Diplomacy, explained.
Interviews provide dubious markers for talent, with a besetting inclination by many panels to clone themselves (Habib Samadov/UN Climate Change)
Absent Hogwarts’ sorting hat, selection panels can do better.
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The perils of recruiting a modern diplomatThe perils of recruiting a modern diplomat
How can anyone recruit for jobs where applicants cannot possibly have the requisite skills or relevant experience? Every foreign service around the world faces that dilemma; none has resolved the problem. Recruiting a neurosurgeon to repair a brain or a structural engineer to construct a bridge might seem relatively straightforward, but how to select a diplomat?
Especially now that selection procedures are purportedly fact-based, scientifically tested and future-proofed, foreign affairs departments have a vested interest in claiming that the way they pick recruits is robust and reliable. Recruitment pitches differ between countries, but only to a limited degree.
Take the US State Department as an example. State’s recruitment guidance grandly declares that would-be diplomats will be tested, among other things, on “situational judgment, “world history and geography” and “principles of effective communication”. Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office offers the alluring prospect of access to fast-track programs. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade lists six altogether worthy – if entirely predictable – attributes which applicants should possess.
Recruitment, though, is a craft rather than a science, one where deft and cunning candidates (surely two qualities would-be diplomats should display) can still outsmart their betters. Essay questions can be swotted up in advance, much as young Americans exhaustively prepare their college entry papers. Nobody needs to know how a neophyte has invented the wheel and will save the world from its sins.
Grit and guts rarely feature in selection criteria, but they should for any diplomatic career.
Besides, who knows how to weigh the value of flair, wit or panache in any writing? A friend of mine at one venerable Foreign Ministry wrote popular page-turners only to have his supervisors invite him to try his hand at a slim volume on philosophical conundrums.
Interviews provide dubious markers for talent, with a besetting inclination by many panels to clone themselves. Against the grain, common sense and real life can occasionally intrude. Another friend won points for noting that he had worked processing dead animals rather than, say, as an unpaid intern at a think tank or a volunteer in South Sudan.
As for psychological tests, anyone aspiring to practise the dark arts of diplomacy might be tempted to bluff or try to game the questions. Outright lies are best avoided; they, rightly, attract more demerit points than rueful confessions of a few past misdemeanours.
As for tap-on-the-shoulder recruiting, surely the oldest technique of all, that used to be a hallmark of some intelligence services. The results were sometimes shocking.
Perhaps all those stock techniques need some radical simplifying. Absent Hogwarts’ sorting hat, selection panels can do better.
One essay question alone might suffice: what are our country’s essential national interests, and how are they best defended? Here one point to flag would be the extent to which candidates buy into the conventional wisdom, banging on about the virtues of free trade, the perils of arms races, good international citizenship, closer ties with neighbours or a deeper understanding of China.
More depth is needed, and more realism, too. Iconoclasm and innovation comprise distinct but distinctly useful forms of diversity. Recruiters might refresh their thinking by reviewing the procedures adopted at Bletchley to break Nazi codes, techniques which drew in an eclectic, eccentric set of war-winning talent.
Turning to interviews, no questioner now would be allowed to ask whether applicants had ever played on a team, had mastered chess, were active on social media, or sported tattoos. They could, however, be queried on what they were reading and what they most loved about their country. Personal answers would tell more than the formal farce of group exercises, where everyone knows not to be bossy or pushy but to butt in with a scintillating angle or anecdote. How can you test, robustly and reliably, the critical diplomatic skill: being persuasive?
In addition, those charged with recruiting diplomats should consider not taking anyone under the age of 30, on the basis that candidates should by then have done something – something useful, practical, durable – with their lives. Dogsbody tasks at embassies, erroneously supposed to build character, could be performed adequately by AI or junior locally engaged staff.
As a supplementary test, candidates should be told that they are applying to join their national public service (a department, not “The Department”). They should expect to be seconded for a year or so to handle domestic work before any serious, senior promotion.
In foreign affairs departments, the whole is often less than the sum of the parts. Talented, idealistic, young folk are sucked in, then removed from direct influence on their nation’s life. Conservatives might regard that as a handy safety valve. Like “Oxbridge” or the Ivy League, Foreign Services can exert a strong gravitational pull on talent.
Nonetheless, diplomacy remains different. Lying abroad for your country is the easy part. Just coping overseas for half your career may prove more arduous.
Grit and guts rarely feature in selection criteria, but they should for any diplomatic career. A few romantics may regard overseas postings as comparable to the great voyages of discovery, with First Secretaries, Counsellors and Ambassadors setting out to explore and explain the world beyond their shores. Other postings might seem a bit more like being locked up in a pirate ship run by Captain Ahab. Selection panels need to prepare for both contingencies.
About the author
Mark Pierce
Mark Pierce was a diplomat and is now a writer who has spent years living in France and Germany.
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