Mid-Level Bidding: Round Three!

(New to the process of mid-level bidding? This primer from my 2018 experience will bring you up to speed.) 

Greetings from still-in-El-Salvador where we've just crested our third year and due to my tour extension are headed into the final stretch with one year to go. This means I'm now at bat for another rousing inning in the game we call bidding. To be more precise, I'm in the warm-up circle, taking some swings, sizing up the pitcher, looking for weak spots among the fielders where I might be successful in finding a gap and sprinting to base. At this point in the game, I'm still confidently/naiively imagining I have the chops to get to at least second. However, the competition is tough and the reality is that many good players will strike out in their bidding at-bat as again this year there are fewer bases than batters. Therefore a lot of folks will end up back on the bench.  

Where's the bench? That's a matter of opinion, eye of the beholder and all. Fortunately, one player's bench is another's home run.  For me, the bench is in Washington, DC. Not because I disliked my DC tour and two years of free museums - quiet the opposite, I loved my job and office. It's my bench specifically because spending about $65,000 in rent when I'm a tour or two from retirement would not be a wise investment decision. And no, we're not going to buy a place.

This means I'm left swinging for the fences in the hopes of landing a position that I could not only be relatively successful at, but my husband will enjoy, our cats won't hate, and that might even be kinda' fun. No pressure.

Here's the suspense-building timeline:

About May 2022:

Look at the Projected Vacancies list.  

Ha! Who am I kidding? I started eyeballing this list the week I arrived here three years ago!  Not out of disatisfaction - not at all - but because it is a compulsion, nay, an addiction that the Department fuels via a constant drip-feed of "What's the next adventure? Thinking of a promotion? Oooh, I want to work with THAT person again - where are they going next?" Keep your eye on the horizon, woman! What changed in May was that the list began to gel and offer a somewhat more realistic view of what would be its final version in September. 

June. 

Okay, Maybe Late May As I Couldn't Contain Myself:

Start contacting the incumbents (the people currently in the position I'm considering) and ask a bunch of questions about what the job's like, what are the challenges, what are the pleasures, what's the morale, what is the country like? These responses are sometimes standardized by posts, generally encourage bidders, occasionally are refreshingly frank, but more often depend on the personal outlook of the writer. It can be a mixed bag and so gathering more intel sources is required. 

I suggest getting the inside scoop from anyone you know who has served there.  The old fashioned way...

Here are some of my favorite responses that were instrumental in narrowing my choices, for better or worse:

• Did you read the OIG report?
• Local staff are knowledgeable about the country's generous local labor laws and take full advantage of them.  
• I would say the section would benefit from someone with experience navigating performance improvement and HR issues. 
• Re driving: All these men who grew up watching "The Fast and The Furious" suddenly found themselves behind the wheel of a car with predictable results. It genuinely made doing anything that involved a drive intensely taxing. We nearly got into serious accidents on every outing.
• Want to know what housing is like on a partially closed military base? Google Chernobyl. 
• I would describe the environment as light-hearted and low-impact. Very rarely do I feel challenged here. 
• This country could not possibly add any stress to your life. If you like excitement, this is not the place for you. Your day is almost always going to be exactly what you expect. 
• The workload is manageable and we are fully staffed.
• The locally employed staff are extremely experienced and highly knowledgeable; several staff members have been in the section more than 20 years and are an absolute joy to work with. 

Key phrases like "hidden gem," "fully staffed," "great weather," and "amazing produce" caught my eye, too.

June-July-August

While continuing to whittle down the best options, we also have to start marketing ourselves for these jobs. That requires gathering recommendations from current and former colleagues. As I'm only bidding on consular jobs, I have to request 7-15 Consular Bidders Assessment Tools, aka CBATs or 360s, selected from supervisors, peers, and supervisees who we can reasonably expect will: 

A. Be responsive and willing to take the 15-20 minutes on your behalf;

B. Say something positive about our performance, or at least not too damaging.

 

September 12- The Green Flag Drops and the Race is ON

The final version of the bid list is published! My list ended up with just over 100 options, not a bad start. We must now submit our Statement of Interest. Again, this is the Consular Affairs process, which differs from other bureaus. The Statement of Interest includes three standard questions that will help CA/EX, the office making the decisions on consular jobs, put just the right person in just the right job, or that's the theory anyway. Here are the questions:

1. What experiences and skills make you competitive for these positions?
2. What professional development opportunities do you hope to gain from these positions?
3. Are there other factors affecting your bidding preferences?

The instructions, in brief:

• We will refer to this statement throughout the bidding process, so keep it direct and succinct.  (Read: Don't make us wade through a bunch of wordy, over-personal babble again and again. It won't make us love you.)
• Save your edits and re-writes for your EER! (Friendly chuckle tone implies that one can simply dash off responses to the above questions.)

My translation:  Spend entire Sunday crafting just the right "This is what I can do for YOU!" statement that is confident, professional, polished, error and typo-free while at the same time guiding them to conclude only that Vancouver, BC is what I mean by "close to elderly family" and not Nogales; or "opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a multi-post mission" clearly refers to the United Kingdom and not China.

Phew, that's done. Oh, I should note that we can't make corrections once the big submit button is hit. Again - no pressure.

Next, add your position preferences in priority order. This is the fun part. Fun part for me because for the past few months I've been carefully updating my color-coded Priority List spread sheet, tweaking it ever so slightly until it represents exactly my Dream Post wish list. Or for some, usually tandem couples, the pick-the-least-poisonous-posts list. This year mine has ten posts. Oops no, nine posts. I just learned that one post requires imported pets to be present in the country of export for six months prior to arrival in country (or something complicated like that that I didn't want to risk). That ain't going to work. Sayonara Singapore.  

This list, fortunately, can be updated anytime as the bid season moves on. And trust me, it will be, as we have conversations with CA/EX that may go something like this:

"We see your preferred positions are quite heavily bid. For example, while you listed lovely, stable, English-speaking Zambia - how would you feel instead about a year of language and then going just next door to somewhat less-stable and war-riddled Democratic Republic of Congo? I mean, they're so close and all. Remember, not everyone can go to Sydney, Paris or Tokyo!" 

Cocktail party laughter ensues. 

September and October - 

Consultative Versus Non-Consultative Postions: A Primer

Essentially, jobs that are chiefs of section (Consular Chief instead of just American Citizen Services Chief or Immigrant Visa Chief, for example) are considered "consultative" meaning that post is consulted on who they might like in that role. This person will sit at the big table as part of the embassy country team so it's understandable that post has some say in who that is, but still CA/EX has the final word. How posts discern who their top candidates are requires a good old fashioned resume and references submission and a job interview. This year, I've selected two such consultative positions. For one, a less-popular post, I was offered an interview immediately and had a lovely conversation with the (sort of) decision makers. Fingers crossed. For the second, a heavily-bid annual favorite, they will review my CBATs and then decide if I made it to the swimsuit and talent, interview round.

The remainder of my selected posts are non-consultative, in which case I can just send courtside tickets tucked surreptitiously into fruit baskets to the decision makers - and light candles. 

That's where we are now. Oh wait, I forgot one step: The regular refreshing of the bid count list! The number of people who have submitted bids on all posts is updated thrice daily. This update schedule is posted primarily, in my opinion, to keep us productive throughout the day and prevent us from wearing out the refresh button. My nine bids are registering bid counts from four to 15 and we're only on Day 3.  I eyeball posts with 0-3 bids, just in case, and find myself musing, "Kuwait, hmmm - once you hit 115 degrees the rest is just academic, right?"  

Up Next: October 31 - The Big Reveal... for Some