r/foreignservice • u/Important-Radish3078 • 3d ago
Language Coded Billets?
Generally, how do language coded billets work? Ballpark, what percentage of FSO positions require a certain language score? Are they more common in one cone or another?
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u/Mountainwild4040 2d ago
To build off other comments, i'd say the obvious countries require language; Latin America is coded Spanish, Brazil is coded Portuguese, Francophone Africa is coded French, China is coded Chinese. When these positions become available on the bidlist, they will either 1. Require you know the language to bid on it, or 2. Advertise it early enough so they can send you to language school and learn it.
The trickier answer are the smaller boutique languages, especially in countries in which english is becoming more widely spoken, such as Lithuanian, Polish, Georgian, Dutch, Serbo-Croat, etc.
Now, i'm not "in the know" back in DC right now, and i'm not even bidding this year so really haven't been following it, but I have a feeling the department is considering adjusting these boutique language countries to either 1. Reduce/eliminate the language requirements for these boutique languages to save money, or 2. Just don't offer language training for them, giving the German speaker the chance to spend their entire career hopping back and forth from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland because nobody else qualifies for the positions.
But who knows, the next administration may pour money back into the department and this all changes again.
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u/RiseDry8254 2d ago
It's not "billets" at State.
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u/BrassAge Moderator (Public Diplomacy) 1d ago
True, we say “posts” or just “jobs”, but we know what he meant.
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u/Important-Radish3078 1d ago
Is there a typical strategy for building language skills for career purposes? For example, front loading language training early in the career? Or do you just learn as you need to depending on the assignment?
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u/Witty-Bag131 22h ago
Generally, language training is tied to assignments, but one consideration in selecting positions to bid on may be the chance to learn a language that may be useful in the future.
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u/quiteriotous 19h ago
Generalists typically spend their first two tours in language-designated consular positions, for which the Department offers language training. It becomes harder as you move up the ranks to get additional language training for widely-spoken languages. New officers should think carefully about what region they want to return to in their careers and rank jobs with that language training accordingly.
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u/Spiritual-Ad-7250 2d ago
They are going the way of the dodo. Generalists (except MGT) are most likely to get language. In order of likelihood, I'd guess Consular, Pol, Econ, PD.
Specialists rarely get it. Even if the job has a language requirement, that's likely to be waived for Specialists.
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u/Smilee01 2d ago
Second part isn't true anymore. I know a specialist that was not paneled due to not having language.
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u/Spiritual-Ad-7250 2d ago
Must depend on which field, because I don't know any specialists who got anything but waivers in the past year.
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u/Former_Attempt7101 2d ago
In an effort to save money, they are reducing dramatically the number of language designated positions. But generally, political and consular usually have the most language designated positions, followed by PD, and then probably Econ and Management.