The Oral Assessment is about the closest thing to a traditional interview that an applicant can expect to encounter when applying for the Foreign Service. Upon being invited to take the oral assessment, the applicant must determine an appropriate date (usually within the next year or so) and location for the interview. I was only given the choice between two locations for my interview; San Francisco and (shockingly) Washington D.C.
Having resided in the Pacific Northwest for all of my life, I’ve had the opportunity to visit San Francisco, but I’d never been to Washington D.C. So despite the increase in airfare (which applicants are expected to arrange and cover) I opted to have my interview at the nation’s capitol, where I could easily segue the trip into a vacation and visit the many world-class Museums and monuments in the area.
I scheduled the interview six months out from the date of my invitation. I was expecting to study quite a bit to prepare myself for it, but was already neck-deep in the last two quarters of my second BAS degree, so I valued the little free time I had. It wasn’t until a week or two before the interview when my last final had winded down that I returned to preparation for the looming assessment. Foreign Service Specialists have a different assessment than the Generalists do, so the panic and preparation regarding the group assessment that Generalists go through wasn’t on my mind. However, the specifics of what these assessments entail and consist of are tightly guarded, so I didn’t have much to go on and simply tried my best to prepare for what I thought I could expect.
The day before the oral assessment I took a red-eye from Seattle to Baltimore. I was running on fumes by the time I found my way down the Marc and back up the Red line to a friend of a friends I was staying with. I told myself I would study for the Oral Assessment more when I got situated, but fatigue caught up to me and I found myself taking a nap for a few hours to take the edge off.
As tired as I was, sleep did not come easily. Nervousness and anxiety for the coming examination crept in to my mind and I was up again to study some more before the evening was out. I hadn’t spent as much time as I would have liked in the last few days going over this. I was too busy celebrating my recent graduation, birthday and the freedom that accompanied it. To say I was “celebrating” was a bit of an overstatement. I don’t really celebrate such things to any great extent, but rather enjoy the additional time spent doing my normal time-wasting activities without the additional responsibilities.
I took some time to familiarize myself with the process. Really, all you need to know about that to expect is included in the candidate guide. Knowing the content and what you will be tested upon is a bit harder to put a finger on, but the guide itself will outline the day pretty well and provides you a good deal of what to expect. Focus on that and the 12-13 dimensions. Be your best self. Appear confident. Every specialty will focus on different things, that’s up for you to know. I went over the dimensions over and over until I had them memorized, but ultimately the preparation that helped the most was to reflect and catalog my own experiences and keep them fresh in my mind so I could refer to them when needed.
I turned in early, dreading the day ahead of me, but filled with anxiety and excitement. I woke up repeatedly through the night, and rested as one might expect when confined to an air mattress. It wasn’t my own bed, that was for sure. Every time I woke, I’d check the time and count the hours before I’d have to face the day while slipping back into a fitful sleep.
At last, I woke around half past 5, and decided that now was as good as any time. I bathed, trimmed and dressed, getting out the door around 6:30. On my walk down the the red line I tried my best to exhibit a display of confidence as I reviewed the purpose of the State Department and the Foreign Service in my mind, along with the 13 dimensions. There was a pit in my stomach as I rode the metro and my anxiety reached unprecedented levels as I deboarded at the Farragut north station.
Being more than a little early, I went to the nearby Filter house and got a mocha, with extra chocolate. Despite being from Seattle, I had never developed a liking for coffee, but I did enjoy the kick it provided and found it an effective way to jump-start the day when I needed it. Today, I definitely felt like I needed it. I ordered a croissant along with my coffee and continued to do some last minute review. I still had more than an hour before the scheduled time for the assessment, so I took a walk, found a peaceful place to sit and tried to collect myself as best as I could for the coming experience.
Finally, at a around 8, I decided I’d walk the remaining block and a half to the designated building and was the first of the candidates to arrive. It wasn’t long before I was joined by another applicant from California – who was taking the assessment for a consular position. We chatted for a bit and shared our experiences so far and tried our best to curb the mounting tension we both surely felt. No one else joined us and we were waved in a few minutes before the given start time.
The process of what happened next is already detailed in the guide to the process for applicants, and is fairly accurate. Aside from the frequent rest room breaks, it was pretty much on point. Another consular applicant joined us before the first exercise and during the downtime we attempted to bolster each others spirits, and wish the others luck. We individually completed our assigned exercises and regrouped afterwards each time as the results were evaluated. Up to this point it had simply been my goal to complete the ordeal, do the best I could and let whatever was going to happen, happen. Upon the completion of final exercise I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders, knowing that whatever the outcome, the trials of the day were over. I was genuinely curious as to how my compatriots had performed, but as it was to happen, I was the first to be called to receive my own results and was separated from my newfound companions.
I was taken into a room with the same people who conducted the interview with me and took a seat. I wasn’t seated for more than a second before the door was closed behind us and I was told to stand again in order to be offered congratulations on successfully completing the oral assessment. At that point, I was simply happy that it was over, but I also felt like I had accomplished something significant and incredible – but the weight that had been lifted from my shoulders had now returned with a distant promise of future trials and sacrifices that would now be my burden to carry. While I basked in the accomplishment, I knew that this was now real, that it wasn’t something that was going to slip away into my past, that it could forever change the course of my life and take a turn for the unknown and well out of my comfort zone.
But hey, that’s what I had wanted, right?
The rest of my time in D.C. was a blur. Monuments, museums, restaurants, blisters. I was simply enjoying myself and paying no mind to the next steps in the application, no, candidate process, that I was now enmeshed in. For the sake of informing readers though, the next steps in this process in order of timeliness is:
- Filling out the e-qip to start ones’ security clearance screening
- Returning the health evaluation to determine fitness for worldwide service
- Follow-up interviews with security clearance investigators
Once all those hoops have been cleared, you’ll be placed on the register and the real waiting begins.