The Foreign Service is managed by a director general who is appointed by the president of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Many had commercial ties to the countries in which they would serve, and were expected to earn a living through private business or by collecting fees.

This was an arrangement challenged in the first professional survey of the service, David Baillie Warden's pioneering work On the Origin, Nature, Progress and Influence of Consular Establishments (1813).

An extremely difficult Foreign Service examination was also implemented to recruit the most outstanding Americans, along with a merit-based system of promotions.

Though formally accorded diplomatic status, however, commercial and agricultural attachés were civil servants (not officers of the Foreign Service).

Commercial attachés remained with State until 1980, when Reorganization Plan Number 3 of 1979 was implemented under terms of the Foreign Service Act of 1980.

The Foreign Service Act of 1946 also repealed as redundant the 1927 and 1930 laws granting USDA and Commerce representatives abroad diplomatic status, since at that point agricultural and commercial attachés were appointed by the Department of State.

It also introduced the "up-or-out" system under which failure to gain promotion to higher rank within a specified time in class would lead to mandatory retirement, essentially borrowing the concept from the U.S. Navy.

The 1946 Act also created the rank of Career Minister, accorded to the most senior officers of the service, and established mandatory retirement ages.

During drafting of this act, Congress chose to move the commercial attachés back to Commerce while preserving their status as Foreign Service officers, and to include agricultural attachés of the Department of Agriculture in addition to the existing FSOs of the Department of State, U.S. Information Agency, and U.S. Agency for International Development.

The evaluation process for all Department of State Foreign Service officers and specialists can be broadly summarized as: Initial application, Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP), oral assessment/Foreign Service Officer Assessment, clearances and final suitability review, and the register.

The applicant's entire package (including their personal narratives) is then reviewed by the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP).

Formerly known as the oral exam and administered in person in Washington, D.C. and other major cities throughout the United States, the FSOA is now conducted entirely online.

Depending upon the candidate's specific career track, they may also require eligibility for a top secret sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) clearance.

[citation needed] Additionally, it can be difficult for anyone who has had a significant health problem to receive a Class 1 medical clearance.

[25][26][27][28] Once an applicant passes the security and medical clearances, as well as the Final Review Panel, they are placed on the register of eligible hires, ranked according to the score that they received in the oral assessment/FSOA.

Successful candidates from the register will receive offers of employment to join a Foreign Service class.

Generalist candidates who receive official offers of employment must attend a six-week training/orientation course known as A-100 at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Virginia.

Members of the Foreign Service are expected to serve much of their career abroad, working at embassies and consulates around the world.

By internal regulation, the maximum stretch of domestic assignments should last no more than six years (extensions are possible at the six-year limit for medical reasons, to enable children to complete high school, etc.

; the eight year limit is difficult to pierce and is reserved for those who are deemed "critical to the service" and for those persons at the deputy assistant secretary level).

[29] This has become more difficult in regions marked by conflict and upheaval (currently many posts in the Middle East) where assignments are unaccompanied.

Attacks on US embassies and consulates around the world—Beirut, Islamabad, Belgrade, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Baghdad, Kabul, and Benghazi, among others—underscore the dangers faced.

Foreign Service personnel stationed in nations with inadequate public infrastructure also face greater risk of injury or death due to fire, traffic accidents, and natural disasters.

This is not the norm, however, as many Foreign Service employees have volunteered to serve even at extreme hardship posts, including, most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.

[33] Clientitis (also called clientism[34][35] or localitis[36][37][38]) is the tendency of the resident in-country staff of an organization to regard the officials and people of the host country as "clients."

A hypothetical example of clientitis would be a Foreign Service officer (FSO), serving overseas at a U.S. embassy, who drifts into a mode of routinely and automatically defending the actions of the host country government.

Former USUN ambassador and White House national security advisor John Bolton has used this term repeatedly to describe the mindset within the culture of the US State Department.

[41] During the Nixon administration, the State Department's Global Outlook Program (GLOP) attempted to combat clientitis by transferring FSOs to regions outside their area of specialization.