Fifth Tour Bidding: Bids Are In

The summer 2024 early assignments bid cycle is drawing to a close, with Special Incentive Post (SIP) bids due today and domestic Long-Term Training and Development (LTTD) bids due right after the holiday weekend.

My statements of interest are in. Lobbying, consultations, and interviews all completed. I’ve entered less than half a dozen bids into all the right platforms and rank-ordered them, and I’ve drafted thank you notes for references and interviewers. There’s no action for me other than to see what happens, and that feels pretty good. We’ve now arrived at my favorite part of the bidding season: the part where I don’t need to do any more work, and am free to anticipate the possibility of any of my bids materializing into a handshake.

Prior to this point, fun daydreams about living a multitude of lives in different countries existed amongst a time-consuming and sometimes ambiguous process of researching, lobbying, soliciting references, writing, interviewing, and keeping track of many requirements and details. After this point, the universe of possible tours you’d imagined will start to narrow down, usually eliminating something you’d really hoped for but also providing more clarity about what’s actually going to happen next. But in the middle, for me it’s sweet, kind of like the middle third of a tour when you’re neither on a steep learning curve nor packing to go.

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Why is it so enticing, this temporary reprieve from bidding stress, even though nothing has been decided and I still don’t know where I will go when my current assignment ends in a year? Because now I can focus on imagining myself helping U.S. citizens in East Asia, building the morale of a team in Eastern Europe, or strolling through a South Asian market. I can imagine what I’d bring, what our housing would look like, the vacations we’d take, and whether it makes sense to buy a new car this year – all without actually having to make any decisions.

I know some of us dread the waiting for a handshake (and dread not getting one). I’m the person who during my second tour dreamt I forgot to bid; at the end of my tour, the embassy sent workers to remove all our belongings from the house and place them on the lawn because I had arranged nowhere to go.

But far from being disengaged in past bidding, I was probably more on the overly organized side. I also have gotten my hopes up very high in past bidding experiences only to be disappointed with the way things unfolded, or with what I thought I wanted seemingly always out of reach no matter what I did. Why did I not make the short list for this job I thought I interviewed so well for? Will decision-makers notice me despite all the competition for this sought-after job? I’m going after this job hard, but do I have what it takes to actually fill the role? The whole endeavor of bidding can seem like a giant black box, and by the way – you still simultaneously have to deal with your busy full-time job.

Ten years ago I did the StrengthsFinder 2.0 exercise with some Peace Corps colleagues and learned one of my top three strengths is Futuristic. (Number one and number two are Focus and Discipline, respectively.) I jokingly wondered if it was referring to my love of science fiction until I read the description. It’s actually a dominant strategic thinking pattern that contributes to informed analysis. Being futuristic speaks to one’s ability to be pulled forward by a vision of the future, and to pull others along with them. Wouldn’t it be great if…? These types don’t buy into contentment with the status quo. I think that’s pretty apt.

But despite the daydreams, I’ve also never been one to count my chickens before they hatch. There’s good reason to be cautious. Besides my first-ever bidding attempt in A-100, I can’t think of a single other bid season that went according to my hopes or expectations, or that I didn’t feel like I’d make some unknowing tactical error with.

After all, when bidding for my first assignment, Tashkent was a top choice for me. The Cyrillic alphabet makes some people want to run away, but I wanted to learn Russian. When I saw the Uzbek flag up on the screen and heard my name called, I was so excited I jumped up to shake hands with our A-100 class mentor, a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and then almost forgot to take the training folder.

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Bidding for my second assignment, I eventually ended up with Canberra, but prior to that, I was assigned to a different post that if I’m not mistaken was #27 on our list of 30. I was shocked, and I’ve never even written about it on the blog until now. I left that story out because it became complicated, and I think it’s good to leave some stories for the post-Department employment years. But suffice it to say there was, among other things, a medical clearance issue and I was reassigned some weeks later to Australia without further input from me. Needless to say, this was not bad news.

And of course, during third tour bidding (my first time at the mid level), Mission Mexico wasn’t really on my radar. But when my first round bid list full of dream jobs all went to officers my senior, I had to go back to the drawing board. The Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) gave me a steer on which posts to have MED quickly pre-clear, and Ciudad Juárez came up as on option. The handshake quickly followed, thus ending our dreams of ending up in the Balkans for a third time but ticking CA’s long checklist of jobs to fill. I liked the assignment, but in the way you like a gift someone gives you that you know you could happily use but wouldn’t have considered buying yourself.

And then finally, during fourth tour bidding I ended up with a domestic assignment even though I wanted to stay overseas. I wasn’t disappointed about the handshake I received, but I guess more so disappointed the process was over for another couple of years and there wouldn’t be a new home so tangibly around the corner to anticipate. You finally see what’s behind the curtain, and regardless of your excitement level, the mystery is resolved.

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Friends and family have expressed surprise that Foreign Service Officers have to put so much effort into bidding. (If they only knew.) Yes, we all already have a job. What we need is an assignment. This is a distinction with a difference. Our current assignments are ending and we need an onward.

So I am hoping that this time with fifth tour bidding, I get a handshake and don’t have to repeat this whole process this autumn! I guess in the next two months we’ll see.