For the last 12 years, Alistair Scott, who works in our Knowledge Impact and Policy Cluster, has been running a workshop for IDS students on How to Get Jobs in International Development. Here he shares his top tips.
I must make a confession. I really struggled to land my first job in international development. I had plenty of passion, but, on paper at least, little relevant experience and completely irrelevant qualifications. And I wasn’t alone. Most of my friends were fellow activists and volunteers, and they also found it hard to break into the development field. Fast forward a century or two to today, and I now have tonnes of experience recruiting people. You name it: writing job descriptions, shortlisting, and sitting on more interview panels than I can remember. I’ve seen the international development jobs market from both sides of the interview desk, which is why I give a workshop each year as part of the IDS Skills Week to try to help students prepare for their careers after they graduate.
So, here are a few top tips for securing that elusive job in international development:
Look for the ‘hidden jobs’
Most people look for jobs advertised on big job portals, such as DevNet or ReliefWeb, via online newspapers like the Guardian, or on the websites of big NGOs, such as Oxfam. While this is a good strategy, it also means that you’re competing with hundreds of other applicants. There are, however, thousands of tiny NGOs, advocacy organisations and consultancies that don’t have the profile or the budget for expensive advertising. So there’s often less competition for the jobs advertised by these organisations. However, be prepared to do some intelligent Googling to find them, as well as talking to lecturers, friends, and any other contacts you may have. Word of mouth is often the best way to find these micro-organisations.
Look for ‘stepping stone’ jobs
Relevant experience is like gold dust when you’re starting your career. You need plenty of it for your CV. Temporary jobs are a terrific way to get it. Employers often struggle to fill short-term posts, so you’re likely to face much less competition. Also, you often find that your temporary job gets extended, sometimes until it becomes permanent. Even if this doesn’t happen, the experience you get still looks great when you’re applying for your next job.
Don’t discount non-development-related jobs. The development sector can be more competitive than other sectors, but the experience you gain from working outside the development industry is often directly transferable to development careers. Experience in marketing, PR, monitoring & evaluation, management, IT, training, fundraising, engineering, or research, can give you exactly the skills that international development organisations want.
Volunteer
Volunteering is a great way to get experience. You often get the same (or better) experience as paid staff, and you’re also perfectly positioned if a job comes up in the host organisation.
Not everyone can afford to volunteer full-time, of course, but volunteer positions can often fit around paid work. Some volunteer roles, such as paid internships, even come with a modest salary.
Volunteering can give you a flavour of the sort of career you’re aiming for. So be clear about what you want to get from volunteering, and, if it doesn’t match your expectations, you can leave at any time.
Start a ‘job club’ with other people who are job hunting
This is a super tip (and in fact I got my first role at IDS largely by doing this). Prepare for job interviews as you would prepare for an exam. Review the job description and anticipate the kind of questions you may be asked, then prepare some model answers for them. Immediately after every job interview, write down the questions you were asked. Type them up and share with friends who are going for similar jobs. Discuss what answers you gave, and how you could improve them. Do this consistently and, before long, you will have a bank of questions and answers that you can draw upon. Then hold ‘mock interviews’ where you and your friends take turns asking each other a random selection of questions from the list. This improves interview performance and helps reduce interview nerves. At your next real interview, don’t be surprised to find you already know the answer to almost every question.
Dealing with interview nerves
An interview panel isn’t a firing squad, and it’s important to remember that the power does not all lie with the interviewers. You are assessing them as much as they are assessing you. Interviewers are human (so far, anyway) and I’ve been on panels where some inexperienced interviewers have been more nervous than the candidates.
Just don’t forget to have a question or two of your own ready for the end of the interview.
Be philosophical
Job hunting is a numbers game. The more interviews you get, the more you shorten the odds in your favour, and the more practice you get at writing applications and answering questions. Stay positive, don’t worry about rejections (everybody gets them – sometimes lots of them) and don’t give up!
Key contacts
