A Post-QEP Mortem and Some Advice

One of the most informative things about the QEP results is finding out who passed and who didn't. In addition to this, knowing who passed the previous year only to fail the following year is useful to know. Keeping in touch with other candidates in your cohort and seeing which ones passed and which ones did not is also instructive. So for future FSO candidates, I offer these points, which may or may not be useful:

1. Follow the instructions. I distinctly remember a Senior Foreign Service Officer advising the audience at an information session I attended that "there are no secrets" with passing the QEP (and OA) and that everything that's posted on the official State webpage is "what they are looking for." And based on my positive QEP results, I have to say that this SFSO's advice was spot on.

The QEP scans each PN and assesses whether the candidate can exhibit the "six precepts" that are used to evaluate actual FSOs. When I looked at my PNs, I made a printout of these precepts and made sure to cross-reference my PNs with the precepts. If I found that one precept was not addressed anywhere in my six PNs, I would edit them to ensure that I could fit it in somewhere. And if a precept was overemphasized, I would tone some of it down for the sake of balance and the ability to use the extra space to strengthen a different precept that might not have received enough attention.

2. If you passed the QEP last year, do not submit the same PNs the following year without taking a serious look at them. When I passed the QEP last year, I thought I had unlocked the secret to passing that mysterious step that had thwarted me before and that I'd be golden with those PNs for a second straight year. But I didn't want to leave anything to chance because I had no idea of knowing whether I was on the knife's edge of passing and not passing or whether I was in the top 1% of candidates for my particular career track. So I took a good look at those PNs and found several places where I could strengthen them to the point where I couldn't believe that the previous iteration of those PNs was good enough to even advance at all the previous year.

This is really important advice. I read the tale of one candidate whose FSOT score was in the 190s. He passed the QEP last time around and sent "exactly the same" PNs off this year. He did not make it this time. Fortunately, this candidate is already sitting on the hiring register with his previous candidacy. But surely there are others who have no prior candidacy to fall back on. Do not lull yourself into thinking that your PNs from previous successful attempts are beyond improvement.

3. Take your PNs seriously. This is not something you can just write from scratch about three days before the submission deadline. We all have jobs or families or special projects that demand our time. But if you keep neglecting your PNs, what was once "important but not urgent" will soon become "important and urgent" and you will no longer have the luxury of time to mull over your PNs and solicit feedback.

One candidate with whom I've been corresponding was unable to start writing her PNs until shortly before they were due. I don't know how well written her PNs were, but she unfortunately did not pass the QEP. She acknowledged that rushing this step was likely what did her in, and I feel bad for her. But like I mentioned in a previous blog post, failure at any stage of this process is educational.

4. Even if you consider yourself a talented writer, solicit as much feedback as is practical. I had a few other candidates take a look at my PNs and they picked up on things I never would have noticed on my own. I am especially grateful to both of them and returned the favor by helping edit their PNs. Unfortunately, only one of them passed. But anyway, everyone has a different writing style and everyone has weaknesses they might not be aware of. Some may be verbose. Others may use poor punctuation. Some may reveal too much and subsequently turn a strong PN into a weak one.

This is one reason why Point 3 is so important. It is unfair to spring six PNs on a helpful reviewer at the last minute and expect them to offer constructive feedback. It takes time for a thoughtful reviewer to read and make comments on these things while still allowing you enough time to incorporate their feedback into their revisions. If you are starting from scratch, I'd recommend spending 10 days writing the actual PNs and another week soliciting and offering feedback. This should give you enough time to write the best PNs possible, pay it forward by helping other candidates, and still get your PNs in by the deadline.

5. Make sure you chose the career track that is the best match for your professional and academic background. As I have mentioned long ago in this blog, this is my fourth FSO candidacy. My first two candidacies came to an abrupt end at the QEP stage. My two most recent candidacies survived at least as far as the OA. I was in the Public Diplomacy track for the first two candidacies and in the Consular track for the last two.

After my second straight QEP rejection in my 2012 candidacy, I took a serious look at what I was doing wrong. That was when I realized that even though my academic background (mass communications) might have been suited for Public Diplomacy, my professional background (TESOL and general teaching) was much better suited for Consular. And I realized that my academic background could also be useful for Consular in terms of explaining complicated material to nonnative speakers--in this case, travel and visa information. So instead of having my academic background not be augmented by my professional background as a PD candidate, I thought I'd go for Consular and have my academic and professional backgrounds complement each other. I don't think it's a coincidence that I have not been thwarted by the QEP since then. Choose the track you believe you are best qualified for, not the track you are simply the most interested in--especially if your background doesn't suggest you are well qualified for it.

6. Do not underestimate the importance of the FSOT registration materials. List all the jobs you had, all the degrees you've earned, all the volunteer experiences you've participated in, all the awards you've won, all the languages you speak, all the licenses or certifications you've obtained, and anything else that will strengthen your candidacy. The PNs are only a part of what the QEP examines. Even with solid PNs, if the rest of your application materials do not measure up, you won't survive the QEP. Perhaps this is what happened with the other helpful candidate with whom I exchanged PN critiques but ultimately did not pass the QEP.

Remember, the QEP looks at the "total candidate." They look at your PNs, your FSOT scores, your FSOT essay, your work history, your foreign language proficiency, your awards, your licenses, your international experience, your volunteer experience, and how well all of this matches up with the career track you chose. There are bound to be lots of candidates with truly impressive credentials: advanced degrees, military service, legal experience, employment abroad, foreign language proficiency, and more. All of these talented individuals vying for a few hundred coveted OA slots. So you need to do your best to sell yourself and show you can offer State what it asks of its officers and candidates.

7. Do not forget that this is an extremely selective hiring process. The official word from State is that 387 new FSOs (and 286 FSSs) were hired during the 2014 fiscal year. With more than 20,000 FSO applicants annually, this makes for a hiring rate of less than 2%. You may very well be a solid candidate with good FSOT scores and good PNs and still not survive the QEP. It is possible that only the top 80 candidates within a particular career track received an invitation to the OA and that you are ranked #94. It's tough.

For other candidates, they may be miffed by their rejection and fail to realize that perhaps they are not as strong of a candidate as they would like to think they are. A bit of humility and honest self-reflection may go a long way should such a candidate choose to embark on a new candidacy nine months from now.

In closing, I send congratulations to those who passed, and condolences to those who did not. If you passed, make the most of what lies ahead. And if you didn't, learn as much as you can from your disappointment and use these lessons to make for an even stronger candidacy next time around.

The QEP Gods Have Spoken

This blog has been pretty quiet for the past few weeks because there simply hasn't been any news to report. I mean, I took the FSOT in early October, received notification that I passed it in late October, and submitted my PNs in mid-November. After that, radio silence. I successfully blocked this process out of my mind for most of the time since then, but with the new year starting, the anxiety-laced anticipation began creeping back into my subconscious.

The Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP) stage of this process is the most opaque because nobody really knows how good is good enough to pass in any given year. I passed it last year and thought I had a good shot at passing it this year. But there have indeed been cases where people who passed one year did not make it the following year. Budgets are tight. Hiring registers are long. Word on the street is that State wants to reduce the number of candidates who expire from the register without getting a job offer. Candidates who never receive a job offer constitute a financial liability for State, which conducts medical exams and security investigations for all of these candidates regardless of whether they are hired. These exams and investigations aren't cheap. Knowing this, I'd surmise that State is trying to reduce the number of candidates who advance to the hiring register, and the best way to do this is by lowering the number of candidates invited to the Oral Assessment (OA).

I would estimate that out of an FSOT cohort of about 7000 candidates, fewer than 300 remain. State says that "only a few hundred" candidates advance to the OA each year. And with three testing cohorts per year, three OA groups of about 300 candidates each put you right under 1000, which is no longer "a few hundred." So if these figures are accurate, only about 5% of the candidates who took the FSOT in October are still in the game.

Fortunately, I am one of the survivors. The QEP gods have given me a second chance. I received the email with the good news yesterday. That still hasn't sunk in.

Anyway, knowing that there's no guarantee I will make it back to this stage in the future, I really really REALLY want to go all the way this time around. I accept that I failed the OA on my first attempt because I didn't know exactly what to expect (beyond what was mentioned in the official study guide). The snow day and OA cancellation and empty stomach and loss of heat in my hotel room and all that crap made for a toxic set of circumstances that was not conducive to optimal performance that fateful day in March of last year. I almost pulled it out though. But knowing that as an FSO, there will likely be many situations similar to this in which I would still need to perform, I need to keep my wits about me and focus on the task at hand. I know where I went wrong last time, so that's where I want to focus most of my energy regarding my OA preparations. But I'll save that for another post.

In the meantime, I have to decide when to take this thing. Fortune smiles!