What Next?

Now that everyone in the February Cohort has submitted our personal narratives it is the long wait until late May or so to find out if we continue in the process or if it is the end of the road. I imagine that there will be a lot of disappointment when we all hit the link to see if the first word is Congratulations!

The whole process is a bit of mystery, but I would suspect even with the size of the registers and the budget crisis that State will still bring quality candidates into the pipeline. I guess the question is how high will the line be drawn in each cone as to how many candidates are invited to the Oral Assessment. This is surprisingly the only stage in the process where State can raise or lower the flood gates during the hiring process. As someone who has spent most of his career in the private sector it seems a strange way to run an organization.

That being said, as I have looked at other geo-political options,as flawed as the FSO process may seem it is certainly far better than most of the others. It has been a little over a week since I hit the submit button and have the sinking suspicion that I might have changed my previous narratives a bit too much, but the good news is that I only have another seven weeks or so to dwell on it.

PNQ's Submitted

I just hit the submit button and it is done. I nearly hit the submit button earlier, but as I proofread one last time, I decided to write a new essay for the Intellectual Skills narrative. I guess only time will tell if that was the right move. It was a coin flip between a story that I used last year, and a fresher experience that showed a different side of me. Also, since I am ex-military and I hit on that experience in the leadership narrative and the new sixth narrative I wanted to do something different.

Timing is usually everything and this might wind up being one of the worst times in recent history to be entering the QEP phase. It will be interesting to see just how quickly the State Department has flipped the switch on the QEP to reflect the current state of affairs on the hiring front. I imagine the magic line in all of the cones will be a lot higher than it was last year.

If I don't make it to the OA this time around, it won't be because I used the same narratives. I wound up using only two of the same stories, one major edit, and three new ones. I upped my overall FSOT by twelve points, have a SCNL, and several new experiences so I definitely didn't rest on my laurels or did I change too much?

Arabic Tutors

If anyone is looking for online Arabic instruction please let me know. I am volunteering at a local refugee center and I am working with several refugees who have recently arrived from Iraq. Some of them have very impressive teaching credentials and worked as linguists or translators for the U.S. Army in Iraq. I am working with them to set up tutoring services and have prepared with them, an outline to help aspiring FSO's get to the S-2 level in Arabic.

Arab Social Innovator Grant

I got some great news from Jordan last night. I wrote a grant proposal for the Synergos Social Innovator Program, and we won the grant! This is great news and will allow us to continue to work on women's empowerment and micro-development programs.

One of the great success stories that I wrote about in the grant was a woman who received a small investment and training. Her family lived in horrible poverty and her oldest daughter was "married off" at fifteen because they could not provide for the family. They live in an area that will never see a tourist dollar in a million years so there are not a lot of options for people in the village.

The organization bought her a tabun oven to make tabun bread that she could sell at the local markets and to tourists visiting some of the tourist sites about thirty minutes from her village. She also received training in food preparation and hygiene, and transportation to and from the various markets.

She made more money in one day, about 300 dinars, than her family earned in an entire year. She now bought the land next to her home for her oldest daughter to build a house and they are growing more herbs to prepare other local dishes to serve the growing tourist market in the region.

I am so happy for Ramez and Suhair and they can now develop some of the other programs that we mapped out when I was in Jordan.

SCNL

I wanted to confirm something for people who are about to take the SCNL phone test or who are contemplating learning one. If you do pass the test the results are good for FIVE years. I found that hard to believe, but after passing the FSOT again I received the, you said you speak a language email. I replied that I had passed last year, and I heard back that they had my results and that I am good for four more years.

It is hard to believe that is the case. I know I start forgetting things after a couple of weeks of not speaking Arabic. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you really want to do this, it is probably time well spent.

PNQ Flip-Flopper

So I guess I can never run for political office as I am now an official flip-flopper. I took a real hard look at my PNQ's which got me through to the OA last year and decided to do a bit more editing. The PNQ's seem to be fairly static from year to year, but there were a few subtle changes this year.

State made a minor change on the Intellectual Skills narrative so I tweaked my answer a bit to make sure that I specifically addressed the new wording. I basically re-wrote my Interpersonal Skills narrative to reflect my continued interaction with the main subject of the story. This was one of my strongest stories and my instinct was just to leave well enough alone, but I didn't want to be lazy on the off chance the same person reviews my narratives again. I felt the same way with the Communication Skills narrative. My old story was very strong. I mean how many times do you pick up a mother and son(Palestinian refugees) and give them a ride, and then they share figs from their lone fig tree with you. But, I had a new experience that addressed the question so decided to write a new narrative.

I am a management cone candidate and the Management and Leadership Skills narratives are perfect cone-related stories so I am not going to touch them. The sixth narrative was really tough to write and basically you have to condense your SOI to 1300 characters. I think this was a good addition to the process.

So it looks like I will submit three new stories, two exactly the same, and one with only very minor editing.

Good luck to everyone and I am sure there are a lot of people banging away on keyboards this weekend.

Recycle or Not?

There is always a lot of discussion about recycling previous PNQ's if you passed the written test in an earlier iteration. I guess I fall into the camp that if they are your very best stories that specifically answer the questions, then you should use them again. I am going to practice what I preach. However, this time around we have six questions to answer, and the sixth question is more like a mini-SOI than a PNQ per se.

The PNQ's tend to be pretty static, but one of them was worded a bit differently so I will tweak that PNQ to answer the specific tweak in the question. I have great stories that address leadership, management, and cross-cultural compatibility so there is no reason to mess with them, and I am changing one PNQ to add a newer experience. I think the mini-SOI will be the hardest to write because there are a lot of questions to address in 1300 characters. This was a really good addition to the PNQ phase IMO.

It seems as if the bar has been raised and fewer applicants are getting through the QEP phase which is why I am sticking with my very best stories. I am on the record and we'll see what happens.

Passed

I know all of my many devoted readers, ha ha, were waiting on pins and needles for the results of the FSOT. Well, I passed. This time around the test scores were included in the results letter which is a nice change.

Job Knowledge 64.56
Biographic Information 61.91
English Expression 50.53

Essay 8

That is 177.00 which was about a 12 point improvement and I improved in each section.

So I guess I am not the greatest editor of awkwardly written passages, but can write OK myself. They must have graded my second essay or felt very sorry for me.

ACT Update

I have to give two thumbs up to ACT for how they are handling the problem that happened during the essay portion of the Written Test. About ten minutes into the essay my 2 1/2 paragraphs vanished. I received an email from them today saying that if I failed the essay portion of the test(and passed the other sections) I would be able to take the test again in June.

We are expecting the results of the test any day so I am guessing they already know the verdict.