Step 1: Choose a Career Track
Once you've made the decision to start the process to become a Foreign Service Officer, you'll have another important choice to make: your career track.
Whether you want to follow a professional path that grows your management skills, impacts economic policy or helps reunite families, you'll find five different career tracks that can direct you towards realizing your goals. Please choose carefully, as your selection will have an impact on your selection and job experiences once you enter a Foreign Service career. In order to make the most informed decision, you'll need to understand the similarities and the differences between each career track. There are several areas that all career tracks have in common:
- Each engages with host government officials, private sector leaders and international organization officials. In every career track, you will work closely with people from other countries.
- Each fosters dialog between the United States and the host country. In every career track, you will advocate U.S. policies, promote U.S. interests, and strengthen understanding between our country and other nations.
- Each career track requires the same characteristics — also known as the 13 dimensions(35kb, PDF).
| MYTH | REALITY |
|---|---|
| Management Officers do boring and routine work. | Nothing is boring or routine about managing an embassy! Management Officers are the "go to" leaders at U.S. embassies. As resourceful, creative, action-oriented leaders, they are responsible for all embassy operations from real estate to people to budget. Management officers make diplomacy work. |
| MYTH | REALITY |
| Consular Officers spend their days stamping passports and issuing visas. | Consular Officers make judgments about foreign nationals who want to travel to the United States. They also facilitate adoptions, help evacuate Americans, and combat fraud to protect our borders and fight human trafficking. Consular Officers touch people's lives in important ways, often reassuring families in crisis. |
| MYTH | REALITY |
| Only Political Officers become Ambassadors. | While a few Political Officers become Ambassadors, so do Management, Consular, Economics, and Public Diplomacy Officers. |
| MYTH | REALITY |
| Economic Officers crunch numbers; must be experts in econometrics. | Every career track involves basic skills in understanding numerical data. Economic Officers work on economic and trade policy, and advocate U.S. economic and commercial interests. |
| MYTH | REALITY |
| Public Diplomacy Officers are the only ones who interact with local citizens of foreign countries. | All Foreign Service Officers, regardless of career track, work closely with citizens of foreign countries every day. |
| WHAT IS MY NEXT STEP? |
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