The OA Rematch Approacheth

It has been a long time since I last updated this blog. In my last entry, I mentioned that I survived the Qualifications Evaluation Panel and was given a second chance to conquer the Oral Assessment. The OA window for the October 2014 cohort lasts from the first Monday in March to the first Friday in July. There were no OAs available on Wednesdays and there were no OAs at all during the month of April. There was also a week in early February that was available for candidates wishing to take the OA in San Francisco. So I had options.

After I got the good news, I had to do a bit of planning and strategizing because OA slots tend to fill up quickly. Candidates wishing to take the OA in San Francisco could immediately send an email to State with their desired assessment date. If there was space available, the slot was theirs. Candidates wishing to take the OA in Washington had to wait for about three days before they could sign up for a slot online.

Here was my thought process:

1. I was not going to take the OA in San Francisco. Sure, it would have been nice to get it out of the way quickly, but I knew I would not be adequately prepared. Plus, I was not in the mood to shell out extra money for a plane ticket in addition to a hotel room.

2. I did not want to take a chance with lousy weather in Washington resulting in another canceled OA like last year. This meant a March OA date would be out of the question. And since there were no OA dates in April, this meant my OA would be in either May or June.

3. Because I was planning on relocating to Washington anyway later in the year, I thought it would be prudent to schedule my OA for after the move was finished because I would have been too distracted or stressed to focus on moving and prepping at the same time. So I figured I should take the OA as late as possible. That would allow me the most time to prepare as well as the most time to take care of other areas of my life without the added pressure of studying for this one-shot deal.

And that’s how I ended up with June.

Several other contacts with whom I had been corresponding scheduled their OAs for early in the window—the first week or two in March. Some even scheduled theirs for February in San Francisco. A part of me was envious of them because they could conceivably start their security clearance investigations sooner and land on the hiring register sooner. But everybody has their own personal schedules and issues they have to deal with. So I decided to remain content with my super-late date.

One by one, I started getting status reports and post-mortems from these contacts. In most cases they were disappointed. They either passed with low scores or did not pass at all. One person did pass with a good score (5.6), but in this awful hiring climate, even her score might not be high enough to get an offer in her career track, Political, which is the most competitive of the five tracks.

So anyway, my candidacy is still alive—but only because the day of reckoning has yet to arrive. As of this writing, I still have another three weeks to go. I will admit that I have not done much studying. Having gone through this before and having passed two of the three components, I am pretty comfortable with what to expect. As late June draws near, I do plan on tackling some of the practice Case Management exercises because I know that is my weak point. But I am strangely calm about this whole affair.

I’ve even got my post-OA gameplan all worked out. Knowing how tough it is to get hired off the Register, I have thought about how to maximize my chances of getting a coveted A-100 offer. Here are my scenarios:

If I get a 5.7 or higher, I will almost certainly get an offer and will be doing backflips.

If I get a 5.6, I will likely get an offer, though I may have to wait a few A-100 cycles first.

If I get a 5.5, I will have at least some hope of getting an offer, especially if some of the older 5.5s time off of the Register before me, but I’d be more inclined to furiously brush up on my Japanese so that I can bump that score up to a 5.67.

If I get a 5.4, I probably will not get an offer and will have to decide whether to take my chances with a 5.57 from Japanese bonus points (a language I know pretty well) or a 5.65 from Korean bonus points (a language I know very little about).

If I get a 5.3, I will immediately commence intensive Korean language study because a 5.55 has at least some chance of getting an A-100 offer; a 5.3 has almost no chance at all.

If I get a 5.2 or less, I will be absolutely devastated for the second year in a row, but I’m trying not to think about that.

Anyway, at the time of this writing, I am working in Washington in an office that is one Metro stop away from the assessment center. I’m thinking about doing a dry run there after work this week just so I won’t be as intimidated when I see that dreadful building for the first time since that cold March afternoon 14 months ago.