Foreign Service Examination and Career Counselling Inc (FSECC) was established in 1984 in Ottawa, Canada. Since then we have expanded—literally worldwide—to provide individual clients with specialized career development training, coaching and workshops, and institutional and corporate clients with organizational development consulting services.

This expertise, based on the diverse international work and training experience of company President Barry Yeates (click here for Biography), has made FSECC the preferred resource for people seeking entry positions or career advancement in Foreign Service work, government in general, and international organizations.

In particular, we provide clients with a significant advantage in highly competitive staffing exercises by separating fact from rumour in how institutions apply hiring and promotion criteria, and how they screen, test, interview and evaluate candidates.

An outline of our clients and the services they used is shown below. Comments from a number of them are displayed in relevant sections of this website. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) by prospective clients are also answered here.

To discuss your specific personal or organizational needs and how we can help, please Contact Us after looking over the array of services we specialize in.

Individual Clients

FSECC has provided test prep materials, interview and career advancement coaching to thousands of individual clients in Canada, the United States, Europe, and South and East Asia.

Services initially focused on helping university undergraduates, graduate students and doctoral candidates seeking entry-level employment. Over the last 10 years we have expanded to become an “entry to exit” career development resource, dealing also with young professionals seeking career change, experienced individuals pursuing internal promotions or outside opportunities, and retiring executives honing their job search materials and skills to find consulting work.

Our clients come from different academic backgrounds, from universities around the world, and from a wide range of sectors and jobs. For example:

• Disciplines represented include: law, politics/international relations/development studies, business/commerce/administration/MBA, public administration, economics, history, journalism, languages, linguistics/translation/ESL/FSL, psychology, environmental sciences, and engineering.
  
• Places of study represented include: virtually all Canadian universities; U.S institutions including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, U.C.-Berkeley, Duke, North Carolina, GWU, Georgetown; European universities including Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, London, Sussex, Le Sorbonne and L’ENA.
  
• Types of positions most commonly sought or worked in are: diplomatic officer (political/economic, trade, immigration, management/consular or development streams in Canada; political, economic, public diplomacy, consular, administrative cones or specialist categories in the United States), multilateral organization staff, government executive, NGO program officer, other international roles for language experts, university instructors, business executives, lawyers.
  
• Canadian government job classifications most commonly sought or worked in are: Foreign Service (FS), Administrative (AS), Program Manager (PM), Commercial Officer (CO), Economist (ES), Information Officer (IS), Management or Economist Trainee (MTP or AETP), and Executive-level (EX-1 to EX-4).

To honour confidentiality, we do not publish the names of individual clients we have helped. However, testimonials provided voluntarily by clients are displayed on this website following the services which they found valuable.

Institutional and Corporate Clients

FSECC has led consulting teams or participated with other firms in projects with selected client organizations listed below.

Government/Political Sector

• Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada
• Citizenship and Immigration Canada
• Canadian International Development Agency
• Trade Facilitation Office of Canada
• Correctional Service Canada
• Royal Canadian Mint
• National Gallery of CanadaHazardous Material Information Review Commission, Canada
• Canadian Alliance Party
• Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation
• Ontario Ministry of Health
• Ontario Council on University Affairs
• City of Ottawa

Multilateral Organizations/Business Associations

• International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
• International Trade Centre, Geneva
• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva
• Association of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada, Toronto
• Canadian Association: Latin America and Caribbean, Toronto, and partner Chambers of Commerce in Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti
• Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce, Bridgetown, and affiliated Chambers of Commerce in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Antigua, Grenada, Dominica
• Caribbean Hospitality Training Institute, Antigua
• Belize City Chamber of Commerce, Belize
• Metal Trades Industry of Australia, Melbourne

Corporations

Educational Institutions/Associations