Fifth Tour Bidding: What Comes After a Handshake?

As a result of my Special Incentive Post (SIP) bidding efforts, on July 5 I was offered (and accepted) a handshake on our next diplomatic assignment to U.S. Embassy Rangoon in Burma.

However, I reserved a little corner of my mind for disappointment. After a handshake, a number of administrative things would still have to fall into place before the job would feel safely “mine.” Now more than one month later, we are getting very close to that point.

I saw three sequential hurdles to relaxing into the certainty of my future job in Rangoon. First, I would need a post-specific medical clearance. Second, my Career Development Officer (CDO) would need to register the handshake. And third, the Department would need to formally panel me into the assignment, an HR action laying the groundwork for generating an officer’s eventual orders to post along with funding any needed language and tradecraft training. Each of these three steps were predicated on the previous step being finished.

Honestly, the first hurdle (MED) was my biggest worry. As the deciding factor that underpinned the other actions going forward, a negative response from MED would blow up my plans before they even materialized. I was already thinking through my appeal in case it didn’t go my way, and grew from a hurdle into a real obstacle. Fortunately this didn’t become necessary.

Medical Clearance

Back in April when I previewed things I needed to do before bidding for my fifth tour, I mentioned I was working on updating my medical clearance. I didn’t parse this out much then, as a result conflating two separate but related issues.

One, every officer must update their medical clearance between overseas tours, no matter what level of clearance they have. I started working on this in January 2023, a year after returning from Juárez; since I’d rotated into a domestic assignment where no medical clearance was required, I hadn’t seen any hurry.

And two, Class 2 bidders like me with less than a Class 1, “worldwide available” medical clearance need to also obtain a post-specific medical clearance – ideally, before spending time bidding. In other words, can posts an officer is thinking of bidding on support whatever the medical condition is for which the officer (or their family member) has a Class 2 clearance?

It’s better to be pre-cleared than accept a handshake for a post where the Department won’t actually permit you to serve. That ends up in a broken handshake and a giant waste of time for everyone. In situations where an officer is Class 1 but their spouse or child is Class 2, knowing which posts their family can serve at together can be an essential part of the bidder’s strategy, too.

And as I’ve mentioned before, the medical clearance bar for an SIP can be higher than non-SIP posts given the realities on the ground.

Fortunately, the Department saw fit to renew my medical clearance at the same level (Class 2) back in mid-May. I was annoyed that it had taken over four months to give me this answer, especially since I’d had no major updates to provide, however, these are the things we go through and I was grateful that part was done.

Knowing by then I would bid SIP – or, at the very least, bid this fall in the regular cycle – and assuming (correctly) my Class 2 would be renewed, I had already jumped into asking MED to begin pre-clearing posts to help me inform my bidding strategy. MED only takes the pre-clearance requests from your CDO (not from you), and you can’t submit more than 10 at once. It took approximately nine weeks for MED to clear my first tranche of 10 posts, for which I received unanimous “yes” answers, and then I sent up a second tranche of 10 posts.

By the time I put forward the second tranche, SIP bidding was already well underway, so… the ambiguity around whether my bids were “valid” was a little stressful. This is because there may be inconsistencies between what you ask MED to pre-clear and what you end up bidding on. When the bid season formally starts and our system switches over from projected vacancies to a live shot of what’s currently available, options may look quite different. And during the course of bidding, a bidder may rule out posts s/he had previously hoped for, along with adding new posts not previously on the radar. So, it’s basically a crapshoot.

MED tries hard, but they also depend on answers from busy post health units and there can be communication back and forth necessitating further forms, justifications, explanations, etc. And I had – of course – put posts on my pre-clearance list that ended up not having a job I wanted on this cycle, “wasting” one of my 10 slots but perhaps providing a valuable data point for the future.

When I got the handshake for Rangoon, I was so excited I honestly could not remember whether I’d put Rangoon on my list for MED to pre-clear. I started kicking myself immediately for not knowing this off the top of my head, and potentially having missed doing it. Fortunately, I had included Rangoon (of course!), but on the second tranche for which I had not yet heard back.

So the day after handshakes when I checked my bidder dashboard to see if my handshake was registered, I suddenly realized, I’m not cleared. My CDO is waiting to see if MED clears me. Cue stomach falling to the floor.

Handshake registration

I tried not to think deeply about any of the above for the four weeks the issue lingered in my periphery. And then last week while I was traveling and visiting my family on the west coast, I glimpsed an email pop up from my CDO informing me I had received MED clearance for Rangoon. I started smiling before I even read past the subject line. I sat down fast. My worries were likely over. Soon after, I checked my bidder dashboard again and observed the handshake registration. Whoo-hoo! I thought.

The week before I had worked to respond to an email from my Assignments Officer, asking for my onward assignment projected training schedule. I put one together with significant thoughtfulness. I researched and sketched out a timeline for every course and action I would need to complete between summer 2024 and summer 2025. I tamped down that voice in the back of my mind telling me it was all going to implode into a broken handshake. It will work out, another part of my mind said hopefully (dismissively?). It did. I spun the wheel and got one of the glittery tabs instead of “lose a turn.”

Paneling

I don’t know when the next panel will meet. I know it happens at least once per month, but I’m not sure if the panels meet more often during high bidding periods.

I will know I’ve been paneled when I receive a TMONE cable, which is essentially the Department inviting me to draft and submit a TMTWO (request for my own orders, which are known as a TMFOUR). A TMTHREE (welcome to post information cable) will eventually follow.

It will probably take me a day or two to focus on that request to staff myself through a fifth TMTWO administrative headache because I’ll be too busy celebrating. If a handshake is the engagement ring, the paneling is the wedding: it’s the deal done.

I’m waiting for it.