The Department of State will place competitively qualified U.S. citizens into Foreign Service Limited Non-Career Appointments (LNA) in country-specific posts with high workloads. These employees will be fully professional members of consulate and embassy teams. Limited appointments, however, cannot serve as special access or alternate entry to the career Foreign Service or the Department of State, i.e., they do not lead automatically to onward employment at the Department of State or with the U.S. government. LNAs are welcome to apply to become Foreign Service Specialists or Generalists or Civil Service employees, but they must meet the applicable qualifications and complete the standard application and assessment processes. Service time and benefits earned as a Consular Adjudicator can be credited in any subsequent federal employment.

Language proficiency tests are given as part of the Consular Fellow Program assessment process. The competitive candidates ranked by the Qualifications Evaluation Panels will be invited to take a language proficiency test with the Language Testing Institute to confirm that they have the required language skills in one of the designated foreign languages (Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, or Spanish). Both speaking and reading will be tested. Candidates will receive their scores from the Consular Fellows Program Unit, along with the invitation to schedule an appointment for the Foreign Service Consular Professional  Assessment. Please find a description of the language proficiency test on the Language Tests page.

There is no use of pinyin in the test. Candidates may choose either traditional or simplified Chinese characters for the reading portion of the assessment.