Buying Into the State Dept. Lifestyle

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Diane Castiglione
U.S. State Dept.

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European Affairs and Western Hemisphere Affairs probably get the largest number of applicants. We allow the bureaus to make the selections, because different bureaus have different needs, and the skills that they might be looking for, the backgrounds that they might be looking for could vary. If it's one of our geographic bureaus that's looking to have somebody go overseas, they may be looking for language skills, where one of our bureaus here in Washington—for example, our Bureau of Population Refugees & Migration—the language skills may not be an important piece of what they're looking for. They may be looking for someone who has a background in issues with which they relate. So we allow the bureaus to determine the selection criteria and what they're looking for because it's got to meet their needs.

What about for full-time hires—how much say do they have in where they're going to be assigned?

We get a lot of questions about that. They answer is, yes, you do, but you still have to be worldwide available, so it does mean that you could be assigned to Baghdad, as well as London, or Bangkok or any number of places. So it's not just London, Paris, and Rome.

But you do have an opportunity to express your preferences and give reasons why. If there's a family reason or if you have a spouse that's looking for employment or you need to have a good school in that post, those are all legitimate things to include when you're bidding on your assignments.

So, say someone successfully fulfills their internship, how does that factor in when they apply for a job after graduation?

It doesn't guarantee anything. It's not the kind of internship where at the end of it if you did really well you'll get a job offer, which I know happens a lot in the private sector. Because of how we hire and because of what we do, we can't do that.

We do know that applicants to the Foreign Service who tell us in their application that they're former interns pass the Foreign Service Exam at a slightly higher rate than the general pool of applicants. Former interns who apply for civil service positions, that's always a plus. Plus, they've networked and they know people, and having some name recognition and such is going to help them in that selection process, as well. So having that experience under your belt, I think, makes them more competitive when they actually apply for a position.

What's the best way to prepare for the Foreign Service Exam?

That's probably the single most frequently asked question. And nobody likes my answer, which is to get a good night's sleep before the test. Particularly for the oral assessment, because it's behavior-based, you can't prepare for it. Some of it, there's hypothetical situations, and you're going to be asked to respond to it. There's a group exercise in which you're going to participate.

It's not the kind of thing you can prepare for in that sense. And even the written exam, the knowledge that what we're looking at is sort of accumulated knowledge. I think a lot of students tend to think of this as like a test in one of their classes, and [think] "Oh, my God. I have to cram. I haven't studied all semester, and now I suddenly have to study for this test." That's not going to work, because it takes information and looks at things from so many different areas, and all different kinds of things that there's really no one thing you could do that would say, "Yeah, now I've studied. I'm prepared."