Opinion | In Protection of the International Service Officer Take a look at

The examination has lengthy been considered troublesome. In a 1995 interview, veteran diplomat

John Edgar Williams

recalled that in 1953 the check took 3½ days and lined all the pieces from astronomy to zoology. Once I began taking it within the Nineties, it took three hours and consisted of a job information part together with the sort of normal questions contestants reply on “Jeopardy!,” an English grammar and utilization part, and an essay, which wasn’t graded until you met the cut-off rating. In a typical 12 months, 10,000 to twenty,000 individuals take the examination and a pair of% to three% of these are employed. The check expires after 18 months; I handed a number of occasions earlier than I used to be supplied a job in 2001.

The State Division made modifications to the check in 1989, in response to many years of litigation by feminine candidates, and in 2006 after

George Staples,

then director normal of the International Service, known as for it to be scrapped for its adverse impact on minority hiring. Feminine illustration has elevated to 42%, however the diplomatic corps remains to be 6% black and seven% Hispanic.

A spokesman says the State Division is shifting towards a “extra holistic” hiring method that can “end in a extra certified pool of candidates.” However on condition that functions already vastly outnumber out there jobs, why the crucial to think about candidates who flunk the examination? The spokesman mentioned the division believes training and work expertise are higher predictors of job efficiency than the examination. Maybe, however the examination and the cutoff rating inject a component of benefit and transparency right into a byzantine hiring course of that includes more-subjective components, together with an oral evaluation and private essays. And the diplomatic corps is already full of people that handed the check and have spectacular résumés.

The American International Service Affiliation, the union representing profession diplomats and consular officers, issued an announcement condemning the transfer as “in opposition to each the letter and the spirit of many commitments made by this administration to its public servants” and expressing concern “that these unilateral modifications danger being seen as excessively subjective and topic to partisan affect.”

The examination was created by the Rogers Act, which abolished the spoils system and reworked the International Service into knowledgeable group with hiring and promotions based mostly on benefit. Practically a century later, the State Division believes it wants the pliability to rent candidates who can’t move the examination to “modernize American diplomacy and win the competitors for expertise.” Let’s hope that doesn’t translate into a brand new sort of patronage.

Mr. Seminara is a former diplomat and creator of “Mad Vacationers: A Story of Wanderlust, Greed & the Quest to Attain the Ends of the Earth.”