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I'm Brooks Robinson. I'm the diplomat in residence based at the University of California Berkeley
covering the Pacific Northwest. I'm one of 16 diplomats in residence around the country
doing public outreach and recruiting for careers and internships with the US Department of
State. I'm a 25 year verteran of the Foreign Service and grew up in California.
We have a wonderful student internship program. In fact I brought a brochure about it which
I'll be sharing in my programs today - Become a Student of the World. We have student internships
in the spring, summer, and fall quarters or semesters. These are ten weeks long. About
half of our interns spend their internships in Washington at our headquarters and about
half spend them at our embassies and consulates all over the world. They are open to students
who are sophomores now and who will be returning to student status after their internship as
a junior, senior, or grad student. The deadlines to apply are quite early. So, for summer 2011
the deadline was last November 2010. The deadline for the Fall quarter of 2011 is March 1. And
this is because students, similar to Foreign Services Officers themselves, have to have
a security clearance to do the work and that can take some time. I should add as well that
in addition to being a returning student, applicants to the student intern program must
also be American citizens.
That's a good question. There is actually no requirement for even a bachelor’s degree
to enter the foreign service. For most of the career tracks you need to be an American
citizen, and you need to be at least 21 years old, and no older than 59. You don’t need
a foreign language, you don’t have to have lived abroad. One of the things that we do
as diplomats in residence is recruit for diversity. And we mean that in the broadest sense- regional
diversity, that’s why we have 16 diplomats in residence around the country, ethnic diversity,
gender balance of course, and also diversity in the type of academic or professional background
that people have. This is because we want to build a foreign service that looks like
America. The people that represent America abroad should be like America.
There are two general types of foreign service positions, foreign service officers have five
different career tracks, and that’s the category, none of those five require a bachelor’s
degree, and entry to the foreign service officer track is through the Foreign Service Written
Test. That's the starting process. And that test is offered three times a year, typically
February, June, and October. Then there are another seventeen or 20 foreign service specialist
tracks, and these are often what you might think of as the support positions, although
many of them do require bachelor’s degrees, unlike the officer track, these are the engineers
that build and maintain our communications system. These are building engineers to design
and build and maintain our embassy facilities overseas and in Washington. We have human
resources specialists, office managers, all kinds, diplomats, security agents, these are
all foreign service specialist tracks, and entry into those is through our websites,
which is careers.state.gov, and on the website you can see how to apply. Applications for
those are as and when openings are announced. For officers, it's a constant rolling entry
process through the test. For specialists it's entry only as and when a window is open
and we need to hire people. Both types of foreign service employees require the same
basic qualities or skills. Something we call the thirteen dimensions. I'm not sure why
we call them dimensions, but we do. This booklet which is on our website - The Guide to the
Selection Process - has a list and description of those thirteen dimensions on page 29. And
some of them are things that are obvious, cultural adaptability, anyone going to live
abroad needs that. Others you might not necessarily think of but they're things like integritiy
and good judgement. Because when you represent America abroad you do so 24/7 and you have
to represent policies and protect our reputation with great integritiy. These thirteen dimensions
are really at the heart of what we're looking for. A lot of these qualities are things that
most people don't get out of a school book or the classroom. A lot of these things you
get from life experience, work experience. And for that reason, the median age of people
entering the foreign service as officers is 31. It just can take a little while to get
the kinds of experiences that give you these qualities. And we need all thirsteen of these
qualities from day one on the job because from day 1 when you arrive at an embassy you'll
be in a position of great responsibility and need to draw on a lot of skills. We think
that we have the gold standard of selection processes. It's very similiar in many ways
to what some of the major international corporations do when they're recruiting their managers,
middle, mid, and senior level managers. I think one of the signs that our selection
process is a good one is that retention is very high. We are hiring the right people.
To enter the foreign service you don’t have to have any language other than English. You
need to have good English skills, but you don’t need any other language than English.
If you need a language to do a job, we will train before we send you there.
Thanks for asking that. We have embassies and consulates in 189 countries I think it
is. Almost every country in the world. Any language is one that we are going to need
people qualifies in. That being said, we have six super critical needs languages. These
are Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Dari, Farces, and Ordu, and these are considered
super critical needs, because these languages are spoken in parts of the world where we
are expanding our diplomatic presence pretty significantly, and we don’t already have
a core of people with those language skills. So, if there are University of Oregon students
who have those skills, or even non-students who have those skills, they can get a few
extra points in the entry process. They still have to qualify, but it can mean that they
can be hired more quickly than people without those skills.
Really anthing from anthropology to zoology. We want a foreign service that is diverse
as I said, but also the work of the US government overseas involves just about every field of
expertise you can imagine. For example, increasing issues around the environment and sciencea
nd techology developments are increasingly important to us both in the multi-national
venues like the United Nations, but also in our bi-laterial relationships, our country
with another country. So, people coming in with those kinds of skills can often find
a lot of job opportunities.
The heart and soul of our selection process for foreign service officers is those thirteen
dimensionsI talked about. In addition to those we are looking for people with a really solid
and broad base of knowledge about American history, American government, American society,
geography, current affairs, as well as world geography and world current affairs. We’re
looking for people, this is how I think of it, we want our diplomats to be well-rounded,
well-informed American citizens of the world. One of the tips that I give people who are
planning to take the Foreign Service Written Test is to read the NY Times or some other
good newspaper everyday. Read the Economist magazine every week. It's a wonderful news
weekly for current affairs. If you do that kind of thing you'll be broadly informed about
what's happening in the world and that's it. And in America. And those are good preparations.
Other than that, really just about anything you may do can help you can help you gain
one or more of those thirteen dimensions. So if you're in a student organization then
you're learning how to work well with others. If you're volunteering through a church group
or some other kind of organization you're learning certain skills that will help you
in the challenging and wonderful workplace that the State Department is.