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Foreign Service Oral Assessment

Back in October, I took the FSOA (Foreign Service Oral Assessment) – one of the last major hurdles to becoming a Foreign Service Officer for the United States (and, arguably, the most difficult one to get through). And, miracle of miracles, I passed!

Things have changed since then, both for me personally and for the State Department as a whole, so it’s looking less and less like a potential career path. But! When I was preparing for the FSOA, reading through other people’s accounts was super helpful to me. I wrote this up on the train out of D.C. and now, several months later, here I am sharing it for any would-be future foreign service officers. Enjoy!

Wow wow wow, you guys. WOW.

So I just passed the Foreign Service Oral Assessment!!! With a 5.9 out of 7.0, which might not sound all that exciting but really, really is. If I take the language assessment in Russian and pass, I’ll have above a 6.0! CRAZY.

I know that a lot of my readers are travel enthusiasts, many of whom are considering careers abroad (whether it be with Peace Corps or Foreign Service), so I thought I would break down the process a little bit for anyone who’s looking for tips. This will be NDA compliant, so no details, but it’ll just give you an idea of how I prepared and what was going through my mind.

They cancelled the San Francisco testing this year, meaning I flew out to Washington D.C. for my interview. Unfortunately, my brain was still on West Coast time – not helpful – so between that and pre-testing jitters I got maybe three hours of sleep total before the exam. Would highly recommend not doing that. I stayed in a hotel in downtown Washington, pretty close to the testing site, so I wouldn’t have far to go in the morning.

The letter said to arrive at 6:45 a.m., so I walked over there at 6:30 a.m. to be safe. There were a few other FSO candidate who had the same idea. We filled out paperwork and chatted about our backgrounds, and I can tell you that everyone in that room had amazing life experience and crazy cool qualifications. I, of course, was a gigantic bundle of nerves.

I had a longer route to the FSOA than is usual, I think – I took the test in June 2015, passed the QEP, then postponed my Oral Assessment for a year while I ran off and did Peace Corps again in Ukraine. So I’ve had rather a lot of life experiences since I first submitted my resume. With that in mind, I brought a copy of my Description of Service (DOS), which documents all the projects and activities I did as a PCV in Ukraine. I have no idea if the assessors looked at it or not, but I did give it to the very kind woman at the front desk, and she attached it to my application.

Group Exercise

After waiting for maybe an hour or two, we finally started the Group Exercise. There were nine of us total and they split us into a group of five and a group of four. I was in the group of four with three other very nice gentlemen. They sit you down, they give you your binders, they shut the door; Boom. Start reading.

I’ve read that the Group Exercise tends to cause the most anxiety in would-be test takers, but this is honestly the part that I worried about the least. We had thirty minutes to go through our packets. There’s a lot of information, of course, but if you prioritize then you can get through the more essential stuff pretty quickly.

First of all, read the letter from the ambassador, and look for any particular instructions or criteria that you should use when making decisions. This will help keep you on track when you’re getting into the discussion phase.

I put all my information into a chart that turned out to be indispensable. I split it up into Title, Description, Resources/Funding, Criteria (U.S. interests, CBA, Support, & Local Culture), Positives, & Negatives. Any questions I had, I wrote on a separate sheet of paper. This chart ended up being super helpful for keeping track of other candidates’ projects, and for making comparisons. I still had some time left over after I had gone through everything, so I actually wrote out the beginning of my presentation, just so I could get my thoughts in order and make sure I’d get off to a good start.

The assessors entered and took up their positions in the corners of the room, as expected. Thus began the presentation phase. Our group worked really well together, I thought – nobody advocated their project, we all presented very clearly and asked helpful questions at the end. I made sure to ask a question of every presentation. My group mates actually asked a lot of questions of me, and I was able to answer them thoughtfully and thoroughly, which I think helped my score in this section.

After that, we were given our new set of instructions: Here’s the memo, you have twenty minutes, and this is your budget. Go.

It was very clear from the beginning that my project would not receive full funding, so I soon switched my advocacy to partial funding of one of my initiatives. It came down to two other projects. The hardest thing in that scenario, honestly, is finding ways to participate when two other projects are duking it out. You can’t stay silent because the assessors are looking to hear your thought process, but other people have all the information. I did my best to ask questions, think out loud, and be a deciding voice. In the end, I was the one to write the memo. I finished the last sentence just as the assessor called “time.” Group exercise complete!

After this came the part that I absolutely was not expecting. One by one, we were pulled into another room for a “debrief.” There, the “ambassador” asked me rapid-fire questions about our decision making process. It was a good thing that I made that chart and had taken all those notes, because otherwise I might not have remembered enough about the projects! Nothing I had read mentioned this part of the FSOA, so I was a bit blindsided, but I think I was able to answer intelligently and thoroughly.

Waiting Game

I think the hardest part of the day was all the waiting. When we were actually doing the exercises, I felt calm and focused, ready to tackle any challenge. But then they put you back out in the main room to stand around for an hour or so, and all the doubt and nausea start creeping back in. I spent a lot of time walking in circles and examining the art on the walls.

We finished the Group Exercise, and all nine of us returned to the waiting room. I think we had a really good group of people. Everyone was excited to be there, most of us were taking the assessment for the first time, and everyone had fascinating stories to tell. The atmosphere was so supportive – camaraderie instead of competition. I was convinced at this point that most of us would pass.

Half of us wandered off to do the Case Management exercise, while the other half waited a while longer to start our Structured Interviews. Soon enough, they called us back, put us each in a different room, and told us to – surprise, surprise – wait.

Structured Interview

This exercise is the one that’s the most similar to a regular job interview. It was also the one I was the most terrified of. I had rehearsed at home, of course, and had my arsenal of stories prepared that would show off the 13 dimensions, but as I sat on my chair in that room they all flew out of my head. I had nada. Why did I want to be a political officer, again?

I took a deep breath, poured myself a glass of water, and refocused. I wanted to be a political officer because… Taking a second to run through a couple answers in my head helped me get back in the right mindset, and remind myself that I can do this.

Soon, my two assessors came in and sat down opposite me. They are not kidding when they say that they’re going to remain stonefaced the whole time. I knew to expect it, though, and I’ve also lived in Ukraine, where stonefaced is a way of life. It didn’t really phase me much.

The Structured Interview starts off with the motivation and experience section, followed by the hypotheticals (i.e. the specific part that I was dreading), followed by questions based on the 13 dimensions. The experience and motivation sections are identical to any job interview. They take preparation, of course, but you can kind of figure out through common sense what to expect.

The hypotheticals are awful. There’s no way around it. You don’t have time to think, you don’t have enough information to go on, and you can’t take notes so you inevitably forget things. I had some tricks to make it a little easier, but I wasn’t quite happy with any of my answers.

Every time I was given a scenario, I first audibly stated my priorities. This may have started to sound a little routine, three hypotheticals in, but it helped show my thought process and honestly helped me figure out where I was going to go from there. I also put an emphasis on communication – with Washington, with my supervisor, with host country nationals, with my peers, etc. – and confirming information before acting. Finally, I suggested a course of action for each one. It’s easy to lose sight of that last bit when your brain is trying to juggle all this stuff, but you really should make a suggestion. Even better if you have a backup suggestion to go with it.

I have no idea how I did on this section. They don’t give you that kind of information. But I did my best, and that’s all you can really hope for!

Last but not least, I was asked a series of questions relating to the 13 Dimensions. Here, honestly, I got lucky. I had prepared a story to go with each dimension, but the questions that came up allowed me to really shine and give some great examples from my life. It could have easily gone the other way – I could have gotten questions that stumped me and spent the last 20 minutes just stammering inaudibly at the examiners – but they just happened to line up perfectly. I did have to make up one answer on the fly, but it ended up being a pretty good answer, I think.

Finally, they gave me a moment to say something at the end. I didn’t really prepare anything for this. I wish I had. I suggest you do.

More Waiting, Dear God

I think you know what happened here. Also, lunch break! That worked in my favor, because I was so nervous in the morning that I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything for breakfast (I also recommend you don’t do that). Then, we came back in, and it was time for the Case Management exercise.

Case Management

I had looked through a couple mock-Case Management Exercises on the Yahoo FSOA Group boards, and I’m quite glad I did. Reading through people’s sample memos helped me plan in advance how I would format things.

The binder they gave us was pretty meaty and had a lot of information in it, much of it conflicting. The first thing I did was read the letter from the ambassador and identify exactly what questions I was supposed to be answering. I referred back to this multiple times throughout the exercise. I also used those questions to create headers and structure my memo. This helped me keep it readable and organized later on.

Once I had my questions that needed answering, I went about reading through all of the information and taking notes. Answers to my questions started popping out at me. My original plan was to do all my outlining and then start typing, but it was more convenient for me to answer the questions one at a time. That way I could move on to the parts that still needed support.

All-in-all, I used the entire two pages, and I think I wrote a pretty solid memo. I didn’t spend any time on “Dear Ambassador, Hope you’re having a lovely day”-type stuff. I just got straight into it. Everything recommendation I made had reasoning to back it up, and I made sure to throw in an alternate suggestion to my suggestion (while explaining why my original suggestion was still better). Once I had made all my major recommendations, I went through and filled in extra detail – for instance, there was one part of the binder that raised a separate, secondary issue. I made sure to cover all my essential points before I went back and addressed it.

One thing I did that helped me, I think, is that I threw in some calculations of my own. There were a few different data points provided, and I did some basic number-crunching that added percentages and statistics to my memo. I can’t do much more than long division and elementary-level addition without a calculator. I even had to practice them the night before. But this was my chance to demonstrate that I’m comfortable with “quantitative analysis,” as the 13 Dimensions say, and I showed that I was capable.

(P.S. On my computer, at least, there was spellcheck.)

The Case Management exercise was one that I was profoundly dreading, but in the end, I think I felt the best about this segment of the FSOA. I did notice one cringeworthy error when I printed it out (if only I had change that one word, argh) but all-in-all, I felt I had created a well-written and well-reasoned memo.

The Final Wait

Lordy, at this point I was just grateful that it was over. I had done what I could. It was out of my hands. Someone mentioned that there was another group of people testing somewhere else on our floor, but I never saw them, and I’m not sure where they could have been hiding. The nine of us, though, hung around and chatted and watched terrible Trump interviews on CNN while we waited to be called back. I think we waited for over an hour. I drank a lot of water.

I had read somewhere before (and one of my group mates also mentioned) that the first person called back is usually a fail, and the last person standing usually passed. So when my name was called first, my heart sank. Oh well, I thought, it was a learning experience, at least I know what to expect for next time, c’est la vie.

I walked into the room and before I could even sit down, the assessor was shaking my hand and wishing me congratulations. I cannot explain to you in that moment what my emotions were. Elation, of course, but also a dash of incredulity and the sudden realization that, wait a minute, there’s more. For so long, passing the FSOA has been my endgame, partially because I didn’t really let myself believe that I’d make it through. Now I have, and there are months, and months, and months, between me and the register, let alone me and an A-100.

Mostly, though, I think I was in a little bit of shock. They led me back to the waiting room, and I was the first one there – pretty soon, the second guy they’d called came strolling in. The third guy came in a little later. We had all done the Group Exercise together, so I felt a certain camaraderie with them, and we were all thrilled to be there.

After some more waiting, it became evident that no one else from our group had made it. I was honestly surprised. I wasn’t kidding when I said I thought all of us would pass that day – there were some spectacularly qualified candidates in there, who I thought would for sure get through. Sometimes these things come down to a combination of luck and skill. In the other, unseen group, apparently only one person passed (though I’m still not sure they were real).

Now starts the security clearance and the medical clearance. It’s going to be a long, long process, but I’m just so happy to have made it through this part. One step closer!

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