After waiting and eagerly anticipating The Bid List for the past two years or so, I'd be happy to just get rid of it now, after having only had it in hand for a few short days.
A brief primer on initial bidding for Foreign Service Officers.
A few days into his employment for the State Department, Dave and his classmates received a list of international cities. I can't share much detail on this list - it is sensitive (how cool is that?!). There are a few more posts than there are people in the class, which makes the list rather daunting. Especially because of how spare the list is.
Our task is to take this list, and rank each job on the list either High, Medium or Low.
I have said that its a list of international cities, and that we're supposed to rank each job. This is part of the challenge of The Bid List. Although it is technically a list of positions available, we have precious few details on the job itself. So, the list may have Cozumel, Mexico listed three times. That means that they'll be sending three people to Cozumel. Other details include the expected start date, and the required language training.
With this spare base, we begin our own personal research. Here is our Bidding Strategy.
We hope and expect to pick up Mei Mei from China in late November or early December this year. I desire very strongly to arrive at post much earlier than that, so we all have time to adjust to our new surroundings, our new home and schools, our new language and possibly our new household help before we add this new little baby into the mix. We simply do not need so many life changing events in such close proximity. If you're not feeling sympathy for us yet, that will include:
1 - new job for Dave,
2 - new school for Lilly and Sophia,
3 - new home for each of us,
4 - new country for each of us,
5 - likely a new language and certainly a new culture for each of us, and
6 - new baby entering the family in a highly traumatic fashion.
So, insofar as we can, we have eliminated any posts which begin between Oct. 1st and Jan. 31st. And by eliminate, I mean that we have ranked them as Low.
Next, we went through and pulled out anything that seemed particularly exciting. A number of the jobs do have small job descriptions, and Dave highlighted a few of them. A few of the posts are in places we would love to live, and so we highlighted them as well. That makes up our High list.
And everything else is currently ranked as Medium.
This feels like the lazy family's way to choose where next to live, but I think I may just leave the list as it is now. I could certainly do more research, and learn which posts have a long commute to school or have poisonous spiders habitually making residence in people's shoes. But I'm not sure that I want to. With worldwide availability, we may well be going to the places that I've eliminated. I don't think I want to allow myself to eliminate anymore posts.
So, our Bidding Priorities are Timing first, and Job second. With Worldwide Availability and the needs of the service trumping all.
2 comments:
Any words of wisdom you can give a spouse coming in on deferred travel? My husband begins his orientation the end of the month. I will not be joining him until he completes his training. I thinking I am going to be missing out on the spouse class/briefings; which I would really like to attend. So any information you could share with me would be great. Thank you.
Jolene - I think you'll be fine. The spouse training was useful (and also online, I think?), but also pretty overwhelming. If you've been doing lots of research, then you'll know a lot of what they say already. The opportunity to ask questions is valuable, so it'll be on you to seek out the answers to your questions yourself. Take advantage of the Overseas Briefing Center and the Transition office - they'll be great about directing your questions. And just network on your own as soon as you arrive. I'd say missing the day won't be such a big deal. Good luck!
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