State Dept. having staffing trouble

[quaoar]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-11-30-state-staffing_x.htm

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - The State Department is having a hard time filling jobs with experienced people in places it identifies as extreme hardship posts.

This has compounded the pressure U.S. diplomats face in locations where they are needed to fight terrorism and Islamic radicalism. The risk of such areas requires staff to leave families at home.

< snip >

As a result, according to department records, up to one-third of the jobs, which include political, economic and consular work, are filled by people lacking the desired experience. Most of the positions are for one year, which means diplomats often don't have time to master the local languages and have difficulty doing their jobs.

John Limbert, a former U.S. ambassador to Sudan, says he was the only fluent Arabic speaker at the U.S. Embassy there.

[skooooo]

1. omg!

People deride the Humanities as worthless, and this is the result. No one studies languages.

[Robeson]

12. Bingo. You've said it nicely and succinctly.....

...this nation thinks only one culture is important, itself. My first visit to Europe, made me realize why we're called, the colonies. Because we still are...

[Hissyspit]

2. Would you want to work for an admin that has no respect for your highest

skills and ideals? Would you want to work for this administration, period?

[kenny blankenship]

3. Really, state has been crapped on hard under Bush

It's like the DoD has subsumed all of State's regular functions. Anything important is decided on and publicly represented by von Rumsfeldt's goons, by uniforms, or by selected Neocon retreads like Johns Bolton and Negroponte, genetically engineered for their Vulcan purity.

[Orsino]

4. Too many people now failing the political litmus test? n/t

[spindrifter]

5. Don't forget

some of these "hardship post" positions are actually CIA. I suspect some of them may be even deeper than CIA. In many respects working for State is worse than being in the military. Remember, you have to espouse the administration's line. How many of us would be able to do that?
They typically have sent people to crappy posts at the beginning of their careers--doing visa approvals--then they shift you back, often to D.C. for your next post, then you go somewhere else for 3 yrs. or so. They also furnish your house with "appropriate" furniture. Not sure if MZM has the contract. :woohoo: That wouldn't go over big in this household.

[msongs]

6. didn't buscho dump 90 arabic speakers where were...gasp..gay?

from the civil service or the military, due to don't ask don't tell?

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[meganmonkey]

16. Aaah yes - I remember reading that

I don't recall the exact number but it was significant.

:eyes:

[goforit]

7. LOL!!!....Who would want to defend Bush's faux democracy/pro fascism

policies?

My god!!!...Can you imagine promoting torture(S&M), secret prisons,
loss of individual rights, ethnic cleansing through pre-emptive war,
destruction of the environment, degrading of womans rights,
leadership removal, boycotts, drug trade, enforcing genetically modified foods,irradication of stem-cell research, demanding that only one religion exist, irradication of world family planning and finally and not least of all.....

illegally removing and stealing other govt's "BLACK OIL"!!!!!

What a job!!!

It would be like joining Satan's army.

Well, I guess Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will be filling out their applications asap.

[Nomen Tuum]

8. Sorry, I'm not a good liar

That disqualifies me right at the start :-(

[liberal43110]

9. I turned down a State Dept job offer a few years ago

It was with the Foreign Service, the diplomatic corps, the type of jobs the piece mentions (I would have been with the economics group). The senior Foreign Service officer who was recruiting me admitted that he had squirmed his way out of ever doing a stint in Washington DC (he had been there about 30 years and you're supposed to do 2 2-year posts in Washington for every 10 years) because it was so unbearable. Clearly, that wasn't just because of Bush.

From what I could gather from employees, people were miserable. It seemed like a horrible place to work, and I figured I didn't need to join the Foreign Service to find a job I hated: I could do that here at home! Even a few years ago, I was told that some of the most remote posts didn't have internet access. Old equipment, lots and lots and lots of ugly politics, spending most of your day arguing over which exact word to use in the daily cable back to Washington.

It was a cool interview, though. You have to get score above a certain threshhold on the Foreign Service exam to get asked for an interview. It was like 8 hours. There was a traditional interview, role playing, group exercises, impromptu speaking and writing. Very cool.

[quaoar]

10. I passed the Foreign Service Officer exam years ago

right after I got out of college. During the interviews they asked me what I would think if Italy elected a communist government. I said I didn't think it would be any big deal. Wrong answer. LOL

[Davis_X_Machina]

11. Did the test in the early 80's, under Reagan.

We were supposed to be the embassy staff in a hypothetical, but really Hatian-sounding Carribean country, with money to give to local gov't projects under Ronnie's Carribean Basin Initiative. (I'm sure you all remember that...)

Anyhoo, I was tasked with trying to get the embassy team to give the money to the local Ministry of the Interior for security equipment.

I screwed the pooch by admitting after the first five minutes that based on the briefing papers, they'd just use the stuff to repress dissent and violate human rights more efficiently.

Wrong move.

[Hekate]

13. You guys are funny. One of my cousins made it a career & has been posted

to glamour spots like Mukden. Right now he's in Nigeria, resisting being posted to Baghdad.

He's very conservative, and I think part of it is having spent so much time out of the country that he doesn't have a good sense of what is happening here in the US under Bush. A couple of years ago he was shocked at what I told him about the local impact of the National Guard call-up to active duty. I also tried to tell him how many Arabic-speakers had been canned for being gay, but he said that couldn't even be true -- not the foreign service. I said so maybe it was the military, but it sure enough was true (like the poster above I'm not sure which it was, only that it happened and it was unbelievably stupid).

We just hope he stays safe -- time enough to argue politics when he makes it back home.

Hekate

[Roy]

14. A job in this administration is like inviting a subpoena or

indictment.
After all if you don't get indicted or subpoenaed then you obviously are not doing the kind of job they hired you to do.

So, you will be fired anyhow.

[Demeter]

15. Would You Want to Work for Condi, Bush, Cheney?

Not if you weren't a grifter on the payoff list. If you had any brains and useful skills, you'd seek some other employer, or wait for 2008.