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[quote=Anonymous]I've worked at Commerce and been on several TDYs where I got to know the econ shop. FCS requires more sales-type people skills. You're supposed to make deals happen - you're kind of like a match maker between US firms and local business opportunities.

The econ cone within state is more analytical and your main counterpart would be the Finance Ministry rather than US companies, although yes they can and do fill the commercial functions when there's not an FCS. However, I'll note that Commerce has FCS posted at their most important countries, so it's like not an FSO Econ person will be doing the full FCS job when Commerce doesn't have it covered - it's not covered because there's less demand, it's not a large enough portfolio to warrant a FCS posting.

State FS is also more fluid. In smaller embassies, political & econ are often joint. Even as an Econ Affairs officer, you're still considered a generalist. You're mostly doing diplomacy, with a slant towards econ, energy, and commercial issues. If you were an FCS, you would be doing promotion of US business interests only, or at least mostly.[/quote]

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