Talking to James Bevan, Director of Change, at the FCO

Video:

Transcript to follow

Posted at 11:03 14 March 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[5]

Familiarisation Visit

Apologies for not writing for so long - I have been away from London on my 'familiarisation visit' to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This was an amazing week that I have been looking forward to for some time. Myself, and several colleagues, travelled first to Jerusalem for a few days of meetings and tours, and subsequently to Tel Aviv for the same. It was a fantastic chance to meet with a variety of interlocutors, including other diplomats, academics, NGOs, and representatives from the Palestinian and Israeli authorities. For me, the trip was hugely beneficial – a perspective from London can be very different to your perspectives when you are actually there. It was a great chance to really get my head round a lot of the issues, as well as the chance to meet with my colleagues at the Embassy in Tel Aviv and the Consulate-General in Jerusalem. These are people that I work with on a day-to-day basis, and the chance to meet with them in person will, I hope, have a really positive impact on our working practices – the relationship you develop with someone after a face-to-face meeting can be very different to one where you rely on email and telephone communication.

Overall, a very sobering trip that really brought home the realities of life for both Israelis and Palestinians and the very difficult issues that still remain to be dealt with. There were positives – you could see how the work that we are doing in London contributes towards improving life for both sides as much as we can – both through our work on the wider political process that will take both sides to a solution, but also through the work the British government does through funding local projects and initiatives. We even got to watch Palestinian young boys and girls doing football training – their training was organised by a club that the FCO fund, and it was great to see relatively small projects making such a difference to people’s day-to-day lives.

Posted at 17:51 05 March 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[9]

Career Aspirations within the FCO

Matt asked a few weeks ago about where I see my career going within the FCO. For me, I think thats a really difficult question. Given that my first (current) job is in the Middle East and North Africa Directorate, I am currently thinking about how great it would be to live and work in the Middle East. However, I think it is still too early to tell which direction I would like to go in. At the moment I'm just thinking about getting through the next two years in London and then seeing what opportunities come up. I can't think of anywhere I wouldn't want to go, and I still feel that there are a lot of different types of jobs in the office that I would like to learn more about. So - options wide open for me at the moment!

In general though, I think the kind of posts that people aspire to within the FCO are really varied. The position of Ambassador is, of course, highly respected and a fantastic position to attain. But there are lots of other roles in the FCO that may not spring to mind so quickly. These roles are also challenging and rewarding and include managing a geographical area from the UK, working on secondment in other government departments (or NGOs or private sector organisations), working in the crisis response unit, public diplomacy, press office, promoting diversity across the office, strategic policy planning, HR, finance and consular work. Individual interests (and availability of jobs!) really guide your next steps within the organisation and there are enough fascinating jobs in the FCO that I think most people are content to take each new challenge as it comes.

Posted at 10:11 16 February 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[6]

Work Experience

A couple of people have asked me about tips for work experience. I think it is really important to highlight the really varied work experience that people I started with have. It ranges from years in the City (banking, consulting, you name it) to academia, PR or public sector work (other government departments, NGOs or charities). I wanted to mention this to emphasise that there is no set work experience that the FCO is looking for. The assessments for entry at all grades are competency based - meaning that you should be able to lift out examples of the key competencies that they are looking for from your work experience, university life or personal life. They are also looking for a strong interest in foreign affairs and living and working abroad. As far as I can see, if you can demonstrate those interests and competencies, it doesn't matter where the examples come from.

Posted at 17:15 12 February 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[1]

Brussels again...

So tomorrow I'm off to Brussels again for another EU working group.

Yesterday and today I am finalising preparations for this (well, squeezing in the preparations for this around other work!). Having received an agenda of what's coming up, I'm making sure that I have as much information as possible on each of those subjects. This includes meeting with other government departments (OGDs - yet another acronym) such as DFID to check that I have a full grasp of our objectives for this meeting. For me, this is really fascinating, a great chance to step away from some of my more detailed day-to-day activities and an important chance to look at the wider picture and explore some of the key issues in greater depth. It also gives me the chance to go to DFID's offices (which are very nice!) and meet with some of my colleagues there. My role requires a lot of co-operation with other government departments - I have even recently initiated some fortnightly cross-Whitehall meetings that give desk officers at my level the chance to keep up to date with others' work and to ensure greater coordination across government. For me, as a newbie to the world of government, this has been great - a snapshot into the way organisations like DFID run and how interlinked their work is with that of the FCO, both in London and overseas.

Posted at 11:03 05 February 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[3]

Women in the FCO

So, Simon raised the issue of women in the FCO, particularly the lack of women in senior management. An excellent point, and definitely, for me at least, a bit worrying. Its hard when you are starting out your career as a keen (!) new entrant to think about which direction your career might go when you are a little short on role models. It even worried me when I was applying - how will working in a male dominated environment feel? Will I really have all the opportunities that a man starting out in my position will have? Will the office inherently be structured in a way that fits male working styles and approaches better? Is there even really such a thing as male working styles and approaches!?

Anyway, I suppose it does all still worry me a little. Particularly when I joined with an intake vastly dominated by men! (I have since found out that this is a genuine anomaly in the intakes of recent years, and of course encouraging proof that positive discrimination hasn't taken hold).

But, since I've joined, I have seen more than just rhetoric about changing the office, and more women than I imagined moving fast up the ladder. Inevitably a shift in the demographics of the office won't happen overnight. The important thing for me is that I feel that there is nothing that I cant achieve in the office on my own merit, and being a woman in the FCO is in no way a hindrance.

There is obviously still some way to go, as in many industries, in making the organisation more family-friendly, but that is in no way an issue limited to women (something the organisation is slowly realising).

One thing I can say with certainty - senior management in the office will look very different in ten years time.

Posted at 09:52 26 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[8]

French

Bizarrely unconnected to my recent complaints about not knowing any French - I will be starting French lessons through the office from next week (hopefully!). France takes over the EU Presidency on 1 July 2008, and a lot of the work that I do will start to be in French (all a bit stressful). So, for those who will have a lot of work in French, the office has offered to give lessons too. Even better, this will be in the form of a long lunch twice a week, rather than outside of work hours (e.g. evenings or weekends) when it would be a lot harder for people to make it (especially those with families).


So... perhaps a blog entry in French soon!? ahem.....

Posted at 07:17 23 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[1]

Service Delivery

In response to Simon's query about consular work...

I am currently on a one year political posting - after this I will do one more year in London probably doing what is opaquely termed a 'service delivery' role. These are jobs that focus more on providing a service (clue is in the name I guess!) - either to the public or to the FCO as an organisation. These roles can be anything from UKvisas work, to project (or programme) management. Personally, I am quite looking forward to taking on a role like this - I can see that the office needs to have people who have a wide range of skills, and service delivery roles are really important in developing awareness of how the FCO works (and crucially how it could work better) and how it interacts with the public.

On the flip side of this, I can understand that some people in the office feel that they joined to work on political roles, and service delivery roles such as change management are not the kind of jobs that attracted them to working for the FCO. I guess it really just depends on how you look at it - I think I would really enjoy a role like that which helps me understand more about how the organisation runs - in fact, i have taken on an IT change manager role for my team in the office, which will hopefully give me a really small taster of project management. How the FCO, or any foreign service, should be run, and how it should look in ten, twenty or thirty years time, and how the service it provides to the public should be managed, are all really important questions, and it can only be a good thing that new starters are encouraged to get a really wide range of experience.

Posted at 08:45 21 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  | 

Talking to Tom, desk officer for Syria and Lebanon

Sarah: Hi and welcome to my quick conversation with Tom here who works as a desk officer for Syria and Lebanon which is in the Near East team and I work quite closely with Tom, so I thought I would ask him a couple of quick questions today. First of all Tom, how long have you been in the Office now?

Tom: Well I have been in the Office for 6.5 years now. I joined on the 1st of September 2001 which was just 10 days before the terrible attacks on the World Trade Centre and actually that was a very pivotal world event that has actually shaped my career in the Office quite a lot because I have tended to focus on quite a lot of counter-terrorism and conflict resolution type of issues.

Sarah: Can you tell me a little bit more about the jobs that you have held in the Office?

Tom: Yes, sure. My first job in the Office was working on the Foreign Office website where I was an editor.

Sarah: Okay.

Tom: I sort of published all of the Foreign Secretary's speeches and from there I moved on to working on Nepal, on Nepal-related issues in London. It was a very interesting time to be involved in Nepal because Nepal was embroiled in a very serious Maoist revolution since 1996 and during my time on the desk the king seized power from the political parties which was a major political event which we had to respond to and I think actually that work that I did on Nepal gave me an interest in conflict-related issues which is why I then decided to do my present job which is working on Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East Department.

Sarah: When did you start your current job?

Tom: I started my current job in the Middle East in June 2006 and it was at a time when tensions were building between Lebanon and Israel where there was quite a lot of rocket fire from southern Lebanon into northern Israel and actually I did my familiarisation visit to Lebanon during that time in June and actually it seemed relatively peaceful. We had no idea that within a few weeks a major conflict would break out and actually I went to a kebab shop on the blue line that separates Lebanon from Israel during my familiarisation visit and when I went back after the conflict the whole building was just completely destroyed and there was not a single brick left and it was really quite an extraordinary experience.

Sarah: Okay. And just a couple of quick questions then about what you actually do day to day? What being a desk officer involves?

Tom: Yes, sure, well. The title desk officer is not a particularly glamorous title, it sounds like you manage furniture or something, but actually what you are responsible for as a desk officer is at the working level advising Ministers on policy and that is what I see as my primary role in the job. So I am gathering in information from a range of different sources, from our embassies overseas, from media contacts, from other government departments, from a range of sources and building up into a picture and then when we have a serious decision to make on policy I then submit papers to Ministers who then take decisions on them. But that is far from all that I do of course. There is a number of other things that we do including managing the public communication of our policy, so I oversee a lot of the parliamentary work and the press work that we do, and there is also quite a lot of bilateral work including things like amending travel advice but also helping Brits abroad. One of the things I did in the Lebanon conflict was work in Consular Department where we evacuated 2,500 Brits at the height of the conflict.

Sarah: So it is really quite a wide range, really quite varied stuff?

Tom: I think it is a very broad range and that is one of the really interesting things about the job, you never know what is going to hit you when you come in the morning, it could be a range of almost anything and you have to react to it very quickly.

Sarah: And lastly, do you have any particular advice for someone starting out in the FCO, so someone like me?

Tom: Well, it might seem like a piece of advice out of left field, but one of the things that I have learnt, particularly through doing my Assessment and Development Centre, is that it is really important to think while you walk.

Sarah: Right, okay.

Tom: So often you have to think on your feet a lot and walking from your desk to a meeting is very important thinking time to prepare what you are going to say and I have found that the 2 minutes you spend walking around the Foreign Office to a meeting is key preparation time and I recommend any desk officer to take that very seriously.

Sarah: I will make sure I will. Thanks very much Tom. Thanks.

Posted at 10:17 14 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  | 

Talking to John Jenkins - Director of MENAD

Transcript to follow.

Posted at 10:58 07 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[3]

First Few Years

In answer to Rikki's question, no you don't have any input over your first year job. You are placed in your first post (or at least this is what happens when you join the office in the way that I have), and then I will be doing applications soon for my next one year post in London . A few months after that I will be doing applications for my overseas posting - which will probably start in early 2010.


Each job is separate and distinct, and from what I understand, the idea is that you have transferable skills that you can take to any post, rather than region-specific knowledge. Having said that, obviously there can be certain themes that appear over the course of a career, as you apply for jobs that fit your interests. So the short, answer is - no, your overseas postings (or at least in my case) will not necessarily be linked to your London postings, and you have a choice to apply for any postings you want (dependent on when you finish your current post etc). Hope that helps!

Posted at 08:05 07 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  | 

Festive Period

I was in work between Christmas and New Year in a very quiet office. Understandably the office, like many, winds down a lot over the festive period, so many teams just have a few people in.It has actually been a really good chance to catch up on emails and sorting through things (and eating all the leftover chocolates!). I have also been using the breathing space that a lack of briefing requests has given me to focus on MP and member of the public letters that are due soon. As my team works on a major foreign policy issue that brings with it many strong, and differing opinions, we receive a lot of correspondence. In fact, as I understand it our team receives more than pretty much any other group. It is always interesting reading the letters that are sent in, and for me, its a really good chance to get under the skin of the issues. It gives one food for thought, and is an important method of explaining our policies to any interested individuals.

Posted at 11:09 05 January 2008 by Sarah Russell  | 

Brussels

A few weeks ago now, I was sent to Brussels for work. This was very exciting for a number of reasons - a) I got to go on the new super fast Eurostar from the lovely St. Pancras; b) I got to go to brussels which I've never been to before; and c) I got to represent the UK at an EU working group.

I spent the Tuesday being shown around, and sitting in on meetings with UKRep (the UK's permanent representation to the EU), and learning about the EU and the way it works. This lifted the fog a little that surrounds everything EU-like in my mind, and seeing working groups in action helped to make sense of what was going on a lot more. I realised I seriously need to work on my French though, particularly with the upcoming French Presidency of the European Council. Highlight of Tuesday was clearly in the evening when I saw the Town Hall in La Grande Place being lit up in time to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - really strange but very entertaining! I also met up with a couple of other new starters who were in Brussels for various working groups and Inductions. It was a useful reminder of how much we work with, and within, the EU across the whole office.

On Wednesday, it was my moment in the hot seat, so to speak. I was supposed to be representing the UK in a working group on the Middle East Peace Process. Initially, when I was told I would be doing this every six weeks or so I had thought it was hilarious - why would they send me? Were they joking? What on earth would I say? I'd never heard anything more ridiculous. And yet, apparently they weren't joking at all...

The fact that they were being completely serious only really hit me when I sat down behind the little placard thing that says 'United Kingdom' and a little microphone all of my own. As I noticed that pretty much everyone else around the table was at least twenty years older than me (and extremely serious looking), the fear hit me. In a rare moment of foresight, I had written down two sensible, articulate, intelligent interventions that I had planned to make the night before. Obviously, I had to get over the fear as quickly as possible, so I thought I should speak up as soon as I could. All went well, I made my sensible interventions, didn't misspeak, did manage to turn bright red, and looked anxiously at the Presidency the whole way through.

Obviously then, just to spite me, the debate then turned in a totally different direction, and I was forced to speak up on a whole range of other issues that I hadn't prepared for. Excellent. Sensible intelligent articulate interventions went out the window, quickly replaced by jabbering responses to the rapidly moving discussion. Nightmare. How had it all gone wrong so quickly!?

To my huge relief, I had someone from UKRep sitting behind me in an official capacity, who was a massive help when it came to knowing when to intervene and suitable points to make (and helping me understand the French interventions!). Overall, I survived, having kept UK policy intact and not having totally humiliated myself in front of other member states. Oh the relief.

Reward for all this stress was a giant lunch hosted by the Portuguese to mark the last working group of its sort under their Presidency (really lovely food). And then, I had to do it all over again for the Maghreb/Mashreq working group (North Africa and the Levant). Thankfully, this one stuck to issues that I felt more prepared for and was also substantially shorter so the potential for messing the whole thing up was much reduced. So, I had made it through my first, and second, working group in the EU without too many battle scars (and with the excitement of going on the Eurostar!). Now to look forward to the next one....

Posted at 13:34 18 December 2007 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[9]

Languages

In response to George's comment, I don't speak any languages. I did A level French. I then promptly forgot all of it, and have never used it since. I did a GCSE in German, and I can still recite my oral speech. Which is, of course, fantastically helpful when trying to do anything in Germany. People are always really pleased to hear about my sister's hobbies, and how I had two tortoises when I was 15. But, having said all of that, I am trying to resurrect my French with the help of my linguist flatmate. We are trying to practice 15 minutes a day. She makes me read out cooking instructions in French, which is seriously damaging our ability to actually make a meal.


So the point is that being able to speak languages is not a prerequisite for joining the office. However, the selection procedure does test your ability to learn languages, using a test called the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT). Your score on this is one of a number of factors that are taken into consideration when you apply for language training with the office. As far as I understand, you can apply for language training throughout your career at the FCO. Language skills are, of course, a huge asset, and a skill that the office encourages you to develop. The language training offered is a great opportunity, and personally I would love the chance to develop my language skills.

Posted at 08:32 26 November 2007 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[8]

This week...

This week has been very, very busy. Really, really, really busy. And I've been really stressed. Next week is the US hosted international meeting in Annapolis. My team have been working on preparations for this and putting together briefing for the Foreign Secretary. This has been a fairly monumental task, and I was given the fantastic opportunity to lead on putting the briefing pack together. I have been compiling work from across the office, as well as working with my team to write key briefs and to search out any and all relevant supporting and reference documents.


Whilst this has been pretty tiring, it left me with an amazing feeling yesterday when I managed to get it all completed! It has been a brilliant chance to get to know a lot more people in the office (fast) and to work on a topic that has been in the news every day this week. What I've been most impressed by is the fact that I have been in the office only a short while, and I have been given a lot of responsibility very quickly. The level of trust that the organisation, and your fellow team members, put in you is impressive, and very motivating. Its also shown me that this job is really going to be as challenging and rewarding as I hoped it would be.

Posted at 16:50 25 November 2007 by Sarah Russell  |  Comments[2]