How to Find your First Job in the Relief and Development Field

With thanks to Impact Pool and Author, Nick MacDonald for providing us with this article.

This chapter is about the things that you can do that will increase your chances of getting a job overseas in relief and development. All of them are good, but I’m going to give away the farm right now and tell you that overwhelmingly there is one thing that I think works better than anything else: Get experience living and working in the kinds of places you want to find a job. 

Sure, there are people who break into this line of work in other ways, but they do it largely through luck or existing connections – they are standing around at the right time and get chatting with the CEO of an organization, and he takes a chance on them, or some other connection gets them noticed. Good luck to you if you can make that work, some people do, but not many. If you have the kinds of connections and skills to pull this off, you don’t need my advice.

For the rest of us, the only reliable method I can really recommend is to get field experience. Lots of it. Let me say that again, in case I wasn’t 100% clear: In my opinion, the best and most reliable way to break into this business is to get lots of experience living and working in the developing world. Let’s look at some ways to do this, first, some general tips:

Be Graciously Persistent

It will take you many, many letters, phone calls, visits and interviews to find someone who wants to give you a foot in the door. Don’t be put off by a series of rejections. In some ways, the determination and thick skin you will develop are great training. You need to develop a gracious persistence that keeps on gently pushing until opportunities start to crop up without annoying people and developing a reputation for being a pushy pain in the neck. A lot of the same advice applies here as with any other job search – hone your networking skills. Don’t ask people to return your calls, set up a time to call them, keep the contact ball in your court, but don’t be so persistent you look like a stalker.

Use your Network of Contacts

The humanitarian community is even more tightly knit than most, and personal referrals can be hugely influential. Developing and using your network of friends, colleagues and contacts is essential. Make sure that you use every opportunity you get to genuinely connect with people you meet who do the kinds of things you are trying to do (or who know people who do). Having said that, the same caveats apply to networking in humanitarian communities as in anything else – don’t make a nuisance of yourself, or get a reputation as someone who is more concerned about exchanging business cards than getting to know people. In fact, while we’re on the topic, indulge me for a moment – there are so many great people in this line of work that I hesitate to use the word ‘network’ at all. Don’t do that. Instead take the time to get to know people, make friends, and don’t feel you have to spend time developing relationships because they are good for your career. You’ll be happier in the long run, I promise.

Have a Bit of Humility

Prepare yourself for the fact that just because you have graduated from a prestigious school with an impressive degree, or have years of experience managing millions in the corporate world, those things will mean little or nothing to hiring managers in the humanitarian world. Expect to be made to start from the bottom rung and work your way up. For better or worse, pretty much the only currency that the aid world values is experience in the aid world. Paying your dues is a part of every industry to some extent, but unfortunately it’s huge in this line of work.

People gain credibility in large part by the amount of time they spend in harsh places, and the degree of harshness of those places. Someone who has spent two years as a program manager in Sudan or Afghanistan has a good deal of organizational karma accrued, and there is an informal seniority attached to this. Don’t expect to be able to walk into a job in a capital city with great facilities ahead of candidates who have served their time on the organizational ‘front lines’. People in this line of work who are closest to the field operations are often given more respect and credibility than people who are theoretically more senior than them but work in a headquarters office. You’ll come to be familiar with the odd ritual that takes place when aid workers meet – they will invariably ask each other where the other has served, and tell a couple of anecdotes about the extreme circumstances they work under. These ‘so-there-I-was’ stories play a role in establishing an informal ‘pecking-order’ of status. Try not to take this too seriously.

Do your Homework and Use Informational Interviews

Informational interviews are a way of getting ‘face time’ with hiring managers or other agency staff in ways that make them more comfortable talking to you. The unwritten rule is that you don’t explicitly ask for a job, but rather ask their advice in how to get one. Of course, we all know what is really going on here. Develop your pitch, and remember that you are absolutely interviewing – the person you are talking to is definitely sizing you up to see if they should consider hiring you or recommending you. You’ll want to avoid coming across as flattering or sycophantic, a professional respect is all that is required. Don’t go on about how much you admire their work or commitment – aid workers tend to find that embarrassing and a sign of naivety.

Don’t call someone up or ask for informational interviews without understanding what their organization does and what they do within it. I know it sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed. Read the organization’s annual report, read their website and any publications they’ve put out lately. Search for the person you’re making contact with on the internet and figure out whether they have been interviewed lately, written articles etc. A little bit of research will make you sound a whole lot more informed. Don’t ask questions in an informational interview that a few minutes research on the web could have answered for you.

Have a Specific Proposal

It is tempting to say that you will go anywhere and do whatever is needed, but people will actually be more impressed if you call them up with a specific proposal about what you want to do and where. It shows that you have thought it through, and understand the environment, and it reduces the burden on the agency to try to ‘find you something’.

You might think that it is appealing to be flexible and be prepared to do anything, but to the agency it makes you look clueless and as though you don’t understand where you can actually add most value. Do your homework on the agency, their programs, and the direction they are moving in, and try to figure out what kinds of things they will be interested in. Of course, in the end, your proposal may not be what they ask you to do – you should be prepared to go anywhere and do whatever is needed, which brings me to:

Be Flexible

My advice to you is that you should take pretty much any job in the field that you are offered, and not worry too much about whether it is what you really want to be doing. It’s a fast moving business, and the chances are you will be able to move on pretty quickly. My first job with a major aid agency was running a heating fuel distribution program. Needless to say, it wasn’t my dream posting, but it got me a foot in the door, and I only ended up doing it for three months. A word of caution on this though – beware of getting a reputation for never finishing a job. It’s ok to move from one place to another if there is a good organizational reason, or if you’ve served a couple of years, but you want to be careful of ending up with a resume full of six month assignments.

Money

If you are volunteering, bringing your own funding in terms of air ticket, insurance, living expenses etc will help a lot. Agencies are worried about the substantial ‘hidden costs’ of free help – costs that add up when they are working on tight budgets. Be prepared to reassure agency staff that you will not cost them anything! Sure – it’s a big deal to save up the money to live for six months in a developing country and volunteer, but it’s probably not that much more than a set of business suits for Wall Street, and certainly less than tuition at a respectable university for the same period of time.

Think of it as an investment in your career, just as you would student loans. Budget properly, and treat it with the same level of seriousness that you would a school assignment or job. It’s not permanent, and with any luck the investment will pay off and you’ll actually be earning money soon!

Make sure you have money saved for coming home too. One of the things you will get told about is culture shock – the sense of disorientation at being immersed in a new culture. What you often won’t be told about is that it can be worse coming back home after an intense experience overseas. Family and friends are pleased to see you again, but you may be frustrated at being unable to communicate the things you saw and learned. Make sure you have some money saved to cushion your return while you look for work and get re-established.