My Tips for Writing EER Bullets

Several FAST (First and Second Tour) Officers (also known as ELOs, Entry-Level Officers), recently asked me for advice on writing EER bullet points. It made me realize that although I have several advice posts about writing the EER statements themselves, I've never done a post about the bullet points so I thought I'd fill in that gap here. For those who may not know, EERs are our Employee Evaluation Reports upon which Department of State Foreign Service promotion decisions are based. We do at least one per year (and in rare cases more frequently depending on whether a supervisor changed or there were outside circumstances that led to more). I was promoted from 04 to 03 (as Foreign Service grades weirdly count backwards so as we move up the number moves down) at my first look, meaning the first chance a promotion panel reviewed my file to consider whether I should be promoted, so I'd like to think I know what makes a good entry-level EER, at least.

Ideally, a FAST Officer will have a good rater (usually the immediate supervisor) and reviewer (usually the supervisor's supervisor but sometimes the Deputy Chief of Mission known as the DCM, section head, or someone else) who actually write their portion of the EER. I've heard horror stories of bosses who don't write any of it and hapless ELOs who have to write not only their own statement but the two others on their EER that should be written by their chain of command, but thankfully that has never happened to me. If your rater and reviewer are actually writing their portion, they will almost always ask for bullet points from you about the things you want them to write about. This is a crucial part of the process that, in my opinion, takes just as much skill as writing the EER itself. So here's my advice to newer diplomats for EER bullets:

• Meet with your rater and reviewer early to find out their preferences for bullets, including timeline. DIfferent bosses will have different preferences: some will want "meaty bullets" that are written like paragraphs they can copy and paste as a working draft of their statement, others will want very concise memory joggers about things you did, and most will want something in between. If you don't get a strong steer, I would err on the side of providing more substantive information since nobody will care more about your EER than you do. Typically, you will share all your bullet points in one document that shows what you will write about, what your rater will write about, and what your reviewer will write about all together. Get these to your rater and reviewer on time so you aren't already running behind before the statements are even drafted.
• Know when to hold your ground and when to let go. Some raters and reviewers will have very strong opinions about which examples they think each person should cover in their section of your EER. I find the vast majority of the time it's not worth pushing back, because if they write about the examples that stand out to them then they will naturally write better. In some cases, you might feel they didn't have full visibility on your work or only the rater or reviewer could do the example justice - in that case, it's okay to challenge their preference. At the end of the day, it's your EER and you should get the final say.
• Keep space constraints in mind. The rater has the longest statement, followed by the employee. The reviewer's statement is significantly smaller. As a result, I wouldn't give a reviewer more than three bullet points because there simply isn't space. The rater should have the most bullet points, followed by the employee. Some people argue two examples very fleshed out is enough for an employee or rater statement, but I strongly disagree and think more examples are better (as long as you're not going overboard and trying to cram in ten per statement).
• Make sure you address all the core precepts in every EER, something you can see at the bullet point stage. You can find the core precepts on the Department of State intranet, from your CDO, or from your office or post HRO. Although the promotion board that decides whether to promote you generally looks at the past five EERs, I think there's plenty of space to address all the precepts every year. When I make my own EER bullets each year, I color code them by precept and review it to see if I'm missing any precepts. If so, I reframe some examples or add ones that showcase the missing precept. (Note: I know there's a lot of confusion this year about whether the DEIA - Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility - precept will remain. It's not worth speculating or trying to find out on social media. Just keep checking with your office or post HR team or the American Foreign Service Association known as AFSA, the Foreign Service union that routinely negotiates the precepts.)
• Only include the minimum context needed to understand your accomplishments. The vast majority of EER bullets I read from newer officers focus way too much on context and not enough on impact. If there are factors that make your post or job particularly challenging, you can include those. But those should only be a few sentences, not entire paragraphs. The promotion board is evaluating you, not the position itself, so make sure the vast majority of your bullets also talk about what you did and not just things about post or your office.
• Focus on what you did and results, not on outputs and titles. Don't just tell me you coordinated the National Day event, but tell me what that entailed and what the outcome was. Perhaps the event enabled a successful introduction of a new Ambassador, opening doors to higher-level follow-on meetings than have been historically possible. If you tell me you were chair of the FAST Committee, that's not as impactful as telling me that as chair of the FAST Committee, you provided essential public speaking training for 20 FAST colleagues that gave them the skills necessary to promote U.S. priority messaging to hundreds of youth through the Embassy Speakers Program. Even better if those speaker programs increased applicants to U.S. exchanges by a certain percentage or improved perception of the United States by a good margin. Or maybe your Consular cooperation with local authorities reduced fraud and increased awareness of visa scams. Whatever your job is, there is some way to show impact and that should already be in there in the bullets.
• Don't just cover special projects, but make sure your core work is well represented in your EER bullets. Most people will raise an eyebrow at an officer in a Consular section whose EER doesn't reference Consular work. If you only write about official visits and other special projects, it will give the impression that that was your only priority and you may have neglected your regular job duties. It's worth remembering the promotion panel will see your Work Requirements Statement including your position description and title when they read your EER. I personally think your core work should be reflected in the bullets of all your statements if possible: the employee, the rater, and the reviewer. If that's not possible, only the reviewer might be able to get away with only focusing on special projects since the space they have is much smaller.
• Ask mentors to see their EER bullets as examples. I always share my EERs and EER bullet points with mentees because I think it's helpful to see the evolution of bullet points to statements to final, polished product.

This is a non-exhaustive list of EER bullet point advice, but I hope it's helpful for any readers out there still relatively new to the process. I benefitted from my own mentors guiding me when I was new, and I'm happy to pay it forward. Happy drafting!