Special Consular Services Assistant

The American Citizen Services Unit at U.S. Embassy Bern provides a wide range of consular services to Switzerland's/Liechtenstein’s 37,000 U.S. citizen residents and nearly 2 million annual visitors.

The incumbent is one of two Special Consular Services (SCS) Assistants at one of the State Department's highest volume American Citizens Services (ACS) posts in Europe and manages a full range of challenging and time sensitive SCS cases that often require considerable research, analysis, and sensitivity.

The incumbent performs the following tasks:

• Welfare checks: Search for missing persons, assist with children’s issues, help with parental child abduction. Answer emails, letters, and phone calls as well as in-person visits
• Medical assistance: Arranges and conducts hospital visits, contacts family and friends, helps with payment/insurance issues
• Financial Assistance / Repatriations: Helps contact family and friends, repatriation loans, assists in travel and housing arrangements
• Deaths: Issue consular reports of death, facilitate return of remains, assist family and friends with funeral arrangements, communicate with local funeral homes and law enforcement
• Arrests: Arrange and conduct prison visits, keep contact with family and friends, ensure fair treatment, assist with deportations
• Voting Assistance: Provide absentee voting assistance in U.S. federal and local elections
• Notary services: Prepare documents for notarization, answer public inquiries about notary services
• Event planning and outreach: Plan and attend outreach events, contact building, and contact maintenance

The incumbent needs to have completed secondary education in administration or equivalent, have 3 years progressively responsible experience involving extensive public contact and the application of complex laws or regulations in government administration, social work, or consular services; be fluent in English and German (speaking, reading and writing), good working knowledge (speaking, reading and writing) in French or Italian and have excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Further information about duties, responsibilities, required qualifications, and related matters can be obtained through the Electronic Recruitment Application (ERA) on the Embassy's website.

Interested candidates are welcome to apply through the Electronic Recruitment Application (ERA) system on the Embassy's website. Only applications submitted through ERA will be considered.