Foreign Service Officer Test Forums

Did anyone pass through the QEP for the diplomatic courier position? Make yourselves known so we can start building some reference material please.

What do the next steps look like? Are they the same as the OA for the FSO positions?

Am new to this forum. Am looking for some advice on testing/assessment process for the Diplomatic Courier field. I have about 5 weeks to prepare. I have the general guidelines sent by the HR folks at DoS, but was hoping to get the skinny on the process.

tom324

Well, the Diplomatic Courier OA has come on gone & I left the Bureau of Diplomatic Security without offer of federal employment. However, as one who hasn’t had but one other real job interview in the last 22 years, it was a learning experience. Other message boards and forums were unable to address the issue of a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) for the courier position. The first document presented to us was the NDA. So it is a good bet that DoS is using the NDA for all its hiring processes.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the courier announcement, it appears to be a mini-FSOT. I received some pointers from a couple of current couriers, who were two or more years removed from the process. There was talk of knowing the Constitution, Government checks & balances and knowing the courier job description; some useful info and some not so useful. So here it is:

I made it through the essay, "multiple guess" QEP & the QEP interview. (3 out of 4 ain't bad for the first crack at it!) Of the 7 guys in my group only one made it all the way through. As I had never encountered the QEP before and hadn’t really prepared for it, I was left at a bit of a loss. It didn’t help that I didn’t take the facilitators suggestion that one should not hold back on these things. Better to err on the side of overstating your experience, which I think one could correct in the OA interview. Only after starting to answer the interview questions, did I realize I had not recalled a lot experience that I could have claimed on the written.

Before I was politely shown the door, I learned that after the October 2009 Diplomatic Courier posting somewhere around 2400 applications were received. They asked about 200 in for the OA; all this to fill 9 (nine) courier positions! As noted above, only one of seven in my group made it through the whole process. For you “old guys” like me, that guy was in his mid-50s so if you are looking to retire & start something new…there is hope.

There you have it.

Tom

Thanks for the follow-up Tom, sounds like there was some pretty tough competition!