Pick the posts you are considering, each person you invite gets a say in what matters to them, and you see facts and figures for each post side by side, with a fit score for the whole group. Free, no account. myBidPal is in beta, so you need the access code you were given.
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myBidPal is a shared sheet for the posts you're weighing in a bid cycle. You add up to five positions, each on its own card. Each person says what matters to them, and you see the facts side by side with a fit score for the group. It's in beta, so you need the access code you were given, and it can't tell you which post to bid on.
Start a sheet and add the positions you're weighing, under Prospective Positions. Each one gets a card with everything about that bid in one place: the job's name, your estimated pay, the facts for the post, the promotion rating, and everyone's pros and cons. The buttons above the cards show every position with its pros and cons count and promotion rating, and you open one at a time. Want them next to each other? Switch to Side by side: what your group said comes first, then the numbers, with the best value in each row marked. "How they compare" is collapsed under it and shows the pay, school, doctor and air quality differences as dots on a line. To change a post, click its name and start typing, like "Paris", then choose from the list.
Name each job in your own words, like "04 ESTH" or "03 Staff Assistant". Weighing two jobs in the same city? Tap "Another job" on its card and the post appears twice, once for each job.
Each person picks the priorities that matter to them. Every priority adds its facts to the table below the cards. Pros and cons start with a few suggestions drawn from the post's own figures. Tap one to add it, or write your own.
The person who started the sheet rates each job's promotion potential as Low, Medium or High. Everyone else can give that rating a thumbs up or down, and the card keeps a running count. If the creator changes a rating, the count starts again.
Up to six people can be on one sheet. Share it by private link and each person adds their own priorities, notes, and pros and cons in their own color.
Pay uses the same rules as the Salary Calculator, with the current pay tables and the post's cost of living, hardship and danger rates. Language incentive, skills incentive pay and the Service Need Differential depend on you, so you choose them on each card. Schools use the education allowance table. Health, air, electricity and crime figures come from the World Bank. Travel advisories come from the State Department.
Language and climate text comes from a frozen copy of the CIA World Factbook. Full detail shows the year of each figure, and the line above the tool shows when the tables were last refreshed.
Your grade, step, household size, children's grades and the pay choices you make on each card never go on a shared sheet. They stay in your browser and are used only to estimate your pay and school costs, so everyone sees pay for their own grade. An unshared sheet also stays in your browser.
Pay is gross, before taxes and deductions. For net pay and a longer breakdown, use the Salary Calculator. It doesn't show the weather for the city itself, flight costs home, or how good a school is. Country figures describe a whole country, not a city or a clinic, and the Department's medical office decides each family's clearance. The time difference is at standard time and can be an hour different when clocks change.
No. A shared sheet has two private links instead: a view link that can read it, and an edit link that can add and change things. Anyone who has a link can use it, so send links only to people you trust.
myBidPal is in beta. Sharing runs on our own database, and we're opening it to a small group first. If someone sends you a link to a sheet, you don't need a code.
The person who started the sheet names the jobs and rates their promotion potential. Everyone on the sheet sees both, but only the creator's seat can change them in the page.
Yes. Tap "Another job" on a post's card and the post appears again, with its own name, pay, pros and cons and promotion rating. A sheet holds up to five cards in all.
Gross pay a year for your grade and step: overseas pay, cost of living allowance, hardship and danger pay, and LEAP if you tick it under Your numbers. On each card you can add language incentive pay, skills incentive pay (up to 25%) and, at posts that offer it, the Service Need Differential. Taxes, deductions and premium pay are not included. The Salary Calculator covers them.
The estimate is at or above the federal aggregate pay cap. As in the Salary Calculator, the total shown is before the cap is applied, so actual pay would be limited to the cap.
Short suggestions built from the post's own figures, such as the hardship differential, the travel advisory level or the air quality, plus a few general prompts like "Career-enhancing job". Nothing is added until someone taps one. You can remove anything you add, and you can write your own.
Each post gets a score from 0 to 100 for each person and for the group. It compares the post with all 675 posts on the priorities that person picked, and every priority counts the same. It's still being tuned, so treat it as a way to start the conversation.
The table shows the yearly average of fine particles in the air (PM2.5, in micrograms per cubic meter) and the U.S. EPA Air Quality Index (AQI) that number would equal. The levels are Good (0 to 50), Moderate (51 to 100), Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (101 to 150), Unhealthy (151 to 200), Very Unhealthy (201 to 300) and Hazardous (301 and higher).
The EPA defines the index for daily readings, so a yearly average is only an equivalent. A city's daily readings can be much higher or lower than its country's yearly figure.
The source has no figure for that post or country. We leave the cell open and don't guess.
The figure is at standard time. Where clocks change, the real difference can be an hour off for part of the year.
Tap Share, copy the edit link, and send it. They open it, type a name, and get a seat and a color. Typing the same name later brings them back to the same seat.
Once a sheet is shared, people add themselves. Each person opens the edit link and types their own name, so everything they add really is theirs. Before you share, you can add people by name on your own device. The "Copy the edit link" button under People on this sheet gives you the link to send.
Open Share and choose Delete this sheet. It removes the sheet for everyone and clears this page: the name, the people, your priorities and the posts. We also delete a sheet that nobody has opened for 18 months.