UNITED STATES
The top human resources official in the US Department of State says the Agency has a commitment to recruit the next generation of diplomats from a diverse pool of applicants.
Speaking to the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Carol Perez (pictured) said nearly half the current membership of the Senior Executive Service were eligible to retire.
She said as part of the State Department’s recruiting push, her focus was on removing some common barriers to on-boarding personnel.
Ms Perez welcomed an amendment to the Defence Department’s fiscal 2020 spending Bill that would give all Federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave.
The career official, who is a former Ambassador to Chile, said she had raised three children while in the Foreign Service.
“When you move every two to three years, you have to make new friends,” Ms Perez said.
“You may have a new medical system, and so this would be something that I think our workforce would really greatly appreciate.”
She noted State Department reports showed that while attrition rates for the Foreign Service generally were low, the “up-or-out system” meant the Agency had its highest losses at the most senior level.
Ms Perez said she was also aiming to increase diversity in the workforce at a time when it had been in decline.
“Federal Agencies were not really focused very much on diversity 15, 25 years ago, and so what you see at the senior ranks is a reflection of those hiring practices that we had back then,” she said.
A member of the Committee, Ted Lieu pointed to a decrease in African-Americans in the senior ranks of the Foreign Service, from 4.6 per cent in September 2016 to 3 per cent in March this year.
Washington, DC, 13 July 2019
