When the U.S. government closed for more than six weeks this autumn, it completely blew up the Foreign Service bid-season timeline for summer 2026 bidders. Summer 2026 bidders are those of us completing our assignments next summer who need an onward. Our bid cycle was meant to begin at the end of September 2025, with bids due in October and handshakes coming out in November.
But as the shutdown dragged on through October and into November without appropriations, bidding—an activity not deemed “excepted”—was at a full stop. Posts and bureaus weren’t permitted to interview candidates, and bidders couldn’t express interest in projected vacancies. In an attempt to create parity between excepted employees who were working without pay and non-excepted employees who had been furloughed and weren’t allowed to sign on during the lapse, the organization even took the portal used for most bidding activities offline, cutting off bidders’ visibility on capsule descriptions for open assignments.
Fortunately, in the lightning-fast window between the bid season’s formal opening at the end of September and the start of the shutdown on October 1, I had seen the shutdown writing on the wall and had already made solid headway.
I’d completed my research, contacted the incumbents in the positions I hoped to bid on, and responded to several invitations to submit a bidder package. I also lobbied a little at the bureau level and completed all their information requests. The bid season had only been open for a couple of days before everything paused, but I’d moved quickly; I knew I could end up at a disadvantage if I let myself get distracted by just having arrived at my one-year assignment the month before. I’d essentially done the lift on a couple of weeks of bidding work in just two days, including on a Sunday.
All I needed was for the government to reopen so the process could start moving again. That happened in mid-November — along with federal employees receiving three missing paychecks in a row. I had imagined a shutdown affecting the bid season. What I could have never imagined was that less than one business day after Congress passed the bill reopening the government, I would be hit by a truck and medically evacuated from post for weeks.
Bidding is one of the most stressful and time-intensive responsibilities in a Foreign Service Officer’s (FSO’s) career. It ranks right alongside Permanent Change of Station moves and drafting our annual performance evaluations (EERs), the results of which our entire promotion process depends on.
Bidding is like a full-time job when you’re already working full time. It requires a simultaneous deep dive into available positions, self-marketing, and relationship-building under tight deadlines. FSOs must research each post’s living conditions and each assignment’s portfolio and workload; reach out to incumbents and supervisors to lobby and impress; and tailor compelling bidder packages—résumés, narratives, and preference statements—for multiple jobs at once.
On top of that, bidders are constantly networking, tracking bureau priorities, responding to follow-up questions and interview requests, and adjusting their strategy as the season evolves. It’s an iterative, competitive process that demands sustained attention, organization, and proactive communication from start to finish. It doesn’t feel more “relaxed” somehow because we’re all already employees of the same organization vs. applying from the outside for a job at a corporation. It’s extremely competitive.
To bid at the beginning of a one-year tour is intense. To bid at the beginning of a one-year tour after several weeks of not being paid, in a hardship posting, while working as many hours and as intensively as we do? Not for the faint of heart. But to bid under all these circumstances and while hospitalized for multiple traumatic injuries and bilateral concussion and being unable to walk just felt nutty.
Being oriented enough to sit up in bed, enjoy a stretch of quiet, and turn on my work laptop—let alone fire up the cognitive and executive-function cylinders needed to focus—was no simple feat. For a couple of days, I thought I was procrastinating; in reality, I was overwhelmed and only capable of dealing with whatever was immediately in front of me.
Maybe I didn’t need, I started to consider, to bid on consultative positions—section-head jobs where posts get a vote and interview bidders to create a short list for the bureau. Maybe I should just stick to unit chief jobs and phone it in on this bid season.
But then I remembered this season’s stats: there are roughly two bidders for every mid-level consular job. I thought about how hard I’ve worked to get here—over 11 years as an FSO, five tours, and three stints in language, including most recently for 10 months of Burmese study, expecting that the one-year SIP tour would give me meaningful equity and credibility in bidding.
Then I started to mentally tally all the losses I’ve taken because of a single moment—a split second of being in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time while a truck driver barreled down the road on the wrong side, trying to beat the light by veering into oncoming traffic to make a left turn before it turned red. A decision that nearly cost me my life. A decision that has cost me 25 days of acute all-day anxiety, pain, and suffering, traumatized my husband, eaten up more than 160 hours of my hard-earned paid time off, caused four-figure losses in missed post allowances, and left me spending Thanksgiving alone in a hospital bed while my colleagues celebrated with our leadership over a family-style American dinner. Not to mention probably caused a hospital bill in the high six figures by now.
If I add to that what will likely be at least five missed weeks in the office, the increased stress and workload on my boss and team during my absence, my canceled work trip to Mandalay, countless missed professional and social opportunities, and the need to change our upcoming R&R plans to accommodate my limited mobility—there is no way in hell I would let a stranger further alter my life. I won’t cede my future potential Foreign Service career from 2026 through 2030 because some person I don’t even know couldn’t be arsed to watch where he was going one day in November 2025.
I later found out that I made both the shortlists for both consultative positions I interviewed for. I’d withdrawn from two other opportunities to interview, not because I didn’t have the energy, gave up on those jobs, or let someone steal my chance—but because a life-threatening accident can be extremely helpful in narrowing down your priorities.
A huge part of this career is showing up when it matters. Despite hardship, despite competing priorities, and despite things not being perfect. Sitting on the side of a hospital bed, wearing a hospital top and bottom, and trying to exude executive presence was not easy. But it was really important to me, and I was feeling well enough, so I wanted to demonstrate what kind of consular officer I would be for their team.
Bids will be due in just over a week, and I’ve already submitted mine. We won’t have an answer on my handshake until about a month later, in late January. It feels like a long time to wait, but perhaps I will have more of a steer next week as I have a final consultation with decision-makers in my bureau. We shall see, but since a year ago when I was just daydreaming about it, the work of sixth tour bidding has almost concluded.
Collecting Postcards 
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