bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 5–7
A s happens every year, last fall’s Public Service Commission Post- Secondary Recruitment Campaign for government jobs introduced significant changes without notice. These changes affected candidates applying for Foreign Service (FS), Management/Consular (AS) and Development Officer (PM) positions.
While the changes were billed as “new, and were perceived to be so by almost all candidates, the campaign was really — from the vantage point of one who has followed it closely for over twenty years — a “back-to-the-future” exercise. A look at how and why that’s true may help future test-takers — as well as those they approach for advice.
Academic Criteria: The shift to requiring only a Bachelor’s degree for FS candidates surprised many. Historically, however, this has been the norm, not the exception. From 1928 to 1992 a Bachelor’s was the FS entry ticket, although aspiring diplomats often had advanced degrees, plus languages. The 1993 to 1998 interregnum, when either two degrees or one degree plus an exotic foreign language were mandatory, reflected two contextual issues: a buyer’s market approach by government, which took advantage of the situation where many people with multiple degrees were chasing few jobs, and the federal deficit, which dictated a reduction in the number of candidates to limit the per capita cost of processing them.
As for PM eligibility criteria, the proliferation of degree specialties identified this past year simply verifies the continuing confusion shown in recruiting by the Canadian International Development Agency. For the record, AS academic criteria changed only marginally this year.
An unpublicized purpose for lowering the FS entry bar was to combat increasingly high attrition rates among officers hired over the last five years with advanced academic degrees, specialized language skills, and considerable real-life experience. The presumption underlying the change was that younger, less highly-educated people would be happier with the FS job, its potential and salary, than those longer in the tooth. In fact, the notion is misguided because abundant numbers of older candidates still emerged and will succeed in the competition. Foreign Affairs interviewers traditionally select the brightest, most mature and best-performing candidates for the eligibility list, which often — though not always – disadvantages applicants with little experience. This is especially true when younger applicants assume incorrectly that their academic work is relevant to the exams and interviews, and that they need not prepare for a competition in which, typically, one-and-a-half to two per cent of candidates are successful.
One final important note about academic criteria: despite what government literature and recruiters say to FS, AS, and perhaps PM candidates, neither degrees nor scholarly achievements are relevant in selection for an interview, a job, or for assignments and promotion after hiring. First, test scores (plus an affirmative action formula in some cases) and then interview performance determine hiring success. It was always thus.
Candidate Volume: The government’s 1999 campaign goal was to double the number of candidates from last year in the FS, AS, and PM groups. This meant about eight thousand or more were expected to apply for FS jobs, and about three to four thousand each for PM and AS positions. Lowering or broadening the academic criteria was intended to increase the numbers of applicants. The back-to-the-future benchmark for setting anticipated numbers: about 6500 applied for FS jobs in 1992, when the “Bachelor’s only” criterion was last used.
Why the volume push? More people stepping up to the hiring plate makes government work look attractive again, and makes the Public Service Commission look effective as a recruiter in a time when the job market for grads is hot. Also, the higher the volume of candidates and the broader the range of acceptable academic disciplines, the greater the likelihood of increased participation by under-represented social groups; the changes were therefore designed as an attempt to address concerns about diversity in government employment statistics.
Test Changes: More back-to-the-future was evident in alterations to two of the three tests in 1999 (the Written Communication Test — or WCT — remained the same). The cognitive Graduate Recruitment Test (GRT) required for FS, AS, and PM candidates was tinkered with as usual. Instead of comprising five types of exercises in 80 questions as in 1998, the “new” version had four types of exercises in 55 questions, with a disproportionately small reduction in test time. Not only were many of the questions the same as in 1998, several were the same as in 1989 and the years following, when the Entry Level Officer Selection Test (ELOST) was used
Why the changes? Very few finished the long, more varied 1998 exam, resulting in the lowest cut-off scores in recent memory, and possibly ever. Higher scores, and particularly the higher passing scores that are inevitable with a pool of four to eight thousand test-takers (depending on the career stream), will result from the 1999 GRT.
The Foreign Service test required only for FS candidates underwent the biggest alteration, but again it was not as radical as uninformed test-takers thought. The main change was that the old knowledge-type geopolitical and policy questions were eliminated. (These had been used in one form or another — essay or multiple-choice or both — since Lester Pearson was the first successful national test recruit in 1928.) Instead, the “new” Foreign Service Written Simulation Test (FSWST) provided four detailed, heavily nuanced, hypothetical situations which diplomats could encounter and asked candidates to respond, in point form, as to how they would deal with the scenarios.
Though new to the exam, these questions were fundamentally the same as, and bore a marked similarity to, the verbal situational and role-play questions used for decades in the Foreign Service interview. Also, they resembled the old “judgement questions” which accompanied the former FS knowledge test in the 1970s and 1980s. Result? Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.
What prompted these changes? Three factors. Government recruiters decided, although many current and former diplomats might argue, that competency testing is a better indication of job aptitude than knowledge testing for prospective FS officers. Indeed, the government has been downgrading for years the importance of international geopolitical and policy knowledge in candidates’ cumulative (cognitive/writing/Foreign Service) test score, to the point where the FS exam was worth only 10% of the final total in 1998.
A second reason for change was the belief that candidates from presumed non-traditional academic backgrounds for the Foreign Service would have a better chance of passing the new exam. This is not so, but another article would be needed to demonstrate why. The third reason for test changes was to avoid the prospect that — horror of horrors – candidates could “study” for the exam. While ingestion of knowledge was neither possible nor necessary to prepare for the new exam, training on how to approach the situational questions, sample answers, and evaluation advice raises scores dramatically, as repeatedly proven from my analysis of interview reports and hiring results in the past.
Conclusion: For the benefit of those attracted to FS, AS, or PM careers and who plan to compete in next year’s Post- Secondary Campaign, a few words of advice. All detailed questions about tests should be directed not to local government offices/ spokespersons or to hastily assembled and badly briefed campus information teams, but rather to informed Ottawa-based coordinators of the campaign at the Public Service Commission and the Department of Foreign Affairs, where there is a modicum of institutional memory about the process and how it really works. Comments about the tests and interviews with former diplomats and, occasionally, with faculty can be helpful, but bear in mind that people will likely talk about their own test experience, which was long ago, far away, and evaluated differently. On a positive note, conferring with serving and ex-diplomats or their family members can help candidates understand the milieu they aspire to work in once the arcane vicissitudes of the exam, interview, eligibility and hiring process are successfully negotiated.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 5–7. Read the rest of this issue →
