IMS Training

IMS training kicked off with a week of Information Resource Management (IRM) Tradecraft. It was similar to the 3 weeks of foreign service specialist orientation except it was focused on the IRM part of the organization. The week was full of briefings on everything that will directly impact my new job.

This week starts the last of the 3 weeks we have for Microsoft system administrator training. This has been a good class because the training lab has virtual machines with mock post environments. We use the lab to work through State's standards and procedures for Active Directory, Exchange, and file and print servers (so far). It's not hard work but it isn't something I have much experience doing. The labs are nice since we'll be expected to just do it when we get to post.

Training is always helpful when it focuses on real use cases. It provides the opportunity to put hands on keyboards instead of training us with death by PowerPoint. There are briefings using Windows training modules covering the basics of server management. Fortunately more time is spent on instructor demos showing what we do instead of just talking about it.

We're going on some field trips this week to see some of the DC area offices that support us. I'm looking forward to this since we'll get to see some of the things we've only been briefed about. We'll only experience these offices through emails and phone calls when we're finally working at our embassies so it's good to put faces to names.

On the home front, we're still packing and getting ready to move from our house to a local apartment in a week and a half . Everything's going well on finalizing the sale of our house closing in mid-April. We've also received our apartment assignment in Stockholm and they provided some pictures. It looks pretty good in a nice area of the city close to a park, the water, and the embassy itself. The apartment doesn't look too small to us considering it's an apartment. Our house here was built in 1959 so we're used to smaller rooms.

The Stockholm apartment will be a short walk to work for me so that's definitely a huge bonus! We're going to go ahead with our plan to sell the cars here and rely on bikes and public transportation there. We need to buy new bikes so that's yet another thing for the to-do list. We're just a little over 3 months away from the big move!

Flag Day

Getting My Flag

Above is a blurry cell phone photo from way in the back but you can see the flag on the screen. We're moving to Stockholm Sweden at the end of June! Some classmates leave at the same time and others leave a month or so later. We were all presented little flags for the countries and my daughter promptly took possession of our flag when the ceremony was over.

Yes, this ended up being our first choice and surprisingly many in our class received their first choice or somewhere in their top 5 out of 22. I think there were a few that weren't so lucky and got something towards the bottom of their list but I'm sure it was impossible to give everyone their top choices.

We did get a lot of feedback during orientation from the people that have worked at various posts that those "third world" countries many of us put at the bottom ended up being the best and most rewarding places to serve. I'll get one of those "third world" opportunities next time since I have a "first world" post this time. The higher equity posts based on differential and hardship pay get higher priority for their second assignments.

First Bid List

Employee Blogging

I'll start by saying this blog is my own personal thing. This isn't the place I can or should reveal anything that isn't public knowledge about my employer. I don't see it as an unusual restriction or anything I've been specifically instructed about in orientation (so far). I'm just going to use common sense and only share personal things here about my life outside of work. Having said that, there will be some crossover and one thing that definitely impacts me is the "bid list" or my first list of possible assignments. I'm not going to share the specific list since I haven't seen a complete list on any other foreign service blog. I've seen a few general summaries so that's what I'll write. In the end, only one location on this internal list of openings will be mine and that's the specific location I know I can share in a future post.

map of diplomatic missions (wikipedia link)

The First Bid List

I will confirm for anyone interested in joining the Foreign Service that they really mean it right from the start when they say we must be worldwide qualified. Fortunately we have a large class of Information Management Specialists (23 now) so there's a lot of variety on my list. Every continent except Australia is represented. The list is somewhat evenly spread over South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. There is one North America opening and fortunately it isn't in the US since I didn't join to stay in DC. There will be opportunities later in my career to come back to DC or maybe even NYC supporting the UN for an assignment. Being in the Foreign Service does mean that I can't be in the US longer than 5 years if we do come back. The State Department has many Civil Service jobs here in DC if you want to just stay here instead of move around.

First Day of Orientation

From Defense to State

There's a noticeable difference between going to work at the Pentagon and arriving at the Harry S Truman (HST) building (formerly called Main State).  The sizes of the Departments of Defense and State just aren't on the same scale. I was curious about the actual numbers so naturally I looked them up on Wikipedia. I was just going to write a little bit about my in-processing day but... squirrel!

The Pentagon (photo Wikipedia)

I used to ride the metro to the Pentagon using its dedicated metro station. Other people arrived at the bus transfer hub, acres of parking, or slug lines. I'd arrive in a sea of 28,000 people (plus 3,000 non-defense support) herded like cattle through security into the 6.5 million sq ft building. It's a huge crowded headquarters. There's also many more lower level headquarters around the world needed to manage a whopping 3.2 million servicemembers (including National Guard) and civilians. According to this BBC News article, the DoD is the world's largest employer ahead of China's Army, Wal-Mart, and McDonald's. The article says China's Army may be a bigger employer if the size of their civilian staff was known. Regardless, my new employer isn't even in the same league since it's #12 in size of the executive branch departments.

Harry S Truman Building (photo Wikipedia)

My arrival today at HST was by way of the Foggy Bottom metro station. It's not too far away but it's definitely not there for the sole purpose of serving the State Department. Foggy Bottom metro is actually surrounded by George Washington University. The HST building is about 1.5 million sq ft with 8,000 employees. It's still a big headquarters but it's obviously not as massive as the Pentagon. State's website says there are 9,000 civil service and 12,000 foreign service (like me) personnel in the entire department. We'd all fit very easily in the Pentagon with lots of room to spare. State also employs 37,000 foreign service nationals (non-US support personnel) but even adding them in is just a drop in the bucket compared to the 3.2M people working under the DoD.

In-processing

I only need to metro to HST a few times since the bulk of our orientation and training is at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington VA. There really isn't much to say about the in-processing day itself because it's similar to previous government employee in-processing I've done. We recited the oath of office, filled out new employee paperwork, got our IDs, and received a variety of new hire briefings. It was very professional and well structured throughout the day. It's definitely nothing to be nervous about if you've never worked in a government job. Everyone seemed to be happy and friendly so the vibe on the first day was a good one. :-)

Transition and Class Size

This weekend is my transition from Air Force civil service to State Department foreign service specialist. It was a happy/sad last day saying goodbye to a great group of people in my office. A big chunk of our weekdays are spent at work so it's always good to work with fun people. The work was interesting enough but I'll really miss the laughs we shared between the work bits.

But now it's time to look forward. I received an email this afternoon saying the final count for the orientation starting Monday is 74 specialists with 24 of us in the IMS speciality. I've seen postings from previous years about the IMS count being about a dozen. A larger class size is a good thing because there's at least one assignment available for each of us. That's at least 24 choices I'll get to rank for our preferences. I learned it's always good to have more from this AT&T commercial...

Two Weeks to Orientation

And Now For Something Completely Different

It's now down to the final two weeks at work before I make the big switch from Defense to State. I've been with the Air Force for 22 1/2 years. I've had a variety of jobs along the way but they've always been in support of the Air Force. I did look at making a change when I retired from the military, but coming back to the Air Force as civil service was the best opportunity at that time. However, now that I have this new opportunity ahead of me I do think it'll be refreshing to move on to something completely different...

I've transferred my workload to someone else and have just been helping lately. Sometimes its hard to resist jumping right in with answers as if my opinion will continue impacting the future of that work. I've started playing this clip of John Cleese every now and then when I'm asked a work question. It's a funny response to any question with a great laugh that serves as a reminder that I'm actually leaving.

The Local Hire Advantage

One definite advantage of being a local hire is that we don't have to move out of this house now. My classmates are making their final preparations at work like I am, but they're also scrambling at home to move here for training before we all move out to the far corners of the Earth. Some are leaving family behind to wrap it up while they're at training, but many are bringing everything now. 

The foreign service training process doesn't provide time for people to return home. I found out we're considered "in transit" to our first assignment when we start orientation. Non-local hire household effects will have to sit in a warehouse since we don't get our assignments until the 3rd week. In contrast, our stuff will just stay in our house as a local hire.

We're working on getting the house ready to sell but moving isn't an immediate priority since we have until June. We might also move twice if our house sells early. But it'd just be a local move to an extended stay hotel with our travel stuff. We should be able to split up our packing according to my assignment and have it all heading directly there and/or to long-term storage from our house.

Non-local hires have to plan out their boxes for the warehouse considering what might stay there long-term and what they may need to request for their assignment. We'll have the luxury of sorting it all out after we actually know where we're going. That's definitely a big advantage of being a local hire! Granted, I won't get per diem to cover temporary housing during training but I'm better able to switch from paying a mortgage to a hotel with minimal overlap so that's probably a fair trade.

Confirmation Letter

I saw the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and it made me a little more antsy for my first Foreign Service assignment. I'm ready to move overseas now!  The scenes in Greenland and Iceland were particularly beautiful and inviting.  The posters for the movie say "stop dreaming, start living" and right now my upcoming move still feels like a dream... one that's closer to reality as I completed a finalizing step today.

I received my confirmation letter (final offer with my starting grade and step) and signed the "Agreement to Join the Foreign Service" memo.  This step finalized my acceptance of employment. Passing the OA didn't guarantee I'd get a final offer so it was still a matter of "if" until the class offer was sent and I said I'm available.  Now it's all official and I'm committed to starting 3 weeks of Foreign Service Specialist orientation Feb 10th followed by at least 17 weeks of training specific to my Information Management Specialist (IMS) specialty.

It took a little while to get the confirmation letter because of the holidays.  There's also a process for setting the starting step based on current salary, education, and experience.  The starting grade isn't negotiable for Foreign Service Specialists (FSSs) and only depends on the specialty.  In contrast, Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) start in grades FP-06 to FP-04.  On the FSS side, for example, all Office Management Specialists (OMS) start at the FP-07 grade and my IMS specialty starts at FP-05. FP-05 is higher than FP-07 since the grades count down from FP-09 to FP-01. This is opposite of the GS pay scale I'm in now which counts up.  It also has 14 steps per grade instead of the 10 steps on the GS scale. Older/younger and more/less experienced all start as the same entry level specialists and go through the same training.  Yep, it's just like joining the military all over again where everyone starts somewhat equal and then progresses through their careers at different speeds.

The rest of this month at work is about tying up loose ends and helping the friends I work with however I can in the short time remaining.  The month will fly by way too fast in that regard since I work with some great people.  The cleaning and purging of accumulated stuff at home continues as we work on becoming nomadic again and getting the house staged to sell.

Walter Mitty progressed in the movie from daydreaming about adventures to living real adventures of his own... I'm ready to do the same!