Foreign Service Oral Assessment Case Management Exercise
January 22, 2009
After you’ve finished the group exercise, you’ll have a few minutes. Enjoy them! Fight the urge to debrief yourself on your performance. What’s done is done, so keep your cool for the next exercise. The order of the next two (case management and the structured interview) varies a bit, but this is the order I did them. You’ll have 90 minutes to sift through a stack of papers. You’ll find a memo from a hypothetical superior explaining a problem and asking for a fresh set of eyes. Your job is to review the documentation and write a memo resolving the problem. You don’t need to know embassy policies, but you do need to show good judgment. (That’s what they say; I’m pretty sure that if you know embassy policies, it has to help. At least on a subconscious level, I would think they’d be more likely to recognize a good idea if it was within their training and experience. Here is the manual if you’re interested.) Your goal is to rifle through the stack of papers, ignore irrelevant documents, and pick up important facts. State recommends you spend 30 minutes reading the papers, 45 minutes writing the memo, and 15 minutes reviewing. That seems as good as anything I can come up with. I’d recommend focusing on these dimensions:
• Experience and Motivation
• Information Integration and Analysis
• Judgment
• Objectivity and Integrity
• Quantitative Analysis
• Resourcefulness
• Written Communication
Of course, if the scenario allows you to demonstrate other dimensions, shoot for the stars. I think the hardest part for most people is weeding through the documents that don’t provide much while still picking up the relevant details needed to write the memo. Bring a watch, keep track of time, and do your best. This one is done on computer, so one of the few things you can do to prepare for the orals during the brief time after your written test is practice typing. Focus on the task at hand, but no one is watching you; you can breathe and take your time. For me, this was the most relaxed part of the test.
This post is part of my unofficial Guide to the Foreign Service Exam.
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FSOT
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This was actually the only one of the three I passed. I passed overall though so I must have done well on it and just barely failed the others.
My additional bit of advice, besides learning to weed out the irrelevant, is to not trust the numbers. I found math errors. I also found conflicting numbers. So just because an email from so-and-so says it costs this much, don’t take that as gospel.
Wow, that’s unexpected. I passed the section, but I certainly don’t remember any math errors. I hope I didn’t just go with them…
This reminds me of the MPT portion of the bar exam. You don’t know of any “practice exams” for this portion, do you?
There’s one concrete example on page 7 of the official info: http://careers.state.gov/docs/3.0_Oral_Assessment.pdf
Two quick questions.
1) How long does the oral assessment last? Is it a full day? If it starts at 7:00 a.m., will it be over by 5? earlier? later?
2) Do I wear business attire. . . like a suit?
Thanks!
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About how long should the completed memo be?
@ Meredith,
The completed memo for the group exercise is very short, 3-4 sentences at most. No need to budget more than 1-2 minutes to write it.