[Ben C]

Hi Emmanuel,

Have you seen job opportunities that you would be interested in? Are you missing any of their requirements? It sounds like you have useful education and experience for a health-related organisation. If you are meeting all their requirements, then you should at least be getting interviews…

How about finding an organisation you are interested in working for and requesting an informational interview? There’s nothing like building up contacts to work your way in.

Good luck!

[Ben C]

Good question! Here are a few blogs that are worth a look:

• http://chrisblattman.com/
• http://aidthoughts.org/
• http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/
• http://www.owen.org/blog
• https://danielesser.org

All the aid agencies (USAID, DFID, World Bank etc.) also pump out blogs, some of it good, but you have to deal with a certain amount of propaganda.

The line between magazines and blogs are blurring, but here are a couple that you could look at:

• http://www.gsdmagazine.org/
• https://newint.org/

Hope this is a starting point!

[Ben C]

That’s great that you’ve decided you want a career in ID. You’re right: there is a lot to this field if you haven’t specialised!

Have you done or considered doing an internship or voluntary work at an NGO (head office or even better in the field)? West Africa might be a good match for you with your French. This would help you narrow down your interests and start building up your network, as well as exposing you to the unique world of non-profits. That would be my recommendation, before taking a few years to do an advanced degree.

[Ben C]

Hi Georgina, that’s great to hear that you’re interested in getting into development. If you are not going to be getting paid and you’re not taking a local position, you should be OK volunteering in those destinations. Here’s some information on visas and volunteering in the US for example: http://money.howstuffworks.com/economics/volunteer/information/can-a-foreigner-volunteer-in-usa.htm

And for Australia: http://volunteeringvictoria.org.au/volunteer/volunteering-on-a-visa/

You should be fine volunteering in countries in S. America too, but I’d recommend doing a bit of research for whichever one you go to, just in case.

While qualifications will help, if you’re willing to work for free, it’ll be hard for an organisation to turn you down! Why not try directly contacting some orgs online and seeing if there is interest. Volunteering is a great way to get into development, so good luck!

[Ben C]

Hi Eefje,

I’m glad you find the website helpful! We’re actually spending some time (after a long break) updating the site, and would love to hear what other content or other features would make good additions to the site.

That’s an interesting niche you are in. I am sure your skills are valuable, but I suppose the difficulty is in finding the organisations and people that would find them useful. Have you found jobs advertised that you would be interested in doing? What are they asking for? If it is experience, then you will need to find some way of gaining that—either through an intermediate job or through volunteering/interning if necessary. I doubt they require the extremely specific knowledge you would gain from a PhD, but I could be wrong. Having said that, it probably wouldn’t hurt your employability either.

In my opinion, once you have a degree, and especially once you have a Masters, you are probably better served by gaining more work experience.

Hope this helps!

[Ben C]

Project man­age­ment, prob­lem solv­ing and com­mer­cial acu­men is all valu­able expe­ri­ence for a lot of jobs in ID, so I think you’re in a good position.

If you are want to stick with an engi­neer­ing focus (which would be the most obvi­ous choice), maybe you can nar­row down the jobs you would be inter­ested in doing? Have you had a look though inter­na­tional devel­op­ment job boards for engi­neer­ing jobs? If so you should be able to see what min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions or expe­ri­ence are required. Once you know that, you can realign your CV and try and gain work expe­ri­ence (either in your cur­rent job or vol­un­teer­ing) to fill the gaps.

You may also be able to iden­tify the organ­i­sa­tions you’d like to work for, and if you can do that, try and get an infor­ma­tional inter­view. That’s a great way to start build­ing up a net­work, as you can get names from each per­son you inter­view with. It’s also low stress, since you’re not ask­ing them for any­thing but a bit of their time, and you can see/learn more about the kind of work you are get­ting your­self into!

Quite gen­eral infor­ma­tion, but hope­fully this gives you more confidence/impetus. Good luck with mak­ing the transition!

[Ben C]

I’m talk­ing about devel­op­ment jobs focus­ing on grass­roots issues. Most often this is an area NGOs con­cen­trate on.

The best piece of advice I can give you, with­out know­ing much about your back­ground, is to do vol­un­tary work in whichever field or with whichever orga­ni­za­tion you are inter­ested in. Com­pe­ti­tion for jobs is plen­ti­ful, but also, bud­gets are small and NGOs are also often ill-equipped and under-resourced, mean­ing the great idea or ben­e­fit you think you will bring to the orga­ni­za­tion is likely to fall by the way­side, unless you are will­ing to take on the task your­self, with­out bur­den­ing the NGO with finan­cial or resource (includ­ing time) out­lays. Until orga­ni­za­tions see rel­e­vant work expe­ri­ence they will be reluc­tant to take you seriously.

By vol­un­teer­ing you open doors, by gain­ing rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence, and mak­ing con­tacts. It also allows you to see whether you are inter­ested in doing this for the long haul, and it should allow you to work for whichever orga­ni­za­tion you want – most will be happy to take on a vol­un­teer. There are also more estab­lished vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions, e.g. Peace Corps, VSO, but these usu­ally involve a selec­tion pro­ce­dure. The ben­e­fit of these spe­cial­ist vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions is that they offer a struc­tured envi­ron­ment, and training.

Pay­ing to vol­un­teer is prob­a­bly the eas­i­est way to find a posi­tion over­seas, but I would rec­om­mend look­ing into vol­un­teer­ing locally and then try­ing to get a posi­tion over­seas after prov­ing your worth. That way you can avoid the often extor­tion­ate fees asso­ci­ated with paid vol­un­tary positions.

[Ben C]

Devel­op­ment work can be frus­trat­ing, but it can also be very reward­ing. There are jobs that take you to the fore­front of prob­lems – where you are faced with real poverty, and on the other end of the spec­trum are jobs with donors, where you will often only deal with rel­a­tively rich gov­ern­ments, orga­ni­za­tions and other donors.

Psy­chol­ogy does not strike me as some­thing par­tic­u­larly suited to a career in devel­op­ment, but any degree (espe­cially social sci­ence) is use­ful, and wouldn’t pre­clude you.

You cer­tainly don’t need to do a mas­ters to enter inter­na­tional devel­op­ment, but there are some jobs that may be off-limits if you don’t have one. As with a lot of careers, some choose to take mas­ters degrees later.

Hope this helps and good luck in your decisions.

[Author]

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