Becoming a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. is a painful process. Of the 17 to 20,000 applicants who sit for the Foreign Service exam each year, three quarters fail to move on to the second round of oral interviewing. At the suggestion of McKinsey, however, the State Department is considering introducing new elements to the application process to make it less rigid and ease the search for the "Total Candidate." Alongside the exam, which they will revamp for online seatings, applicants will be asked to submit a "structured résumé" of their work experience, foreign residence, leadership experience and language abilities, among other things. Then, according to the NYT,
[...] on the basis of the test results and résumé, combined in some undisclosed metric, a screening committee will decide who goes on to the oral assessment.
There is concern, however, among Foreign Service vets that adding such factors would mean that the Service would be "dumbed down." But according to one officer,
Testing people on their general knowledge, their ability to parse questions, is a poor standard for bringing people into the Foreign Service [...] You get people who are well educated, and understand the relationship of inflation and interest rates. But the test doesn't measure more important things, like good judgment.
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