At this time of year, just about every employee in the Foreign Service is required to write up and submit an EER, short for Employee Evaluation Report. In simpler terms, every year we are all required to write a one page evaluation of ourselves, which in reality is an essay contest to see how good everyone is at kissing their own butts. From there, your boss and their boss will also submit a narrative evaluation of you, and then it all goes in your permanent record. Fun huh?

These evaluations are of critical importance in the Foreign Service, as several times a year panels are assembled to determine if tenure is to be granted to an employee based on what their EER’s say, and once a year, promotion panels comb over these to rank order candidates up for promotion. Although I am 2 years away from being considered for both tenure or promotion, the panels will go back and review EER’s half a decade old when making their decisions, so this very first EER is still an important one.

Each year the State Department publishes core principals like communication, management, leadership, etc, and expects you to highlight how you check off each of these boxes with real examples. This isn’t necessarily hard to do, but I think medical providers all do these things with regularity, so if trying to set yourself apart for promotion, how do you do this when you are compared to everyone else in your specialty who is ultimately doing the same thing? This is where ones skills as a writer come to matter.

In my 15+ year career, I don’t think I have ever been asked to write such a sweeping narrative of just how great all my accomplishments are. Sure, managers may have asked me to appraise how I thought I was doing, but having to spell it all out and have a major role in your future is weird. Back when I was working in the hospital, bonuses and evaluations were tied to hard objective data like readmission rates, length of stays, compliance with sepsis protocols, or satisfaction surveys. This however rewards solid writers. Stories abound in the Foreign Service of mediocre employees working their way up the ranks because of their superior writing skills.

At the end of the day, I believe I have crafted a solid EER for this rating period thanks to fantastic guidance by more experienced officers on my team, but it has easily been one of the more bizarre professional experiences I have undertaken. Thankfully, having a weekly blog helps keep your writing mind sharp. Here’s to a successful EER season to one and all! –Nick