Get Hired by the Foreign Service: World Languages and Critical Needs

As any unemployed graduate of a university foreign language program can tell you, linguistic expertise is not the first skill that employers search for. Despite all the rhetoric about globalization, most employers only want to know how you can help them solve their core, workaday problems.

The Foreign Service is no different. It selects first for core diplomatic competency.

However, when the testing gauntlet has been run, and the dust settles on the survivors, those who possess language skills are the ones who get hired.

Linguaphiles, read on.

Immediate Conditional Offer of Employment

By passing the Foreign Service Written Exam (FSWE) and Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA), you prove to the State Department that you possess the broad knowledge and managerial skills required to perform core embassy tasks.

If you do manage to pass both the FSWE and FSOA (most people don't), then the State Department will extend to you what is known as an Immediate Conditional Offer of Employment, or ICO.

While this sounds a lot like a bona fide job offer, don't count your chickens just yet: an ICO is really just government slang for "maybe we'll hire you, if we don't hire someone even more qualified first."

Languishing on the Register

Receipt of an ICO means only that your name will be placed on a rank ordered register of eligible hires. Score well on the FSOA, and your name will be near the top of the list; score poorly, and you could expire on the register.

For example, suppose that your oral assessment score is a cumulative 5.4. You immediately receive an ICO, and the State Department places your name on the register, ahead of everyone who received less than a 5.4.

However, your name is still behind anyone who received higher than a 5.4, and everyone who received a 5.4 prior to you. Also, if another candidate receives a score of 5.5 tomorrow, then their name will be added to the register ahead of your name, regardless of the fact that you were on the register first.

The more people who score a 5.5 or better, the longer it will take for you to be hired. If your name hasn't progressed near enough to the front of the line after eighteen months, it will be automatically removed, and you must begin the entire process again, with the FSWE.

Language Points to the Rescue!

This is where your foreign language skills save the day, and you win the job. Consider the following scenario:

Your best friend spent a few months on a departmentally credited party abroad in Costa Rica, sipping Guaro, surfing, and "studying" Spanish with her Cuban boyfriend-slash-dictionary. You, on the other hand, spent eight semesters chipping your way through the permafrost of Cyrillic alphabet and Russian grammar. You froze your yagoditsi off for two semesters in St. Petersburg, because a culturally authentic taste for suffering a la Russe requires that you live Solzhenitsyn, not just read him.

Despite the hard time you've done, your Russian is still roughly on par with your well-tanned amiga's Spanish, because - let's face it - Spanish is just not that tough.

The State Department thinks you and your Tico friend should each be rewarded for bringing a language to the table. However, it thinks you should be rewarded more.

Your friend, as a speaker of a World Language, will receive 0.17 additional points on her ICO register score. But you, as a speaker of a Critical Needs Language, will seal the deal with a bonus of 0.4 points.

Calculating Your Language Points

Suppose, in the example above, that you and your friend both scored a 5.4 on the FSOA. You both receive ICO's, and you are both placed on the register. To improve your positions, both of you sit for telephone interviews with a State Department linguist in your respective foreign languages, which you both pass.

Because she speaks a World Language, your Guaro-guzzling friend's score will rise from 5.4 to (5.4 + 0.17 =) 5.57. Her chances of being hired have gone from middling to hopeful. However, because you speak a Critical Needs language, your score has leapt from 5.4 to (5.4 + 0.4 = ) 5.8.

Your chances are now very strong. It might not be next week, but you had better start thinking about selling the house, because more likely than not, you will be getting "the call" to an A-100 training class.

Of course, both of you are better off than your other classmate, a charismatic charmer who applied his talents to score a 5.5 on the FSOA, but has, sadly, always ignored foreign languages.

World Languages

The State Department defines a 'World Language' as any foreign language used to conduct foreign relations in its embassies and consulates abroad. Spanish, French, and German are all examples of world languages.

Critical Needs Languages

Russian, Arabic, and Urdu are difficult languages for native English speakers to acquire. Since they are difficult to learn, there are relatively few Americans who have mastered them. Also, these languages are spoken in politically volatile regions, where the US focuses large amounts of diplomatic energy.

To ensure a steady pool of candidates with capabilities in these languages, the State Department has classified them as Critical Needs languages, awarding them the greatest number of bonus points possible on the ICO register.

While most Critical Needs languages are rare and/or difficult to acquire, not all rare and difficult languages qualify. Czech, for example, is difficult for native speakers of English to acquire, and is spoken by relatively few people. However, the Czech Republic is a small, peaceful nation that poses neither a threat to the US nor a drain on her diplomatic resources. Therefore, Czech is categorized by the State Department as a World Language, and receives fewer points.

Is My Language on the List?

The following is the State Department's current (as of this writing) official list of Critical Needs Languages:

- Arabic

- Chinese (Cantonese and Standard/Mandarin)

- Indic languages (Urdu, Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, Punjabi)

- Iranian languages (Farsi/Persian, Dari, Tajiki, Pashto)

- Korean

- Russian

- Turkic Languages (Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Turkmen, Uzbek)

Almost any foreign language that is not a Critical Needs language would qualify as a World Language, as long as the State Department has even a limited need for speakers of that language.

Multiple Languages

Unfortunately, the State Department only awards points to candidates for one language, and the maximum number of points that a candidate can accrue through language testing is 0.4 .

If you happen to speak Arabic, Russian, and Czech (0.4, 0.4, and 0.17 points, respectively), you can still only achieve a maximum of 0.4 additional points by testing successfully in Russian or Arabic.

If you fail both the Russian and Arabic speaking tests, you can still qualify for 0.17 points for Czech, or you can wait 6 months to retake Russian or Arabic.

It Pays to Study a CNL

For those aspiring diplomats who are considering which language to study, here is the best advice: study a Critical Needs Language. If Arabic, Chinese or Russian don't kill you, they will only make you a stronger candidate for hire.