INTERNATIONAL CAREERS : A World of Opportunity : A Chance to Serve : Thousands take the Foreign Service exam each year in the hope of gaining a government job that can really make a difference.

For Aaron Williams, the decision to join the Foreign Service came on a winter day in 1976.

“I was sitting in Minneapolis one cold day and I looked outside, where I couldn’t even find my car in the snow,” he said. “So I thought, why not?”

Four months later, the former food company executive had developed a model agribusiness program in Honduras to help small farmers grow crops more efficiently and export them to the United States.

“I could see the tangible returns on my work,” Williams said proudly. “We were getting subsistence farmers to diversify and market produce in the U.S.--I was hooked.”

Since then, as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, he has created banks in Haiti, helped Costa Ricans attract light-manufacturing jobs and tourists, and coordinated relief efforts for Caribbean victims of 1989’s Hurricane Hugo.

It’s the kind of international work experience not likely to be found in the private sector. Nor is Williams’ resume likely to be duplicated by any of his 4,000 fellow foreign service officers.

From 260 posts in 150 countries all over the world, foreign service officers say the appeal of their jobs is a combination of hands-on work, cultural diversity and a feeling that they are making a difference in the communities they serve. For example:

* In post-Cold War Warsaw, Anne Sigmund set up a reference center to help Poles draft legislation on issues ranging from accommodating people with disabilities to encouraging the private sector to support the arts.

* In Tokyo, John Dinger studied Japanese trade unions and opposition political parties and made regular reports to Washington about their potential impact on U.S. foreign policy. In a later tour in Sapporo, he helped U.S. firms gain a foothold in the Japanese market.

* In Madagascar, Steve Holgate arranged a visit by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to discuss the American legal system with locals so that they might adopt practices that could be useful to them.

“It’s a way of life more than it is just a job,” said Holgate, who joined the Foreign Service through the U.S. Information Agency.

That’s what entices more than 11,000 people into taking the Foreign Service exam each year in the hope of joining the service with the State Department or the U.S. Information Agency. [The next exam is scheduled for fall of 1996.]

Typically, one in five people passes the test and goes on to take the oral assessment, a group interview that only 8% of the remaining candidates pass.

About 200 finalists then submit to a background investigation, which weeds out about a dozen people for security or medical reasons.

The rest are ranked and then called, in order, with offers to join the service as spaces become available. About half of those who make it to the list are eventually offered positions, said Jonathan Owen, staff director for the Board of Examiners for the Foreign Service.

Candidates must be U.S. citizens between the ages of 20 and 59, and they must be willing to go anywhere the Foreign Service sends them. Typically they are college graduates with at least a few years of work experience before joining the service, said Vera Engel, branch chief of the service’s recruitment division.

Foreign Service officers who come in through the Agency for International Development have a separate admission process. A written application is followed by a group interview and an essay test on international development. The Departments of Agriculture and Commerce also field a relatively small number of Foreign Service officers to help promote U.S. business interests overseas.

In the early years of a foreign service officer’s career, most of the work involves “consular” tasks, such as processing visa applications for foreigners wishing to visit the United States and helping Americans abroad who are in distress, Owen said. For example, on Bethany Schwartz’s first day as a foreign service officer in Brasilia, Brazil, she was handed the case of an American who had just died of a cocaine overdose.

“It’s just awful to have to make that phone call to the family,” said Schwartz, who made all the arrangements to send the body back home. “But it’s really important and it’s one of the reasons we’re out there.”

After getting a couple of two- or three-year “tours” under the belt, a Foreign Service officer can specialize in economic, political or administrative work, or continue to climb up the consular ladder. Diplomats with the U.S. Information Agency become cultural attaches or public affairs officers, while those with the international development agency create programs to help developing countries help themselves.

Foreign Service officers say that although they probably could have found their way abroad by working for a private company, they doubt they would have had as many interesting and varied assignments.

“If I had been more patient and stayed on in the private sector, I would have ended up with an overseas assignment,” Williams said. “But this has been very rewarding and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. I made a difference, and now I can go back again and I can see the difference.”

Although a life overseas may be exotic, Foreign Service veterans say it also has its downside.

“A lot of these places are dangerous or unhealthy,” Holgate said. For example, while serving in Paris in the mid-1980s, terrorist bombing campaigns in Europe had escalated to the point that Holgate and his wife always visited the U.S. Embassy separately. That way at least one of them would survive if there was a terrorist attack.

Later, on assignment in Madagascar, Holgate’s wife and son nearly died of a life-threatening strain of malaria.

“When you buy into this business, there are certain costs you have to be prepared to accept and you hope you never face them,” Williams said.

The schools he has encountered abroad for his two children were not as good as American schools. Williams’ wife, a medical technologist, has not been able to find a medical job at any of his posts.

Still, he says, “nothing has happened that would have stopped us from going on the next assignment.”

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For information about joining the U.S. Foreign Service, please call (703) 875-7490 or write to the State Department, Recruitment Division, P.O. Box 9317, Arlington, VA 22219.