Not everyone who works in an embassy is a diplomat.

Most embassies are staffed by what is known as “locally-recruited staff” (LRS), meaning that the individual lives in that country and applied for a job at that particular embassy. The LRS holds no diplomatic rank, and do not get assigned to another embassy in another country. I often say that it is the LRS that provide the institutional memory of an embassy; while diplomats come and go, the LRS remain as part of the embassy for years, some even retire at the same post they started in. An LRS can be a citizen of any country.

Diplomats, on the other hand, are the citizens of the sending state (the country which opened that embassy). They are normally career-service officers who are assigned to a country for three to five years on average.

Even among the diplomatic personnel, some are full diplomats (meaning they are from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), while others are attachés (meaning they are not from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Officers in this latter category include the agricultural attaché, the labour attaché, the defence attaché, or the police attaché, to name a few.