did. I'm a pretty self confident person, I went in thinking "I am a great candidate, because I can do this job well." In the face-to-face, I focused on telling them why I felt that way and what my motivations were for joining. Normally in interviews you want to talk as little as possible (because the interviewer will fill in the spaces and generally people love to talk about themselves). That's not the case here. You're there selling yourself. Explain to them why you want this job and why you're a good fit. 

Reader Question on Promotion Potential

Well, I guess it's time to answer some reader questions. These answers are so long overdue that they're probably no longer even useful for the askers... but here we are. So... I guess this is my first "Dear Vigg" section. I'll answer a question a week until I'm caught up. These questions all came during my blogging doldrum, so I apologize for the delayed responses.

Dear Vigg: "I was curious if you could speak to promotion opportunities as a FSS/IMS, as compared with generalists... it is my understanding that there is a sort of competitive backlog for [generalists] around the mid-career level. With IMS, especially as there is a private sector corollary that I imagine affects attrition and retention, is it fair to say that people move up the ranks quickly, as compared with generalists? Any insight into this and related topics is of interest to me, and I thank you in advance for your comments."

The "pig in the python" phenomenon following the widespread hiring a decade ago is certainly a problem for many mid-level officers, both Generalists and Specialists. Realistically, IMS get promoted slower than Generalists (and other Specialists) across the board. They publish the numbers yearly in State Magazine, but generally the first (competitive) promotion from grade 4 to grade 3 averages around 9 years time-in-service, compared to Generalists' average of 6.5 years. It would be fair to say that IMS do not move up the ranks quickly. This makes sense, in my experience, because IMS tend to be IT professionals with established careers when they join. Whereas many Generalists join directly out of college. People choosing to leave a lucrative and respectable job to join the Foreign Service may be more likely to 'stick-it-out' than folks taking this as their first job out of college. Honestly, I don't know, but it seems reasonable that the different selection criteria lead to different attrition rates. Similarly, IRM has more lower-ranked jobs, so people tend to stall at grades 3 and 4 for longer. 

Ironically, I don't see this as a bad thing. We hire IMS based on their technical merit. We should not be in a rush to push them to more and more managerial work... if we do... we should logically hire for that instead. You don't hire the world's best setter in volleyball and then ask them to manage the team instead of playing. (Or maybe you do, I'm terrible at sports.)

Happy 3rd Anniversary, 132nd Specialist Class

Happy 3 year anniversary to the 132nd Foreign Service Specialist Class! I know what you're thinking: what's the big deal? Well, this pay period (for those of us without prior government service) we begin the next phase of our careers. That's right, we now accrue 6 hours of annual leave per pay period. Let the partying begin! (You know, at whatever vacation location you choose!)

Blog Fading

I have to apologize for the absence of my blog postings... I don't have any particularly great excuse, except to say it's been a busy few months. Between moving to Argentina, having a new baby, and an 'aggressive' leave schedule among my coworkers... I guess I just haven't gotten around to writing. Anyway, I'll try to catch up again... this year. My wife has continually suggested that I just write some shorter posts, to get the juices moving again, but we'll see, I'm never really a fan of too-short-posts.

PS: I guess I'm a real Foreign Service Officer now; I have to constantly fight the urge to capitalize the 'p' in 'post.'

PPS: I found the keyboard at work... It uh... is old..... and funky. F18? No CTRL key? Who knows.

Disasters in the Foreign Service

Floods, Earthquakes, and House Fires. Since joining the Foreign Service, I've known people who have had to deal with each of these disasters. It's an interesting thought, but "what types of disasters happen" may be as good a reason to bid or not bid on a post as any other. I mean, if you're terrified of Tornadoes (let's be honest, who isn't?), maybe living in Kansas isn't for you. The same applies for every other type of disaster, because... you name the disaster, there's a Post where that's the primary danger. I guess it makes sense why so many people in this job have insurance on their household goods (and others are sorry they don't, when something happens.)

This post is just my round-about (and much delayed) way of telling my friend, "I'm sorry your house burned down."  

Preparing (Mentally) to Leave

I wonder if everyone has the same sense of excitement when learning their onward assignment. Since finding out where I'm going next, I've definitely had a shift in my perceptions of work and life in Chennai. I'd like to think I never went completely "FIGMO" (Forget It, Got My Orders), since I see my departure more as a deadline, than an excuse. However, the fact that there's a coined term for that (in the Foreign Service) means that it must be something people regularly struggle with. For me it was a more subtle change. I was more exasperated by the quirks of my office and coworkers, but that happens near the end of most jobs.

The biggest change I've noticed, at least in retrospect, was the lack of desire for Indian food. When we arrived in Chennai, I ate at the canteen (low end South Indian food) every day for two months. Following that, I ate my housekeepers cooking 4-5 nights per week. After R&R... we never really got back to eating Indian food. Sure, we still had Sangeetha Saturdays, but we noticed that we were eating out (at non-Indian restaurants) more often, and having our cook cook less frequently. It seems silly, but I think it was the end of my excitement peak for living in India. As my excitement waned (and my excitement for Buenos Aires waxed), I had less and less interest in integrating with my local environment. It's also a self-defense mechanism. The more I point out (to myself) the negatives of my current life, the easier it will be to uproot and leave.

HOME LEAVE NOTE: I wrote this post during home leave and post-dated it... I can now say that... during my last few months I focused on all the negatives, until I was pretty excited to be leaving. Literally as soon as I left, all I could think about was all the positives that I was now missing. Sorry for those that had to live through my last month in town. I'm sure I was a big ball of pessimism, but it was just the situation.

Begin the End (of my time in Chennai)

Ok, ok, so I stole the title from a Placebo song. Honestly though, it's about as happy a song as I feel right now.

My family left India this morning, for the last time in the foreseeable future. They're off to start home leave slightly before I do. We're all excited about our next assignment, but we're also quite sad to be leaving Chennai. Perhaps that's the default state in the Foreign Service: happy to arrive, sad to leave, repeat until retirement. It'll be a hard transition for my son. He'll miss our nanny and (of course) mini-idli with sambar. A few weeks ago, he told our nanny that "we will go to Argentina and [she] will stay in India, but [he'll] come back and visit." Now if you'll excuse me, I have some sadness to wallow in, intermingled with pack-out, check-out, and finally my own departure. Change is hard.

Great (Pay) Expectations

When I joined the Foreign Service, I expected to take a fairly substantial pay cut. I was making 6 figures at my last job and figured I would start as a low FS-5. That being said, I've been (pleasantly) surprised by my actual compensation. In my initial guesses, before getting hired, I really didn't understand how overseas pay was calculated. Here's a breakdown of my current pay modifiers:

All Foreign Service Officers, while overseas, get "Overseas Comparability Pay" (OCP) of 16.14%. In Chennai, I receive 15% "Hardship Differential." In addition, I get a 5-10% "Cost of Living Adjustment" (based on some wonky math, so it ends up being 4-8%).

This changes my original belief of making $43,378-$63,702 to $60,369-$91,881. That's a pretty substantial difference. In addition, I was also fortunate to qualify for a much higher step than I'd expected. Throw in free housing and utilities,  drastically lower expenses ($5/month for a cell phone plan(!), $20/month for high speed internet, et cetera) and things are much better than I'd expected.

Other's mileage may differ, certainly many countries have lower hardship differentials (or none) and are much more expensive than the US (Hi, London!). That being said, we've actually been saving more in Chennai than we ever did living in the DC/Baltimore corridor, despite the lower gross pay. I've heard more senior officers say that you save money while overseas to be able to afford going back to DC (where you don't get free housing, differential, or COLA). I could definitely believe that.

Of course there are a lot of "quality of life" differences as well, both good and bad, but I'll save those, and how my benefits have changed, for another post. (Hopefully? Soon).

Note: Why oh why did they discontinue these AMAZING one rupee coins? Eeeeeeeeeey!

Unannounced 132nd Specialist Class Reunion at FSI

You know, I think I may have been the only person from the 132nd specialist class to even bother showing up for the reunion at FSI on Monday. Of course... it was unofficial... and unannounced... and... uh... made up by  me. BUT COME ON FOLKS!

Joking aside, walking the halls of the Foreign Service Institute... running into people I met on the other side of the world, I guess this makes me a true Foreign Service Officer. I scheduled some time on my R&R to stop by and see some of my (departed) friends from Chennai who were in training (or working) there. It was neat to be back, albeit briefly (and unofficially). I think that's one of the experiences (for better or worse) that IMS miss out on: extended periods at FSI. We don't tend to get language training, which tends to be the longest training, so we spend less overall time between posts. Similarly, we seem to get more funding for mid-tour training than many of our counterparts (at least at this post).

PS: That's a picture of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

Job Perks

Generally when you talk about "job perks," you're referring to monetizable benefits. Joining the Foreign Service is pretty much the opposite. This job is all about the "experience" fringe benefits. I'm not even talking about the swanky parties, getting to live overseas, or (possibly meeting) visiting VIPs.

Closer to 'work,' we have frequent drills and micro training sessions. Some are pretty normal (fire drill), but others can be quite novel! For example... I can count the number of times I put on a hazmat helmet or extinguished a fire at my previous jobs (any of them!) on zero hands. Besides, I (finally) have a job where I occasionally get to hit computers with giant hammers! Let's face it, that's the biggest job perk of them all.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Birthday United States! (Ok Ok, it's a few days early, but no one wants to work on a holday, right?) Tonight was the US "national day" representational event. Every country's diplomatic community celebrates one major holiday at their overseas posts ... It's fairly logical that ours is Independence Day. This event is loved by some, feared by others, but as the only event we throw that is allowed to be sponsored (by American companies...), it tends to be a big deal. Most of the Consulate staff participated in some way or another. It ended up being a heck of a party, with lots of good food and interesting people.

Forgive the glasses... my eyes looked like I was a madman...

Actually Another Job Openning

Good news IMS fans! The job req is open again. It turns out the Department of State really needs IMs these days. Just think, you could have the pleasure of working with me at your first post! (You know, if it happens to be my second post.) So if you do join and go somewhere awesome, start convincing them they need me early.

Just think, this picture could be you! (Assuming you own a red shirt and look like me with a different face...)

(Yeah, I know this is a repeat of a previous post... so sue me...)

Menninger's Morale Curve

Whatever happened to the frequency of my posts on this blog? [For those not reading this blog in real time, I've since back-posted several articles.] Well, let me tell you a story about cultural readjustment and morale overseas. As it turns out, I'm not actually the first person in the world to move overseas. (I know, right? I was shocked too!) The PeaceCorps and Foreign Service have been doing this for awhile and they (and others) have studied the effects on their people. Both have found that morale forms a W over the course of a two year tour. The transplantee starts the W with a peak of high expectations and excitement for being in a new place. Their mood slowly worsens as the honeymoon ends and they fall into their first valley, commonly called culture shock. Things start to recover as they accept their situation and adjust their expectations. This is where the Foreign Service diverts from the graph. Our middle peak comes right around when we're learning where our next post will be. The realization that we're leaving causes people to "check-out" from their current position and start fantasizing about the onward assignment. Finally the last peak begins the honeymoon period of your next post.

So... when I was starting to have motivation issues approximately six months after I arrived, my more veteran colleagues quickly pointed out that it was "just my time." It's kind of depressing how cookie-cutter my symptoms were from the link above. I love Chennai (and that's not the middle peak speaking), but I think any major life change has its challenges and we pretty much changed every part of our life when we took this job.

Anyway, since February I've gotten over my hump and things are smooth sailing again. I've thought of a bunch of potential blog posts, so things should pick back up. I'll be curious to see how this curve compares in the future when I'm more acclimated to this lifestyle and experience other posts with higher or lower hardship ratings.

Merry Christmas from India

T'was the night before Christmas
When all through the house

Not a light bulb was shining
Not even a [computer] mouse

The appliances all sat
With their power not on
In hopes that GSO
Soon would be anon

The child was nestled
All safe on a chair
While shadows from flashlights
Danced here and there


Uuuuh, this is getting hard to maintain... so...


But I heard them [GSO] exclaim
As out of sight they were driving
Happy Christmas to all
And we'll be back in the morning


Ok that was pretty strained. It seemed easier in my head when I was driving home from work. Anyway, it's our first Christmas in the Foreign Service, and on paper it was pretty lousy. In reality, it was quite pleasant, TAKE THAT PAPER; you're always lying to us!


I should start from the beginning, and I'll recap at the end. So we have some family visiting and after 5 days of traveling (standby, and being bumped from flights several times), they arrived at our house at around 2:30 AM on Christmas Eve. I had an extra long day at work, but an hour or two before leaving I got a frantic call from our housekeeper saying that one of the AC units was smoking and she'd turned it off. Thinking she'd done well, but might have been overreacting a little, I planned to submit a request to GSO that it be repaired, and just not use it for few days. (One missing air conditioner is not really a big deal when you have 7 in the house, and we were coming up on several holiday days.) Shortly there after I got a call from my wife... Apparently the AC unit had caught fire and my housekeeper had turned off all the power to our entire house. This seemed a little more serious, so I called GSO to have them look into it immediately (yes... fires are always an emergency). When the maintenance guy got to the house, he attempted to turn the power back on. Approximately half of the house stayed dark, and the light bulbs from the other half started making popping sounds and turning off. (Hooray?) He quickly turned the power back off and had the landlord call an electrician. Long story (a little) short(er), the electrician left with one AC unit and most of our lights working. However, our refrigerator and microwave were not so lucky. We moved most of our chilled goods to the freezer (separate unit, still working) and the rest to our upstairs neighbor's refrigerator. The GSO guys came the next day (Christmas), conveniently arriving shortly after we finished opening presents to continue repairs.


To recap, my Christmas eve was a sleep deprived work day, with overtime, where my house caught on fire, our power was out for several hours, our refrigerator and microwave broke, and we had only one AC unit to cool the house, all while having guests from the States. Sounds pretty bad, right? Well... not so much.


The positive side. We had several people (even the CG) offer to let us stay at their house if needed. We had upstairs neighbors who could store our food and let us heat up meals. Christmas day we had (previously arranged) plans to be at a friends house. The GSO folks were fantastic: they came quickly, fixed as much as they could, and had no issues with coming again on the holiday day to continue working. Best of all? I don't have to pay for any of this. Having just gotten rid of my old house, I can truly appreciate how lucky I am to not have to replace every major appliance in my house... as well as paying electricians overtime (and/or holiday pay) to come fix the faulty wiring in my house.


We've been jokingly saying "Welcome to India" or "Welcome to the Foreign Service," but honestly we still had a great Christmas. We opened presents (most of which were shipped half way around the world by our family), we spent the day with friends, and had good food. We're quite lucky; many of the locals here would have never had any of these problems, since they live everyday without air conditioners, refrigeration, or even power.


Merry Christmas!

Corridor Reputation: Bagels and Blogs

Corridor Reputation is a big deal in the Foreign Service. They literally teach you about it in the first 3 week orientation class, heck they even named their internal social networking system "Corridor." I don't think the term is really unique to the Foreign Service, but I'll define it anyway. Corridor Reputation is what precedes you when people ask your former (or current) coworkers about you. As you can imagine, this is always an important thing to maintain in any job. That being said, it's even more crucial in this job, because your future assignments (after your first two) are decided by 'bidding' or 'lobbying' for the position. If people have heard of you (in a good way), you're more likely to get the jobs you want. If you're known as a 'screamer,' well... enjoy getting posted wherever is left.

I'm a pretty friendly guy and generally good at getting things done at work, so I've never had any issues with my reputation preceding me. <brag>In fact, my last job as a contractor, before this job, I literally got the job because some higher up I'd never met or heard of found out I was in the list of candidates and told them to take me. </brag> All boasting aside, Corridor Reputation isn't something I've overly concerned myself with. That being said, I can feel myself being inexorably changed... I'd be lying if I tried to claim that I never consider my reputation while at work. In fact, I've taken on some projects that I probably wouldn't have cared about, except that they'll give me nice exposure to other IMS around the world.

Of course, let's face it. I made bagels for a CLO bake sale (which are unavailable locally) and I have this blog. I should just resign myself to being the "Bagels and Blog" guy. I'm pretty sure it's already begun. The Management Officer here (jokingly?) told me bringing bagels in once a week should be added to my work requirements... and I learned from my social sponsee that my blog had some readers in the 134th Specialist class. I guess the moral of this post is: if you want to succeed in the Foreign Service, learn to bake bagels. Wait no... I mean, be that guy with crazy hobbies... No... that's not it. Oh yeah, be nice and work hard! Yeah, we'll go with that one.

Why We Skype

"This is why
Why we Skype
Why we stay up late
And this is why
This is why we Skype"

It might sound weird, but since we moved half way around the world, we actually seem to talk to our families (via FaceTime and Skype) more frequently than when we lived in the same time zone. That being said, we've come to realize something. Other than our parents, everyone wanting to Skype with us has an ulterior motive. Engagements and pregnancies seem to be the prime suspects. Don't get me wrong, we're flattered that people want to tell us and that they're willing to go through the effort of arranging a 'face-to-face' meeting. Of course, at first we thought they just missed our charming personalities and wanted to hear about India from the horse's mouth. Maybe I'm just underestimating the awesomeness of my blogging, but apparently that's all people need! :-D

The song has nothing to do with this post, but I like it, and writing a post named "Why We Skype" got it stuck in my head. 

PS: The video only plays in the US, sorry people elsewhere. You'll just have to go buy the album or something!

Technically Another Job Opening

Good news IMS fans! The job req is open again. It turns out the Department of State really needs IMs these days. Just think, you could have the pleasure of working with me at your first post! (You know, if it happens to be my second post.) So if you do join and go somewhere awesome, start convincing them they need me early.

Just think, this picture could be you! (Assuming you own a red shirt and look like me with a different face...)

Technically a Job Opening

Ok, maybe throwing "technically" in front of everything isn't the best policy. Anyway, there is an IMS vacancy announcement currently out. I just assume (thanks, healthy ego!) that everyone wants to follow in my footsteps. Good luck to you all!

Our House

Welcome to a special "Foreign Service" edition of House Hunters International. In this episode, I was given one choice of places to live and after careful consideration, I picked it! On a more serious note, we filled out our housing survey a few months ago, a month ago received a text description of our house, but we were thrilled to finally see where we'd be spending the next two years. 

Our apartment is on the 2nd floor (that's the third floor for you folks back in the USA) and takes up the entire floor of the building. We're in a corner building on moderately busy streets. There is a decent amount of street noise (mostly polite honking, since people honk here instead of using blinkers... or brakes), but it is not very loud in the two bedrooms we're using. 

There are 4 bedrooms, 4 full bathrooms, 1 eastern style bathroom, two living rooms, a dining room, kitchen, pantry, and 5 small balconies in our apartment. It (in theory) takes 7 air conditioners to cool the entire house, but we generally only use 2 or 3 at a time. We also have 3 dehumidifiers that are running constantly to minimize the insane amounts of humidity in the air (we're trying to avoid getting mold in our less frequently used rooms). Every room has marble or tile floors and extra high ceilings.

The GSO-provided furniture is fantastic, much nicer than our previous furniture. We were also provided with a welcome kit which provides us with everything we need until our effects arrive. 

Enough talk already, here are the pictures!

Kitchen

Main Living Room

Auxillary Living Room

Dining Room

Dining Room's Balcony

Front Door + Fancy Bug Zapper

Guest Bedroom

Guest Balcony

Guest Bathroom

My Son's Room

Master Bedroom

Insane Amount of Storage
(that top cabinet goes back like 2 meters)

Master Bath

Fourth Bedroom / Office / Trampoline Room?

Fourth Bedroom's Balcony

Pantry, Giant Extra Freezer, Laundry

Eastern Bathroom

Chennai Consulate Attack

(Photo from AP)

Midway through my current class, "Local Emergency and Evacuation," seems like a great time to talk a little about... well, emergencies. In one of our many crisis management briefings, the instructor noted that one in three Foreign Service Officers will be evacuated from a post over the course of their career. At first I thought this was an exaggeration, but the more I hear, the more I believe it. It's important to remember that the State Department's number one mission overseas is to keep Americans safe.

To that end, it isn't just major events like the Arab Spring or Fukushima that cause evacuations. Often, evacuations are preemptive and very temporary. Anyway, this point really hit home in one of our briefings when the instructor referenced the Chennai consulate attack in 2012. The event was barely (if at all) reported in the US, because of the more serious events taking place in Benghazi and Syria at the time, but I found a couple Indian papers that reported on it. Essentially, a mob formed to protest the release of a movie (made in the US) criticizing Islam. In Chennai, the consulate was surrounded, there was some minor vandalism, and a few hours later local riot police broke up the mob. The chancellery wasn't breached and no one was hurt, but I'm sure it was no picnic for everyone inside. I'm a pretty level headed guy... but I still think I'll pass on experiencing this first hand, you know, if at all possible.