Once upon a time, I was interested in becoming an FSO (Foreign Service Officer) with the US Department of State. I passed the FSOT (Foreign Service Officer Test) but that was, apparently, not good enough.
Episode Transcript
Failure is… something I am very familiar with. If you’ve ever listened to this podcast at all, or if you’ve even looked at the titles of these episodes, you’ll know that I have failed many times, at many things.
I have a long list of failures throughout my life, some of which bother me a lot, and some of which were just annoying.
When I was still actively singing, for example, I failed my audition for the Metropolitan Opera, twice. Then I failed to get into the music program at the college I wanted to go to shortly after that. Earlier in life, I failed at my first attempt at moving away from my parents’ home at age 17. I couldn’t quite figure out how to get a job and support myself, so I had to move back home and try again later the next year.
Every time I fail, I go through the same complicated process of grief, and then try to decide what to do next. Try again? Start over? Do something different? Give up?
One of the strangest failures I’ve experienced, though, I must say, was when I failed the hiring process for becoming a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State. Also, in certain ways, it hurt more than some of my other failures.
So, this episode is all about how I tried to join the US Department of State as a diplomat in the Foreign Service and failed.
First of all, I should state at the beginning that I have no military or government experience whatsoever. I’ve never worked in any government role or served in the armed forces, or run for office, or done anything even remotely political. So how on earth did I find myself in September of 2019, sitting in front of a computer at a Pearson-Vue testing center in Denver, taking the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT)?
It’s kind of a long story. Here goes…
That year, I had just completed one of the strangest seasons of my life.
My wife and I had moved in 2016 from Colorado Springs up to Boulder County in Northern Colorado, where we didn’t know a soul, so we could finally finish school. My wife was a full-time student at CU Boulder, in Boulder, and I was a full-time student at Metropolitan State University in Denver. Yes, that’s right: my wife and I were both full-time students, as were all five of our kids, so we had seven people all going to school full-time all at the same time. But I’ll save that for another episode. Suffice it to say that these three years were the weirdest, most challenging, and most depressing years of my life. Most of it remains a blur, and I wouldn’t even remember half of what happened during that season except for the fact that I took thousands of photos. My wife and I still look back and wonder how we even survived.
Anyway, in May of 2019, I finally graduated from college after 16 long years of sporadically taking classes on nights and weekends. I was finally, FINALLY an actual graduate, from a real-live, accredited institution of higher education. For the first time in my life, I could now, as a 33-year-old man, check the box “bachelor’s degree” on official forms and paperwork that asked about my educational background instead of having to select “some college” like I’d had to with embarrassment up until that point.
A few years before, in 2017, I had gotten laid off from my job working for a coding boot camp in Boulder… which now meant I had been laid off from three separate companies over the years. In each case, I lost my job not due to my own performance, but because of economic factors and bad management. But no matter the root cause, the end result was that I had completely lost faith in all employers who could (and did!) hire me or fire me on a whim.
So I had fired up my on-again-off-again web design and digital marketing company and was working for myself full-time, going full speed ahead. But I didn’t like it.
I’ve always said that I’m an “accidental entrepreneur,” because I never intentionally set out to be my own boss. I started my own business out of sheer necessity when I got laid off the very first time, the day before Thanksgiving, in 2009, when the home-building company I worked for was decimated by the Great Recession.
I never really wanted to be self-employed, and the whole “I am my own man, and I have grand dreams and visions and I want to conquer the world and nobody can tell me what to do” thing really isn’t me.
I always wanted to be a part of something. I still do. I don’t like being a leader, and I don’t like having followers. My preference is to find a larger movement, cause, or organization, that is doing things and going places I like, then hitch my wagon to them. The problem is, every time I do that, they end up kicking me to the curb.
But I am still interested in being a part of something bigger than myself that is important and meaningful. I’ve always been looking for that opportunity, whatever it is, and I think I still am and will be for perpetuity. How can I make a meaningful contribution to the world, my friends, and family, and the people around me? How can I do something extraordinary?
So when I was in my last few semesters at Metro State University in Denver, I met with the career counselor a few separate times to discuss big things like this. It was kind of weird at first: talking to a woman I didn’t know at all, and who didn’t know me, about “my career” and “my future” and “what I want to do when I finish college” as a man in my 30s who was currently self-employed and didn’t need a job seemed really strange.
It was kind of like “Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted,” as my grandpa would say.
Or, perhaps to use a better analogy, it was like I had gotten married at 20, had 5 kids in 6 years, finally got serious about going to college, did it, and was now graduating at age 33, and deciding what I want to do for a living after being in the workforce for over 17 years… because that’s exactly what happened.
But whatever… choose your analogy: launching a ship out into the ocean and then deciding on a destination? Breaking ground on a new house and then designing it? It’s all the same.
Here I was, as an adult man, meeting with a professional counselor whose job it was all day, every day, to meet with college students and help them prepare for their career of choice, at no additional cost to me. What a great opportunity!
I tried to ignore the fact that I had just gotten a degree that I didn’t need anymore since I was self-employed and focus on the potential for a career switch. What if I could have a do-over? What would I choose if I could do something completely different?
I met with the counselor and we decided that I would think about it like I was starting from scratch: pretend I didn’t have any work experience at all and just ask questions like “What am I good at? What are my strengths and skills? What am I interested in?”
So I took the SII (Strong Interest Inventory) for the second time in my life. The first time I took this potential career assessment when I was around 16 years old, it gave me a list of 5 or 10 potential career options. Most of them were super interesting so I don’t even remember what they were except the top two: “medical records technician” and “restaurant manager.” I decided that managing medical records would be boring, so I decided to chase down the second option and tried working in food service.
But after three dead-end jobs in the industry (a waiter at a diner, a banquet server at a hotel, and a busboy at an Italian restaurant), I gave up and went into construction, even though I didn’t like it, because it was more dependable.
Well, it was more dependable work until it wasn’t… and I got laid off as I mentioned earlier. Which is why I started my own business, and, okay, blah, blah, blah, that’s all boring backstory stuff.
So, anyway, after I took the SII “Strong Interest Inventory Profile with College Profile and Interpretive Report,” this time around, I met with the counselor and we reviewed my results and I really dug in this time to think proactively about a better future option that was suited to me, and not just something accepting a career I could do to make money out of necessity.
So this time around, my top five occupations were:
- Public relations director
- Broadcast journalist
- Advertising account manager
- Marketing manager
- Musician
None of these were a surprise, and it was clear that a few of them simply showed that I was interested in the work and artistic endeavors I was already doing.
Long story short, though, after a few different conversations with her, my scratch notes near the very top of the first page said “Department of State.”
That’s right, our conversations led to the conclusion that perhaps one of the best career options for me would be working for the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer. This woman had placed several recent graduates into internships with multiple federal agencies such as the SEC, DOJ, etc.
Although that had not been on my radar screen at ALL before taking this test, and this conclusion would have shocked me just a few weeks earlier, it actually made quite a bit of sense in the big picture.
Personality-wise, I’m naturally a diplomatic person. I have served in many quasi-diplomatic roles on a small scale: marketing and advertising is already a somewhat diplomatic role, serving as a liaison between an organization and the public at large. Plus, running tech Meetups, organizing and attending networking meetings, occasionally speaking at educational events, and just being a salesman, in general, all require skills that are diplomatic in nature. They require clear communication, a good understanding of human nature, reading body language, relationship building, finding common ground, and occasionally resolving conflict.
Going back even further, the more I thought about this, the more I realized that my childhood was, in a sense, fertile soil for absorbing diplomatic skills just by osmosis.
I grew up in Stockton, California, in a Mennonite home, and our family modeled “hospitality” better than just about anyone I’ve ever met, still to this day.
We served as a host family for international students at UoP (University of the Pacific), the nearby college. We constantly had people from other countries having dinner with us, staying with us, and even living with us at times. Many of the photos from my childhood include people with names like Risa, Miko, Tomoko, Mokoto, Atsushi, Faud, Stefan, Patrice, Hax, Eibun, and Nimila sitting next to me at the dinner table, smiling.
There was even a period of time when I shared my bedroom with a young man from Japan, although the fact that I threw a shoe at him to wake him up from a nap one time proves I wasn’t entirely hospitable, just yet.
My point being: I grew up in a home where our door was open to people from all over the world.
I heard men from Sri Lanka tell us about how both men and women there dye their hair with [red] henna, partially because of how it looks, and also because they believe it’s good for their skin and hair.
A woman from East Germany showed us 50 pfennig notgelds from Glauchau, which depict the legend of the Buttermilk Tower where the mayor imprisoned two farmers locked them in the tower, and forced them to drink sour milk. They gave us Kinder Eggs as presents, and her daughter let me listen to her cassette tapes of “Bibi Blocksberg, Die Kleine Hexe” and we learned to speak to each other by drawing pictures and using hand gestures.
A man from France taught me how to play a card game with a very naughty name: “bullshit.” “In our country, this word stinks a lot. I think it’s the same here, yes?”
A woman from China explained that her last name, “Qi,” was pronounced “chee” even though it starts with the letter Q.
A teenage girl from Japan who lived with us for a summer gave me a pair of blue pajamas that I wore constantly… until a different, older, young woman from Japan translated the Japanese characters on my PJs. “It says, ‘I am a crazy monkey,’” she told me, and I was so offended that I didn’t even want to wear them anymore.
(Incidentally, that second Japanese woman, by the way, eventually married my Uncle and now is my Aunt. Thank you, Aunt Yukie, for translating that for me).
All throughout these formative years, I saw my family host foreigners in our home, breaking bread, sharing meals, teaching them the language, showing them our holidays, and exposing them to a wide variety of American experiences, like hiking in Yosemite or eating chocolate at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco.
They learned from us, and we learned from them.
We cooked them Thanksgiving dinner, took them to stores where they could buy Batman and Superman tee shirts, showed them skateboarding, and mini-golf, and we watched movies with John Wayne and American Cowboys.
They cooked us their favorite meals using unique spices we had to buy at specialty stores, taught us how to make paper cranes with origami paper, and gave us weird gifts like hard candies that tasted like pine trees.
Even my parents had childhood experiences that lent themselves well to hospitality and diplomacy.
My mother was the daughter of missionaries, and she spent several years as a child in Ethiopia. When her family came back to the USA, they brought with them an obsession for Ethiopian food, which I still make and serve in my house to this day. Growing up, whenever I went to grandma and grandpa’s house in Fresno, Sunday lunch after church was always open to international refugees we had never met before, often from random war-torn countries I knew little about, like Lebanon, Laos, and Cambodia, and my grandpa led bible studies at a Korean church.
My father’s childhood was different, but also contributed to the Stauffer home being a place where relationships were easily made. He grew up in a military family, where his dad was an officer in the Air Force, and they lived in at least 9 different places, constantly forging new relationships, re-adjusting to different communities, and making strangers into friends. And, obviously, serving and representing America through its military.
So, fast forward a couple of decades. It’s 2019. I’m an adult. I work for myself. I’m a professional communicator, who writes, speaks publicly, shakes hands, and builds long-term relationships for a living. Every day I go out into the world, meet people who are total strangers, and turn them into my friends.
I’m also an opera singer, so I’m constantly learning new languages. By now, I’ve studied Italian, German, Spanish, and Latin at a college level, and have dabbled in a bit of French on my own.
In my spare time, I’m a volunteer English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at one language school for adult immigrants, and I’m a “conversation partner” doing mock interviews at a second language school, also for immigrants who have recently passed the GED test and are now seeking a job in America.
I’ve just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Storytelling where I spent hundreds of hours taking journalism courses, conducting interviews, researching, writing, cold-calling, and photographing people from all walks of life. My final projects included flying to Pennsylvania to research my Irish ancestors, then flying to San Francisco to report on the San Francisco Opera’s productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, then flying to Yosemite to walk up to random strangers from all over the world and ask them about their experiences coming to America and visiting our greatest National Park.
It all started to make sense: all of these experiences, and more, did seem like a great platform for launching me into a potential second career working in diplomacy at the Department of State.
A job where I can represent my country and culture, across the world, to people who are nothing like me and potentially don’t even speak my language? Now we’re talking.
A job where I can go to new and interesting places, meet people I’ve never met before, and find common ground to turn them into allies? I do that every day already.
A job where I can build relationships with people in a foreign land, learn about their culture, break bread with them, try their cuisine celebrate their holidays, and do the same for them while representing America abroad? That’s got my name all over it.
The more I looked into it, the more it seemed like a really natural fit.
One of the biggest differences between this potential career path and what I’d done up until this point, of course, was that it was government work. I had zero experience with that, and had never even applied for a government job before.
The closest I came was in 2007 when I met with a military recruiter and considered joining the US Marine Corps. Mostly out of a sheer sense of desperation, I was looking for a way to avoid bankruptcy, support my wife and two small children, and pay for college and health insurance. The idea of a “government job” was never appealing to me, except in this case, when the recruiter told me something like “There are no layoffs in the military.” Hmm…
I never did follow through with the Marines, mostly because it created conflict with my wife, who told me she “never wanted to be a military wife.”
Thinking of getting a job at State, though… that could be similar but even better by providing the same benefits, without the same level of risk.
Being self-employed, I don’t get paid a single dollar that I don’t earn myself. I essentially work for 100% commissions, nothing is ever guaranteed, and there’s no such thing as a normal paycheck, so getting a dependable job seemed very attractive.
The Foreign Service has a LOT of structure, and getting a job would provide me with an actual payday, along with health insurance, and a retirement fund. (It even has a mandatory retirement at age 65). In fact, the Department of State’s own website says it is “part of the nation’s largest, most stable employer, the U.S. Government.”
Now that sounds like a deal worth looking into. So I did.
Now, for background, when I told my wife about the Marines, she did not like that idea one bit. But when I told her about becoming a Foreign Service Officer, she said something like “I’m not thrilled about that, but… I’m listening.”
So I gently, carefully, talked with her about it, without being pushy, for a few weeks. The implications for our family would obviously be huge. Foreign Service Officers work in foreign countries. She asked if I could do something else that would keep us in the USA. I said that yes, we do have a domestic service, and I could apply for a job as a Civil Service professional, but I had absolutely no interest in that whatsoever. None.
No, I wanted to join the ranks that would send us overseas. That was the whole point! If I were to join a large employer where I could work stateside, I might as well do something already in my industry, like apply for a job at Google, or Twitter, which both had a presence in Boulder, a few miles down the road from where we lived.
And I wasn’t really interested in that… so, I applied at the Department of State.
The first step in becoming a Foreign Service Officer is to take the Foreign Service Officer Test or FSOT. They only offer this a few times a year, and you have to apply ahead of time and be accepted to take the test. So I wasn’t ready for that at first, but I decided to start with the very basics.
Working for the Department of State would require a deep well of knowledge that I didn’t quite have yet. To be sure, I am a student of history and I’ve spent my life studying geopolitics, foreign policy, economics, geography, and international relations in a loose, informal way. I’m totally obsessed with finding out the answer to basically every question ever asked in the history of the world, and I’m a rabid consumer of books and articles on a wide variety of topics. But I knew I’d need to brush up on some of the more specific knowledge needed in order to pass a test with hard questions about international diplomacy.
So I found the “Foreign Service Officer Suggested Reading List” and printed it out. I went over the entire list and looked them all up to see where I could buy them. This would have been quite an investment of time and money: the list had 50 books on it, and if I bought them all, I’d have to spend around $2,500. So I figured out how many of them I could get through my own library, especially as audiobooks, so I could listen to them and get work done at the same time.
I’ll be honest: the books on their suggested reading list were a total mixed bag. Some of them were excellent, and very helpful in painting a broader picture of societies in general and America’s historical and current place in the world.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Why Nations Fail, stand out in particular as some of the best and most interesting. I also subscribed to “Foreign Policy” magazine as recommended (and I still do today). That’s usually filled with excellent takes on current events, with an occasional rotten apple thrown in the mix.
But some of the recommendations were just awful. One book, in particular, “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America” is the worst book I’ve ever read in my entire life. I don’t mean the worst book I’ve ever read about history or politics: I mean the worst book I’ve ever read, period. Across all genres. With no exaggeration, I am telling you it was so awful I felt sick to my stomach for days afterward.
It was the most sickly, gruesomely depressing account of American history I could ever imagine. I wondered who on earth would write a book like this, and how a person like that could even get out of bed in the morning with such a miserable attitude and outlook on life.
I searched the internet for the author, Ronald Takaki, and it turned out—I kid you not—he had committed suicide. This was both shocking and not shocking at all. I don’t intend to make fun of him or make light of his death, but this man’s outlook on life was so grim, he couldn’t even take it. Really, it was such a bad book it almost felt like it was anti-American propaganda written by an avowed enemy of the USA, like a leader of the Worker’s Party in North Korea.
I can’t believe our own Department of State saw fit to put it front and center on their reading list for people who wanted to work for America. What a bizarre glitch in the matrix! I’m all for a diversity of opinions, and of course, it’s good to read criticism about a government you’re going to represent to the world so you can have the proper historical context, but the fact that some of this dismal junk comes recommended simply boggles the mind.
On a side note, How To Hide an Empire was equally critical of the USA, but better read, more balanced in perspective, and actually somewhat helpful as a resource.
One thing I noticed throughout this process was just how much of the reading I’ve already done on my own helped me have an informed opinion, and also helped me identify some of my strengths and weaknesses.
The publications on the Foreign Service’s recommended reading list were just icing on top.
Clearly, the reading list is just there to help refine what you already know. It’s not nearly enough to prepare you for the FSOT, much less being an FSO in and of itself. You need lots of life experience for that.
So anyway, I got through about 10 books on the reading list and decided “That’s enough… time to schedule the test.” So I did.
One nice thing about the FSOT is that you can prepare for it with an official practice exam. On the Department of State’s website, you can practice your knowledge by answering questions that were part of the official test in the past but have since been replaced.
So you can see how the questions are formed, and get a sense of the knowledge base you’ll be tested on. That was SUPER helpful. The practice test contains questions like:
The Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency arose as a result of conclusions drawn by policymakers in the aftermath of:
- A: World War II
- B: the Korean War
- C: Stalin’s death
- D: the East Berlin uprising of 1953
-and-
In the United States, there are primarily two levels of law: 1) the U.S. Constitution and 2):
- A: laws enacted by elected legislators.
- B: presidential recess decrees.
- C: Supreme Court rulings.
- D: local initiatives carried by a majority vote.
These are great questions, and the test was very stimulating. I took it a few different times, I think, and then scheduled the live test.
When it came time to take the FSOT, I got in my car and drove south to a testing center in a nondescript building in Wheat Ridge, just outside of Denver. I walked through the doors, removed my coat, emptied my pockets, and checked in with a man at the front desk. He got me all logged into the system, then I sat in the lobby until I was able to go to the testing room.
Throughout this entire process, I wasn’t really nervous; mostly just excited and curious about how it would all pan out. Do I know the material? Am I smart enough? Will my country find me worthy?
I was doing just fine and felt mentally prepared until a young woman (younger than me) came out of the testing center and signed out at the front desk. The desk clerk started chatting with the lady and I sat there, listening.
“How did it go? Was it harder than you expected? Or easier?”
“Oh, it was harder than I was prepared for.”
“Oh, wow. Well, best of luck to you. Hopefully, you pass then you can go jet-setting around the globe in style.”
He laughed, she laughed, and then she left.
And for some reason, this completely knocked me out of my relaxed, prepared mindset. I can’t even explain how much it bothered me that she said the test was harder than expected.
My mind started spiraling out of control, as I started doubting everything.
Had I prepared enough? Was I ready for this? Was it going to be harder than I expected? What if I failed? What if she passes, and I don’t?
What if I WAS going to pass, but now I’m getting so worried and worked up about this stupid little comment exchange — that didn’t even involve me — that it’s completely sabotaging me and I’m going to fail because I’m nervous and distracted?
And what was all that about jet-setting across the globe in style? This was a total joke, right? Surely he knows that is not how the Foreign Service works. It’s not a glamorous job where you travel in luxury.
He knows this right? Does she know that? Why am I so shaken by all of this? Why are a few dumb jokes from some random guy I’ve never met before completely disorienting me?
Who am I? Why am I here? What’s the meaning of life? Am I about to make a complete and utter mistake?
It’s been 467 days since I took the Strong Interest Inventory at Metro State University where I first got the idea to become a Foreign Service Officer in the first place. Am I about to find out that I’ve wasted more than 15 months of my life preparing for this only to fail? What’s wrong with me?
My name was called. I tried to shake off this wild inner voice as I walked into the testing center, proved to the guy that my pockets were empty, and sat down at the computer and started taking the test.
The questions were… basically exactly what I expected. Neither harder nor easier. Some of them were really hard because they hinged on specifics that I couldn’t remember.
“Who was America’s biggest trading partner? China, or Canada?”
Ugh. I can’t remember! It could go either way, and it’s surely changed over the years. At some point, it was probably Canada, then was surpassed by China. Or it was China, which was then surpassed by Canada. I couldn’t remember.
Some of the questions were kind of dumb. One of them asked about anti-virus software on a computer, and it was just wrong. None of the answers provided were accurate.
As somebody who’s spent decades working in and around technology, both in software and hardware, it was annoying to know with 100% certainty that none of the answers were right… but I still had to pick an answer. So I chose the one that I thought they thought was the right one.
Another question about computers referred to having to press “CTRL+ALT+DELETE” which was very concerning to me, because it told me that if I passed the test, and was eventually hired as a Foreign Service Officer, I would probably have to use a Windows computer, and one running a VERY old operating system like Windows XP at that.
That was concerning, not just for me personally, but also simply knowing that this was the hardware our government was using for official international relations communications. It’s no wonder people like Julian Assange could hack our diplomatic cables and release them for the world to read on WikiLeaks.
That aside, I finished the test, with some time left, which made me feel great. I raised my hand for the guy to come get me and I signed out and left.
I noticed that he didn’t joke with me like he had with the young lady before. He just said something like “Well, we’ll letcha know. Look out for an email from us in the next few weeks.”
I got back into my car and started driving home. My mind kept reviewing the answers I gave and the questions asked. I wasn’t exactly sure how I did and started to wonder what my plan was from here.
What would I do if I passed? This would completely upend our lives as we know it.
What if I didn’t pass? Would I even want to reschedule the test and try taking it again? If so, how long should I wait? Should I read up for another few months and try again next year?
I wasn’t sure.
As I got closer to home, my phone gave a (bi-dip) notification sound saying I’d just gotten an email.
Weird, I thought. I wonder if… no way… there’s no possible way that could be my results already.
But it was! I saw the email was from the testing center so I pulled over at a new neighborhood that was being developed, and parked, then found a park bench and sat down. I opened the email and clicked the link to review my results. It said:
Dear Ronald Stauffer,
Congratulations! The scores you achieved on your Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) qualify you for the next step of the Foreign Service Officer selection process, the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP) review.
Wow! I was not prepared for this at all! Here I was, thinking it would take weeks to hear back, but I got an approval notice the very same day: in less than two hours!
It was so unexpected I was almost dumbfounded. I stood up from the park bench and just started walking around in a daze.
Here I was, a total noob who had never officially applied for anything in government or politics, and I took a test that I hadn’t even heard of before, for a career path I’d never even considered until the previous year… and I PASSED!
Well, now what? I wondered.
I took a screenshot of the congratulations notice and sent it to my wife, and she responded with excitement. She was probably as shocked as I was.
I got back in the car and started driving home again. I stopped by a tobacconist and bought a big cigar to celebrate. When I got home, I sat out on the back porch, smoked the cigar, and watched the sun set.
What a world. What a strange change in my life’s trajectory. I was now on my way to pursuing a completely different career path, and I’d passed the first test, literally and figuratively. It was all very strange to ponder.
The next step in the process is to submit personal narrative questions, or what they call PNQs. (The State Department, like every other governmental agency, uses an OBNOXIOUS amount of acronyms that normal people have never heard of before): PNQs, A-100, ELO, QEP, FSOT, FSS, FSOA, BEX, and a lot more).
Trying to explain this part could get really, super boring, so I’ll spare you most of the tedious details. Basically, the PNQs are the “essay question” part of the process. The FSOT gives you a bunch of multiple-choice questions, and the PNQs give you prompts that you have to answer in a concise manner to describe yourself.
These are like the lame questions that dumb companies ask you in person during an interview, such as “What is your biggest weakness?” and where conventional wisdom tells job-seekers to reframe the question with your answer in a way that turns it into a strength.
This is the kind of garbage I can’t stand: the crap where people pretend to be nice and do or say just about anything to get the job without just coming out and saying what they really think.
“Why do you want to work here at Acme Corporation?” An eager recruiter asks you, challenging you to prove that you’re worthy enough to be considered for the privilege of coming to work early, attending an endless number of pointless meetings, and staying late, every day, in order to show your devotion to the corporation that’s really “just like a family here.”
You come up with some stupid answer, like: “Well, Karen, I’m so glad you asked me that. I’m drawn to Acme Corporation’s unparalleled culture of innovation, excellence, and diversity, and I’m eager to contribute to its dynamic, forward-thinking team.” (Thank you ChatGPT for providing me with the best possible bad answer to the worst possible question).
Anyway, my point is, that you have to answer all these dumb questions you don’t really care about with answers you don’t really mean in order to avoid saying “I just want a job where I come to work and you pay me money. That’s it. That’s why I’m here. Okay? Can we move on?”
Honestly, my whole life, when I’m faced with questions like these, I want to answer like Adam Sandler in the movie “The Wedding Singer.”
“I’m a big fan of money. I like it, I use it, I have a little. I keep it in a jar on top of my refrigerator. I’d like to put more in that jar. That’s where you come in.”
Seriously, as Americans, the job interview process is the second dumbest thing we do, only surpassed by our bizarre practice of tipping waitstaff at restaurants. Both of these need to stop.
This is part of why I’m self-employed, and I know it. I really, just… don’t care. I don’t like to suffer fools, and I can’t stand arbitrary questions and answers or artificial barriers put in front of people who can otherwise do the work, if not for the dog and pony show required before they’re allowed to… actually do the work.
But the bad news is, giant dumb corporations do this… and the Foreign Service does it too.
So I created a profile on my online portal, and was given a set of questions under the following headings:
- substantive knowledge
- intellectual skills
- interpersonal skills
- communication skills
- management skills
- leadership skills
The questions weren’t so bad in and of themselves, but I still recoil at the thought that the US Government is going to decide whether I’ll be a good representative on the world stage based on how I answer six vague questions with a maximum of 1,300 characters each.
Now, I married my wife 7 years before Tinder was invented, so I don’t know first-hand, but I’m guessing this is similar to putting yourself out there on a dating app. You share a photo of yourself knowing that you’re subjecting yourself to instant judgment about every microscopic flaw in the way you look and that your potential mate will try to instantly sum you up by reading 500 characters on your profile. Horrifying.
Makes you think long and hard about what you put there, right?
I worked long and hard on my answers. The PNQs, oversimplified, and condensed, asked applicants to describe:
- Why you chose the career track you selected and what you bring to that career track.
- A time when you responded innovatively to unanticipated circumstances to solve a problem.
- How you have used your interpersonal skills in a specific situation to resolve a problem or achieve a goal.
- A situation in which you used your communication skills (either in English or another language) to further an aim or achieve a goal.
- A project you managed or helped to manage and how you sought to achieve the project’s goals.
- How you have demonstrated leadership, either on one particular occasion or over time.
I took all of these very seriously and spent the next 20 days (since that’s exactly how many days I had) writing, rewriting, thinking, and editing to come up with the best possible responses I could.
I even got my journalism professor, who, at the time, was also the chairman of the technical writing department at my college to review my answers and help me with copy editing.
I sent him my first draft, he gave some feedback, and I revised as needed, and we repeated until we both thought my responses were as good as they could be.
So I submitted my PNQs a few hours before the deadline, and then… waited.
…and waited…
Unlike the FSOT, I did not get the results back within an hour, or even days. I just waited and waited.
I had done the best I could with my personal narratives. I dug deep and pulled from my life experience, 1,300 characters at a time, trying to explain why I would be a good fit “to promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the U.S. abroad” as a diplomat in the Foreign Service.
I talked about the “dinner table diplomacy” of my childhood, teaching Indians about the significance of Thanksgiving as we sat around a giant stuffed Turkey, and celebrating Independence Day with Japanese people as we lit sparklers and grilled steaks in the backyard.
I talked about conflict resolution and how, at a previous employer, I was called on to help rescue our relationship with a valued customer who was absolutely livid about a poor experience, and how I dropped everything I was doing, hopped into my car, bought an “I’m sorry” card and a bunch of flowers and sped up to her office to go meet with her and listen to her complaints. In the course of one meeting, I was able to smooth things over, explain the situation, and promise better service in the future. By the time I was done, she was so happy that she literally hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, then told me I was welcome back any time.
I talked about how I ran a marketing think tank in Colorado Springs that offered free assistance to nonprofits who help them improve their messaging and fundraising efforts… and how I started a webmasters guild where I found all the competitors for my web design company and got them to pay to join my group where we shared best practices, and job opportunities, and hosted educational evenings.
I talked about how I was passionate about teaching ESL and loved seeing the eager faces of people from other countries who came here because they still believe in the American dream and want it for themselves and their families.
And I meant all of it.
In my opinion, I wrote everything truthfully, without any fluff or feel-good nonsense. I hoped it would ring clear and true and come across as authentically as I stated it.
In the meantime, as we waited, my wife and I sat the kids down and told them about how I was thinking about changing careers. I told them I MAY end up working for the government, and we MAY end up needing to move to another country.
They thought about the gravitas of this situation: it would mean a HUGE change for our family. “Where would we move to?” They wanted to know. Based on what I had learned, I told them it could be any country except Ireland since I found an official memo that said dual citizens could potentially serve in the Foreign Service, but could NOT serve in their secondary country of citizenship.
“Who knows?” I mused. “Maybe Germany? The Gambia? Senegal?” It was all up to the Department of State, and, as far as I understood, I had no say in the matter and would only find out months after we would have moved to Washington, D.C., Foggy Bottom, on “Flag Day,” if I was even accepted in the first place. The odds were good that as a newbie, it wouldn’t be somewhere glamorous like Switzerland or France.
We prayed about it at dinner time for the next few weeks, and, from time to time, the kids would ask me, “Hey, Dad, did you hear back about the government job yet?” and I’d say “Nope, not yet. We’ll see!”
Then, after 82 days, I got an email with an update from the Department of State. It said:
We regret to inform you that your QEP-determined relative ranking in your career track is not high enough to continue your candidacy to the next step of the Foreign Service Officer selection process, the Oral Assessment.
Well, shoot. Now what? January 3rd, 2020, two days after New Year’s, I now had my answer. The answer was… no? Sort of?
Of course, the email said all the typical niceties you tell people when they’re rejected for a job and you try to let them down easy…
“At present, a large number of individuals are applying for a very limited number of Foreign Service Officer positions and the process is extremely competitive…” blah blah blah. Yeah, I get it.
Finally, in my mind, the email added insult to injury, it signed off with:
“We thank you for your interest in foreign affairs and wish you success in the future. Sincerely, The Board of Examiners”
Wow. Ouch. That hurt. That really hurts. Just tell me you hate me and I suck, and let’s get it over with. How painfully dismissive.
No matter how eloquently it was phrased in black text on a white background on my computer, all I heard was a cranky woman speaking in a British accent, saying “You are the weakest link. Goodbye!”
So… what so make of all of this? It was all over.
I had applied to become a Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State. And, in essence, they said “We’re just not that into you.”
Once again, I felt like Admiral Stockdale, asking myself “Who am I? Why am I here?”
Really, what was all of this for? What was the point? What was it about? Was I an idiot?
I had just spent 564 days, or one year, six months, and 16 days, thinking, hoping, planning, dreaming, and studying for a potential career change, and it was all totally, completely wasted. What a devastating blow.
I told my wife, and she was a bit sad. But not really. Then I told the kids that evening at dinner, and they… didn’t care at all.
They basically said “Huh. So we’re not moving to another country? Okay. Pass the potatoes?”
For me, though, I wasn’t mad so much as hurt. I took the test and I passed. I showed them that I knew the material. But when it came down to learning who I was as a person, they lost interest. How? Why? What did I do wrong? What’s so bad about me?
I didn’t seethe in anger, and I didn’t really take a negative view of the Department of State. You know how sometimes people don’t get a certain promotion at work, or they don’t get hired, or a girlfriend breaks up with them, and they take a nasty, jaded view of the whole situation and say “Oh yeah? Screw them! It’s their loss! Who needs those guys, anyway?”
This wasn’t like that at all. I was mostly confused, and sad.
I felt like the message I got was: “Your country believes you’re smart enough for this role, but we just don’t like you as a person. Your own story just isn’t that compelling.” Or, worse, I wondered if they were really saying “You are a B-grade citizen, who wasn’t born rich, and don’t have any political connections, and didn’t go to a prestigious school, and, also, you’re old.”
I don’t want to be too dramatic (though it’s probably far too late for that), but it felt like a watershed moment in my life. Getting a letter from the United States government saying “We regret to inform you…” was a depressing experience that was far more hurtful than I expected.
As a musician, I’ve always told people: “Opera singers eat rejection for breakfast.” But being rejected by my own country… that really made me feel like a failure.
I suppose it was made worse knowing that I come from a long line of Stauffers who served their country in some way throughout the centuries.
Despite being a Swiss Mennonite, my 6th-great grandfather Abraham Stauffer served in the Pennsylvania Militia in the 1700s and fought against the British Crown in the Revolutionary War. My great-grandfather Clayton was a WWII-era Army Veteran, my grandfather, Ronald, was a fighter pilot in the Air Force, my Uncle Mike served in the Marines, my brother Reuben served in the Army, and my dad, Ronald, even ran for the California State Senate. Down through the years, many Stauffer men have served this country we call home in a variety of ways.
It wasn’t just the German side of the family either: we have veterans all over the Irish side of the family tree as well. My second-great grandfather Andrew McElwee served in the Army Air Force during WWI and is buried in Long Island National Cemetery. Peter Grady, my second great-granduncle, was a WW1 veteran who served in the US Army and spent time with the Army of Occupation in Germany. My grandmother’s brother-in-law served in the Navy.
I have a letter in my office from the White House, stamped and dated in 1940 hand-signed by Stephen Early, the White House Press Secretary thanking my great-grandfather for a letter he had recently sent to the President of the United States.
But when I tried to serve my country, I felt inter-generational shame when I was told, in essence, “You know what? We don’t want you. You’re just not that interesting.”
As I mentioned, when I looked into joining the Marines, they were very interested in me. I took the practice ASVAB and got an excellent score. The Staff Sergeant definitely wanted me to come back and take the real ASVAB, but after my wife and I talked about it, we decided military life wasn’t for us.
So, now, on the recommendation of my college career counselor, I tried joining the Foreign Service, and they said “No, thanks.” Kind of strange.
In a sense, one of my biggest takeaways from all this was: “America wants me to go fight for them in combat during wartime. But they do not want me to go help them in peacetime to prevent wars from happening in the first place through diplomacy.” Weird.
The whole thing was a bizarre emotional roller coaster in a strange season of my life.
But here’s the thing that’s so weird: I was welcome to try the application process again. Apparently, many people who fail the process do indeed try again, sometimes, many, many times.
However, RIGHT AFTER I failed my application, they changed the rules. I got a notice saying that they reordered the steps, such that NOW you have to submit your PNQs FIRST, and THEN they’ll decide if you’re worthy enough to be invited to take the test.
Well, HELL’S BELLS! What on earth is up with that? This is totally, completely, utterly backward. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Now the rules are you have to come up with a compelling enough story to sell them on who you are, and THEN they’ll see if you’re smart enough to show them you have the skills and knowledge to perform the job. What?
In my honest, humble opinion: this is stupid. This is VERY stupid. I can’t think of another job or industry where this is the case.
After all, I had just taken the test, and passed, then answered the PNQs with essays they said weren’t good enough. But I was still welcome to try again… but this time, by submitting the essays FIRST and THEN taking the test?
They had just rejected my PNQs, so if I wanted to try again, I would have to… resubmit my PNQs to wait another 80 days and be rejected again? Why on earth would I do that? I’m not an idiot: this was masochism. I’m not putting my family’s life on hold over and over again for this multi-step process I could keep failing at any point.
I would gladly serve in a similar role as a political appointee, but this whole application process? I’m out: I will never do that again.
So, I just walked away. That was it.
And thus ended a very strange episode of life in the Stauffer family where I took an unexpected left-turn where a pipe dream came within reach, only to slip away, and then we all went back to living life normally again as though nothing had even happened.
In summary, like most of the other times in life where I’ve failed, I don’t exactly know what to make of it. What was the lesson I’m supposed to learn from it all? How do I use this experience to make myself a better person? How can I use this in a constructive way to keep moving forward?
I have no idea. It doesn’t make sense. I still don’t know what to think about it.
Maybe it will somehow make sense in 10 or 20 years, but at this point, it’s just another failure in a long string of failures that are confusing, and weird, and painful, and time-consuming, and time-wasting and embarrassing to tell other people.
So why am I talking about this now, to potentially anybody on earth—friend or foe—who may be listening, when I have no big conclusions, no major takeaways or lessons learned, and it’s embarrassing?
I have no idea. I’m just living my life, and sharing my story. I’ve decided to be more honest with …everybody… about …everything. That’s what this podcast is all about.
I’m just a man approaching 40 who is very much in a mid-life crisis, wondering what it all means. The older I get, and the more I look back on my life, every day that passes I feel like my life makes less and less sense and I have no idea what I’m on this earth for and what it’s all about.
I hope somehow, some way, if you’ve listened all the way to the end, you’ve found this helpful, or encouraging, or just interesting.
Thanks for listening.
Every once in a while, when I feel like this entire thing was a complete waste of time. I catch a glimpse that maybe it wasn’t.
For example, last year I took a trip to Honduras. I brought along the classic book, “The Ugly American,” and read it by the pool. One of my acquaintances, Hector, from Honduras, saw me carrying it one day and said, “Why would you read a book like that?”
I was a little confused by his question. I said, “Well, because I don’t want to be an ugly American.“
His forceful and immediate response remains etched in my mind as one of the best compliments I have ever received.
“You do not need to read this book, my friend. You are not an ugly American.”
If that’s all this whole process has done, which is to help me better represent America when I visit other countries, maybe it was all worth it. We’ll see.
One thing I got from this experience, if nothing else is, I can now say that I have failed again in six languages:
- Ho fallito di nuovo.
- Ich habe wieder einmal versagt.
- He vuelto a fallar.
- Defecit iterum.
- J’ai encore échoué.
- I have failed again.