After nearly 14 months in Israel, it’s officially time to start looking ahead to our next post. In State Department lingo, this process is called “bidding.” I’ve mentioned the term “bidding” in several previous posts and in many conversations with friends and family. When using the term in conversation, I’m almost always met with one of these reactions:
Hopefully, I can clear up some of the confusion here. Each tour has a slightly different bidding process. The first one is the most straightforward, the second one is confusing and not at all fun, and the process for third tour officers and beyond is most similar to a normal job hunt. I’ll go into detail into what our experience has been like below, keeping in mind that actual bid lists are protected information and I, therefore, cannot name potential destinations.
In my post titled “Flag Day” from August 2019, I went into some detail about what bidding was like coming out of A-100. To summarize, A-100 members are given a list with all the jobs available to entry-level officers (ELOs). Each officer then ranks each post by low, medium, and high priority, with a maximum of roughly 20 slots for low priority. Officers then discuss this list with an advisor to go over individual priorities (want to learn Mandarin, good schools for children, etc). After much deliberating, bid lists are submitted. The group of advisors then gets together, downs a bottle of whiskey, and throws darts at a map until each new Foreign Service Officer is assigned a country (presumably). Advisors do their best not to assign anyone a low priority post, but it does happen. Misha’s class was fortunate to avoid this disappointment.
This brings us to second tour bidding, a process with way more variables, and with it, way more stress. FSO’s are on language probation for the first 5 years of the job, and get off it by passing the language requirement at any post. This is generally not something officers need to worry about, but if a FSO were assigned an English designated post out of A-100, they might. Misha passed Hebrew to come to Israel, so we are no longer on probation. However, the amount of training assigned for Hebrew, coupled with several extra months of training for her current tour of economic and consular assignments, severely limited the options for our second assignment. Officers are only allowed 78 weeks of training in their first two rotations. Misha had 56 in round one alone. With almost all languages requiring 24 weeks of training minimum, that leaves us with a fraction of the options of our colleagues.
Round two bidding requires officers to submit 20 total bids. Each officer is allowed to bid on a maximum of two posts that put you over the training cap. We would love to go to a Central or South American post at some point, so there is a slight chance we still wind up in language training. The rest of our posts are all English-designated (or at least the specific job is done in English), and that is where the easy part ends. Although officers still meet with advisors, the advice they give can be incredibly inconsistent from officer to officer, and rules about how to bid are frequently changing. Officers are also required to take a certain amount of home leave between posts. Then they must identify eligible trainings to fill the time between departure from one post and arrival at the next, and for indicating any other issues with potential bids. Head hurt yet?
Luckily, we are able to fill out a full list with places we’d be excited to end up. The bids are spread out all around the world, with at least one on every continent except Australia. The largest portion of our bid list is comprised of unaccompanied hardship posts. These posts are located in cities and regions that have seen very high rates of violence and/or terrorist activity in recent years, and therefore allow only essential personnel only. There are many positives and negatives for these options. Among the negatives are: Misha and I would be separated geographically, Misha would be heartbroken without Mochi, and, well…danger. The positives are a substantial financial incentive, one-year tour instead of two, extra vacation time, and an utter lack of things to spend money on. In other words, these are excellent posts for couples trying to save money so long as they are willing to handle spending a year apart. From what we’ve been told, these posts are also much safer than you might realize with excellent security.
Bid lists are due tomorrow, and it will be another month or so before we learn our next assignment. One thing that did not change from first to second tour is the emotional response: immediate excitement at the initial list followed by stress and anxiety once the lists are narrowed down and reality sets in. Much like last time, there will be a period of calm followed by a wave of emotion in between list submission and post assignment. Well, until next time…
Beer and Diplomacy 
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