Hmmm… it’s kind of funny.
Sometimes you get to the point that you think you have all the time in
the world. After a year in Pakistan I’ve
been just kicking back and enjoying my time with the family and when it comes
to this blog I haven’t really been focused on anything except finishing The
Chair… slowly by surely.
Now that The Chair is finished, I’ve been looking over my blog
posts and I’ve realized I haven’t said word one about Suriname, which just seems
bizarre! I guess I thought I would have
plenty of time. Especially since this
was supposed to be a three year tour.
But now… now it’s not. I leave
next month. Crazy.
Now, I know I’ve hinted at about this transfer in my last
couple of posts without getting into any details, but it is official. Nine months into my three year tour… and it’s
over.
You see a couple things have happened since the New Year. The first and probably the most important is
that I was tenured. The coveted tenure! I guess being tenured is a pretty big deal in
the Foreign Service. I was actually
tenured with Cobb County before leaving to join the State Department… and on
both occasions it didn’t really feel all that special. Just something that happens on the road to
retirement.
But, unlike being tenured in with Cobb County, being tenured
within the Foreign Service comes with some very interesting prospects… like
career mobility.
In previous posts I’ve talked a bit about how folks within
the Foreign Service bid for jobs. Aka,
how we lobby for assignments. For the
most part, people are hired for specific specialties and when they bid for
assignments, they bid on jobs within their specific specialties. However,
once a Specialist is tenured, they are allowed to branch out and bid for jobs outside
their scope. Now, I won’t say bidding
outside your specialty is abnormal. But
it is certainly more difficult to land the coveted job. And a lot of the times, the attempts are
unsuccessful. At least for Specialists.
It is not abnormal for Generalist (also known as Officers)
to jump around specialties (or ‘cones’ as they call them), but for a Specialist
the process is harder and not as common.
Anyway, once I was tenured I became curious about the
process. How exactly would it work for
me to jump into a different specialty… or even into a Generalist’s cone? So I started asking around. The general consensus was pretty much, “Well…
it’s pretty much impossible… but you can always try. Just don’t get your heart set on anything;
you’ll just set yourself up for disappointment.” I am paraphrasing, but this sentiment came
from numerous people who had been in the service for quite a while.
However, all I really heard was, “you can always try.” I’m a firm believer trying. I don’t believe you can get anywhere unless
you try. If you don’t try, where does
that get you? Nowhere.
If bidding on jobs outside my specialty really was
impossible, like so many people seemed to believe, we wanted to know where in
the process it would fall apart. So,
Serena and I sat down, updated my resume, and decided to ‘stress-test’ the
system.
We picked seven positions on the NOW List, which is a listing
of unfilled jobs in need of warm bodies, and sent them my resume. It was a Tuesday morning. And by the close of business four of them had
responded.
On Wednesday, one of those posts submitted my name to their
hiring bureau in Washington expressing interest. Equally intrigued by my background and work
history, they contacted my references that evening.
By Thursday afternoon my references had responded and the
hiring bureau contacted my assignments officer in-charge of Paramaribo,
Suriname to see if she would be willing to let me go. My assignments officer, who is simply amazing,
immediately saw what this new assignment would mean for me and orchestrated a
deal to release me from my current assignment.
By the close of business Thursday the deal was done and by
Friday afternoon I received the official ‘handshake’ (or job offer) from the
new assignment, which is a Generalist Chief of Section position three
pay-grades above mine. Insiders call
this a “triple-stretch outside of cone or area of specialty”. I just call it “awesome”.
So… here I go… off to another continent. This time it’s Africa… the horn of Africa to
be exact… Asmara, Eritrea. And just like
all great rewards, they come with great sacrifice.
SchutzHappens is going unaccompanied again.
