Mid-level professionals fail at these, and it's damaging their chances of success in the Impact sector - Insider advice

Our Experts answer these questions according to the current recruitment realities in the sector:

If I'm not in the sector, but I'd love to contribute to a greater good, will I succeed eventually, if I just keep applying persistently for years?

If my goal is to work in Headquarters, is it advisable to keep applying until I succeed?

Is it advisable to disregard some requirements in the job description? 

How do you recommend I should start the job search?

On a personal level, what should you ask yourself before trying to succeed in the impact sector?

What are the key success factors when persuing a specialized-field career or a generalist career in development?

Many fellows are in their mid-level career, many work in the private sector dreaming of a career transition and many have applied for several jobs without success. In this article I share the experience I have gained for the last 15 years recruiting to International organizations. I have seen colleagues entering the sector after transitioning from the private to the development sector. Many have four things in common - all the qualifications of the job, eligibility to apply, persistence and sector knowledge. Read my top 9 tips how you land your dream job.

If I'm not in the sector, but I'd love to contribute to a greater good, is it recommended to just start applying?

Tips 1 - Never use the UN nor any other development organizations as your shortcut for an individual thematic career change!

UN as an example always look for the most suitable talent and would never hire someone just to fulfill someone's career dream. One common mistake that surprisingly many applicants do when applying to the development sector is to apply for a ‘thematic’ career change. With a thematic career change we refer to when someone who currently works as an ‘accountant’ wants to change career and work as a ‘child protection officer’ for UNICEF in a development country, just to make the world better.

Maybe many of these applicants have reached a stage in their life where they have realized that they rather want to do something meaningful (work for peace, human rights, refugees or serve the poor) and therefore consider development organizations as their shortcut to fulfill this dream.

“A brutal fact! I have never seen any of them succeed!”

These applicants lack relevant skills, nor relevant background, nor the right education. It might sound brutal, but using the UN or development organizations as a shortcut to a ‘thematic’ career change is a completely impossible strategy. Development organizations are strictly specialized like most private companies, but in addition many work under rigorous audit and under constant pressure to be complicant at the same time they deliver results that are cost efficient. These organizations must be very picky with recruitments and make sure that the talents found can deliver at once.

Tips 2 - Applying to headquarters (HQ) vacancies only lowers your chances to succeed!

It is rare that an external applicant serves its first assignment in a HQ location. The only group where this happens frequently is among seconded personnel (individuals funded by an external source - an example is Junior Professional Officer, read more here), but outside seconded personnel it is rare to start a career in HQ.

Mid-career jobs in New York receives about five to ten times more applications per job than similar jobs in country office locations. If a HQ position is compared with a position in a crisis location, I have seen similar jobs where the HQ position attracted 100 times more applicants.

Also In many organizations HQ jobs is given with preference to staff members that have served in a challenging environment or to colleagues with a family situations that requires some more security.

Hence for a complete external, these jobs are very competitive.

Tips 3 - Never disregard any requirements in the advertisement!

We have written about this in previous articles (read more), but it doesn’t hurt to repeat. Many applicants apply to jobs to which they don’t meet the minimum requirements (years of experience, language and education). To me it seems these applicants try to take a chance. Before making the effort drafting your application, make sure that you read what is needed and that you meet all requirements.

To land a job as a complete external to the development sector is extremely competitive and might be a longer journey than you envisioned, including many more applications than you ever could imagine. On the other hand most of the staff members of the development sector including the UN, financial Institutions, EU etc have at some point of their career started as a complete external to the system so nothing is impossible. Remember - Qualifications, Eligibility, Persistence and Sector Knowledge.

How do you recommend I should start the job search?

Tips 4 - Assess yourself against jobs that you are interested in! We recommended that you read several vacancy postings for jobs and for organizations that you are interested in. Read what they are looking for and assess what you have; how close are you? What is missing in your profile? What can you do to fill the gap? When trying to secure a job with an attractive employer it always helps if you have a clear career objective and a strong background (obtained both relevant university degree, relevant skills and experience). Given the number of applicants competing for the same job, of course you can’t make it without a portion of luck too, but the more you have built up your own profile the less luck is needed.

Tips 5 - What risks are you prepared to take! Are you in a position in your life where you can take risks? Can you apply to crisis countries (often a duty station where you can’t bring family) or can you take on a volunteer assignment? In fact, crisis countries always offer the best chances for external applicants, fewer applicants to compete with and more opportunities (as funding often is focused on crisis countries). If you also consider the number of applications UN organizations receives, the majority is targeting local jobs and junior international jobs. Mid-career jobs receive often a lower number of applications.

Tips 6 - Why do you want to work in development, is it just to make a difference or is it to make a difference in a specialized field? This might sound like a strange question, but in fact it is not. It helps you to determine your actual chances. If you just want to work in the development sector, you should select a focus that is broad and available in each organization (e.g administrative personal, finance, human resources, procurement) as these profiles are present in more or less every agency (many jobs in many locations and good opportunities to move around to different locations and between organizations). But if your answer is that you want to work in the development sector with a specific thematic area (e.g HIV/aids) you may have a limited number of jobs and a limited number of agencies. You may also face difficulties to move around and your career opportunities outside the development sector might be fewer after completed assignment. If you ask yourself this question at an early stage (when you formulate your career objectives), you may be able to take a successful direction at an early stage and save future problems.

Tips 7 - Study and make sure to understand the organization’s structure, size and objective! When applying for a job with an international organization it is always an advantage to know about how the organization is structured and what the organization’s objectives are. As a mid-career professional it is wise to first make sure that the organization is offering mid-career jobs. If you focus at the UN and study some of the Specialized Agencies (i.e WHO) you might find that the number of junior and mid-career opportunities are much fewer than in the Funds and Programmes (i.e. UNDP, Unicef, UNHCR, WFP). WHO has more senior opportunities (P-5 and above), which make sense, given the global health advocate role of WHO. It is a fact that mid-career opportunities are more common in field-based organization, and this comes back to why you should not only focus on applying to headquarters jobs. Field based development organizations often offers more junior and mid-level career opportunities than Headquarters based organizations. This is true to all type of development organizations, being NGO’s, Multilaterals etc.

Tips 8 - Understand the value of your background and experience! Again we might be a bit too honest, but being a white male from a high income country is not a profile that stands out in an international development career context, and in some organizations (i.e. Unicef) a hiring manager must seek a management waiver to recruit a person with that profile. This does not mean that a white male can’t get a job. What it rather means is that a white male is unlikely to be selected for a job because he stands out. One profile that is much more interesting for the development sector  is when they find a highly skilled and educated mid-career woman with management experience from a crisis country. Over a number of years many organizations have been looking for multilingual and highly educated women from Afghanistan or Sudan, so if that’s you, your chances of being recruited are much higher. Recently we have run several campaign focusing on Arabic speaking talent, and all organizations wants women. If you are an arabic speaking women, please sign up for our newslist and job alerts so that we can reach out to you.

Tips 9 - Find out if your government sponsor a mid-career talent program or if you are eligible to apply for any career programmes out there? For some nationalities the governments are on a regular basis sponsoring positions for their nationalities at mid-career level, read more about the UNDP Special Assistant to the Resident Coordinator Programe (SARC) to find out if you are eligible. Another donor funded mid-career programme is the (DFSP) in the World Bank. Also, UN organizations are sponsoring mid-career programs, one example is the Capacity Building Initiative (CBI) offered by UNHCR. A career programme is an excellent first entry point into the sector, it may be competitive but on the other hand, if you make it you have extremely good chances to remain in the system.