It is possible to make a decent living as a consultant in international development. If you’re reading this, and work in the international development field, you are probably someone who did not choose a career because of the money. But we all need to earn a living. We all have to eat. Indeed, a lot of our work centers on helping people in low-income countries earn more, increase their job opportunities, or lower their living costs. Today’s blog post is a series of observations on money, mostly aimed at consultants working in international development, who are maybe trying to navigate the earnings map and find their place on it.
Most international consulting jobs pay by the day. Like many others in today’s economy, a lot of international development consultants rely on short-term assignments. They may prefer them, as I do. Short-term jobs give you a lot of flexibility and don’t involve extended overseas stays, which can last for months. I know some consultants who spend as much as a year abroad, leaving their family at home. But that’s not for me. Typically, the short-term jobs will be contracted based on a specific number of days at a given rate. I’ve had contracts for as little as 5 days and as much as 150 days, but most fall in the 30-60 day range.
You can negotiate your daily rate.* In most cases, you can negotiate your daily rate just as you would negotiate a salary when you are offered a full-time job. Once you have been selected for the assignment, you will be offered a rate. You can either accept it or ask for more. If the offer is less than you earned previously, you can share contracts you’ve had with other organizations, they can be used as a reference point. Maybe you have misgivings about negotiating for yourself in a field you entered because you want to serve the greater good? I suggest you still try to earn what you think you are worth, and give away the surplus to a worthy cause.
Most organizations have fee structures. A lot of firms and development organizations such as the World Bank, IMF (and the US Government) have a fee structure. The structure usually has broad bands and is not necessarily rigid. The fee structure may factor in your years of work experience, sector, position (team leader, specialist, researcher), professional background, and education. The World Bank has a four-tier system, based on years worked, and each tier encompasses a fairly wide range, which includes a minimum, maximum, and market reference point. The number of years of experience seems to trump everything else. Even in development work, financial sector assignments seem to pay more, reflecting the market for these skills. (Whether finance jobs should pay more is another topic. My suspicion is that it is merely the ability of finance people to organize their work around commissions, which are easily calculated as a percentage of a deal or an investment, unlike most professionals.)
Fees can vary widely by organization and assignment. Don’t count on earning the same daily rate for every assignment. Your daily fee may vary substantially between organizations, by as much as 50%. Some organizations have salary caps which apply to contractors (as is the case for USAID contractors, which topped out at about $655 in 2016 [update – in 2020 the maximum was set at 698.08]). Exchange rate fluctuations can make a big difference. The US dollar went from $1.59 to the euro in 2008 to below $1.05 in 2016, which meant that working for European firms became less attractive for Americans over this period, and vice versa.
How much can consultants earn? As an established consultant, you should be able to earn the same as, if not more than, full-time staff at the international development organizations you engage with. Many staff have posted their salaries on glassdoor. Of course, you won’t receive any standard benefits. The main benefits of this work come from the satisfaction of doing good work, making a difference in people’s lives (hopefully a positive one), meeting new people, and exploring new countries. That means you should make sure that you can provide your own benefits out of your fee. That applies especially for health insurance and retirement savings. However, remember that your work is not worth less than that of salaried employees. To increase your rate significantly with the same organization may involve moving to a different level (based on years of experience or responsibility).
In theory, your rate should broadly reflect what the market will bear. Keep in mind that the market is different in different countries, and obviously exchange rate fluctuations can have a big impact. As noted above, when the euro was strong, working for a European entity was a better deal than working for American organizations. Within the last few years, the situation has reversed. This is by way of pointing out that one can operate in different markets, and must take that into account. In some markets you will find you are worth more than others.
Expenses are normally accounted for separately. In international development work, expenses are almost always budgeted and paid for separately. You receive your fee as milestones are met, and then submit receipts for any travel and accommodation expenses, unless the organization pays for it directly. Almost always, there is a per diem for meals and incidentals for which you don’t need to produce receipts. You should never have to pay for your expenses out of your fees. Some contracts are lump sum. You cover your own travel, accommodation, meals and incidentals and don’t submit any receipts.
Your present determines your future. By this I mean that whatever rate you agree on today will be the basis for future rate, at this and other organizations. So even if it is just a 20-day contract, and that $20 difference isn’t so important, your next contract may be 100 days, and it will be based on your previous contract. And most organizations will take into account what you earn elsewhere.
Does your rate seem high? Don’t forget – as a freelance consultant, you have to cover all your own benefits, and any enforced vacations from work. Essentially you are trading off benefits for freedom. You need to take into account taxes and benefits when considering your rate. Depending on your nationality and who your contract is with, you may or may not need to pay taxes. In contrast to full-time employees, you will also need to cover your own benefits, especially health insurance and retirement. Plow part of your earnings every year into a low-fee 401k. Warren Buffet suggests Vanguard S&P index funds and I agree with his advice. If you have a partner with an employee health insurance plan, get on that.
You can work overtime. Obviously, if you take on more contracts and work weekends your earnings will rise. Some organizations allow you to bill for a 7-day work week others for a 6-day work week while on site (i.e. working in country) or ‘on mission’ as it referred to by some organizations, as if international development professionals were modern-day secular missionaries preaching the gospel of improved living standards. Just make sure you do top quality work. Don’t double bill by charging different organizations twice. Be results-oriented and be ethical.
Your annual earnings will fluctuate. Ups and downs in earnings are inevitable for non-salaried workers. Over time you will, however, see an upward trend in your income as you get more work, add years of experience, and become better at negotiating your rate.
The daily rate isn’t everything. Despite the above, you may find yourself willing to accept a lower rate for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are trying to get your foot in the door, or you like the assignment, or the work conditions. Perhaps you are willing to earn less on this assignment because you’ll be working in a country you’ve always wanted to go to.
Some resources to consult
- Glassdoor. Review the salary ranges on their website, glassdoor.com, which aggregates salaries for different positions, by organization. The data is based on what people have posted themselves.
- Fellow consultants. The best source or information on what you can expect to earn is probably other consultants who work, or have worked in the field. (Don’t necessarily ask them about their own rates, however. Talking about one’s salary in the US remains an even bigger taboo than talking about one’s sex life!)
- Fee structure matrices. These may or may not be accessible to consultants for all organizations. But it never hurts to ask around. They will give you a benchmark.
- Devex. This organization describes itself as the “media platform for the development community.” It caters to organizations, companies and individuals working in international development. There is a monthly individual membership fee (starting at $9.50 at the time of this writing) and you can post your CV and look at job postings. Members have access to articles, including “Foreign aid salary spotlights,” which describes international development jobs and rates in a selection of countries.
* For more on negotiating your daily rate, see: How to negotiate your fee as a consultant: Figuring out what matters (footnote added July 30, 2019)
Nils Junge
March 29, 2017
Congressional Budget Office logo
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last week released its cost estimate of the American Health Care Act, the Republicans’ plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare.
The CBO looked at a range of impacts. The headline numbers from the CBO estimate are a reduction in the federal deficit between 2017 and 2026 by $337 billion and a total of 52 million uninsured by 2026 (with 14 million losing insurance next year). There’s something to like (deficit reduction) and something to dislike (loss of health insurance for millions), depending on where you stand on these issues. Without passing judgment on the significance of the potential effects of the new bill, let’s focus on the reaction of the bill’s backers, including the White House, to the CBO and its work.
Even before the CBO report was published on March 9, potshots were being taken at the normally highly respected office. Forbes characterized the them as a “pre-emptive, coordinated attack.” Joe Barton, a Republican former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, had this to say about the CBO: “I don’t know what they do, they sit around and think great thoughts and everything on the issues…One of the things we need to do is reform the CBO folks.” And Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council said on Fox News that “in the past, the CBO score has really been meaningless.”
The reactions suggest that some supporters of “repeal and replace” already sensed that the new healthcare proposal would not follow Trump’s professed goal of providing all Americans with great healthcare at lower costs than Obamacare. It is also worth remembering that the CBO director, Keith Hall, was named to his post by Republicans. This doesn’t mean that the CBO always gets its numbers right. It doesn’t. But its analysis is transparent and explained in enough detail that one can understand how it reaches its conclusions.
As an evaluator, part of whose work involves estimating the impacts of policy reforms, I can sympathize with the CBO being targeted for attack. Conducting evaluations, which is essentially what the CBO has done in tallying the costs and benefits of replacing Obamacare, is a great way to lose friends and alienate people. Evaluators are never the most popular kids on the block. We don’t control pots of money, we aren’t trumpeting success stories, our job doesn’t involve being ingratiating in order to sell stuff. We dig around and find out what worked and what didn’t, who’s winning and who’s losing. It’s necessary (and hopefully useful) work, but it’s not a popularity contest. And evaluations always turn up shortcomings. Nobody’s perfect. As the messenger, you can expect to get (metaphorically) shot at.
At a minimum, people get a bit nervous when their organization or program is evaluated. Even if the client who commissions the evaluation outlines the questions they want answered, evaluators are still being allowed ‘inside’; they’re able to ask questions of pretty much anyone connected to or benefiting from the project. Good evaluators pry through reports, extract data from whatever sources they can get their hands on, and double check everything they hear. Sometimes, the evaluation can seem a lot like an investigation.
I’ve conducted evaluations all over the world, some of them under fairly hostile circumstances. Even if the main client wants to have evidence on the impacts of a reform, that doesn’t mean everyone wants to know. There are potential winners and losers who have a stake in the outcome of your evaluation. There are vested interests. Trade union representatives, for example, can be a tough bunch. I once worked on an evaluation of the potential impacts of a mine privatization in eastern Serbia. Layoffs were expected. When I conduct this type of work, it is my policy to meet with representatives of all the affected groups. In this case, everyone knew that the restructuring was going to lead to the loss of about 2,500 jobs. It was the task of my evaluation team to estimate what would happen to their income and job prospects afterwards. The concerns of the workers were legitimate and completely understandable from their perspective, even if the mine was dependent on tens of millions of dollars of budget support annually. My approach to dealing with the trade unions was to open a line of communication with them, and keep it open throughout the study preparation, fieldwork and reporting period. This involved meeting with them periodically, listening to their concerns, and explaining what we researchers were doing.
On a similar study, this one collecting evidence on the impact of downsizing Croatia’s shipbuilding industry, we had a very different experience. There was unfortunately not enough budget or time to meet with the trade union representatives more than once. The antagonism toward the evaluation was considerable. Fieldwork included conducting an employee survey in a room on the premises of the shipyards. In fact, our survey supervisor, a young Croatian woman, was asked by a shipyard manager to turn over the list of (randomly selected) employees she was interviewing. When she refused he locked the door to the room and threatened not to let her out unless she complied with his request. She resolutely stuck to her guns however, risking her safety and wellbeing in the name of evaluation ethics. Luckily, she was able to call someone in the Ministry from the locked room with her cell phone, and secure her own release. But it left her shaken. I have even heard of survey interviewers in some countries being detained and jailed for doing their work.
In some respects, evaluators are indeed like investigative reporters. That makes the work interesting, and occasionally risky. But the evaluator as an investigator is not really the ideal association you want to create. It can sound, well, threatening. Another, and more conducive analogy is that of evaluator as a “critical friend.” This concept was proposed a quarter century ago by Costa and Kallick in a 1993 article. They noted that critical friendship must begin with building trust, and go on to highlight the qualities that such a friend provides. That includes listening well, offering value judgments only when the learner (i.e. the client) asks for them, responding with integrity to the work, and advocating for the success of the work (p. 50). As an evaluator, you are not trying to establish guilt, or attack or push an agenda. You are there to help the organization or policy maker better understand the impacts of their programs or proposals, and improve them so that their goals can be attained.
Going back to the CBO’s report, it reads like a levelheaded, thoughtful piece of analysis. If its critics have a problem with it, you might expect them (at least in a less frenzied atmosphere) to respond by questioning its assumptions, or offering counter-evidence. When critical voices fail to do this, it is probably because they don’t have good answers.
This does not mean that, as evaluators, we can be smug. We live in a world where the idea of “evidence-based” does not have a strong hold on the public’s imagination, and is anathema to many politicians. We need to work harder, and use the evidence we have to tell a more compelling tale.
Nils Junge
March 21, 2017
The importance of soft power in professional life
Recently, a senior manager at a multilateral development bank told me about problems she had been having with a lead consultant on a project. He had resigned without completing the assignment, and she needed to replace him. She said she was looking for someone ‘with common sense.’ She was even willing to hire a candidate with fewer technical qualifications, as long as he or she could deliver the work and facilitate the relationship with the government. Apparently, this particular consultant had been unreliable and unpredictable. For example, on one occasion he failed to show up at a workshop he was supposed to lead, having failed to notify his client in advance. She arrived at the workshop only to learn that he had left the country without warning!
While I wouldn’t say that this type of behavior is common, it is certainly something you come across when you work in the international development field. Indeed, I have seen stranger behavior, to wit: Exhibit A: a consultant team leader who spent the first 10 minutes of nearly every meeting with partners or government officials bragging about his qualifications, yet never actually delivered anything. On top of that, he threatened to sue counterparts from other organizations who disagreed with him, and essentially went about ruining relationships with almost every key partner. Exhibit B: a consultant- engineer who determined that an entire country’s gas infrastructure was substandard based on observing a single, rusty pipe; and whose understanding of sampling boiled down to “Let’s ask our local colleague to get in touch with his friends to see what they think.” Exhibit C: a senior manager at a bilateral organization whose capricious and unpredictable behavior played havoc with an evaluation, by, among other things, changing the scope of work well after the work started, and undermining her colleagues in front of the consultants. If you’ve spent any time in the development field, you will have stories of your own to tell.
These people may have had the technical skills and looked good on their CVs, but they were difficult to work with, and had a disruptive effect on the work. They lacked soft power. In some cases, they ended up squandering months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention putting at risk the usefulness of the work.
The point I want to make, though, is that in order to do good work, non-technical skills – such as common sense, the ability to communicate with others and present themselves well, plus a commitment to doing the work – are at least as important as the other kind – such as mastery of a subject, experience in a sector, or technical abilities.
Based on my 17 years working as a consultant in international development, I would boil down the qualities you need to the following:
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Common sense
- Communication skills
- Commitment
The first two I consider hard skills, and the last three soft skills. Try to cultivate each of them. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Knowledge
By knowledge I refer to the technical understanding about a subject that is gained from learning, study, and doing. It comes from formal education at university or in technical schools, training, continuing education, and staying up to date on the literature in the field. It is a core element of the specialization needed to accomplish a task, e.g. analyzing data, developing models, designing surveys, assessing a particular sector. For virtually any field you work in, there will be many courses, webinars, software programs, and training sessions, ranging in price from free to very expensive (thousands of dollars). As you assess these learning opportunities you will need to weigh the costs and benefits in terms of money and time. But this is how you invest in yourself!
2. Experience
Experience is what you get as you act in, and are acted upon, by the world. Your knowledge and assumptions are tested, and you find you have to adjust your approach to doing things. Drawing on experience enables you to make better decisions and work more efficiently. It is the whetstone against which you sharpen your theoretical knowledge. In the beginning, you will be inexperienced. If you are starting out, this is not held against you. It is normal and expected. On a team, or a consultancy, there will be a mix of more senior and more junior members. All are needed, like the cogs in a wheel, and there is a role to play for everyone .
3. Common sense
It turns out that common sense, as I discussed above, is a valuable and perhaps underrated commodity. At its most basic level it means acting as a reasonable person. It involves critical thinking. More advanced concepts of common sense could include seeing through complexity to the essence of a matter, connecting the dots, and framing and organizing information in a useful manner. Much of the time it boils down to the simple ability to reflect upon something, see what is needed, and do what is necessary to get results. Maybe this is not a satisfying explanation, but if you don’t understand the concept of common sense, this may be a problem.
4. Communication skills
The basic ability to have a conversation and get along with your colleagues and counterparts can carry you a long way in any field. People want to get a sense of who you are, whether you are trustworthy, and whether they will be able to cooperate with you. Under communication skills I would include not only to the ability speak in public and engage with colleagues and clients, but the ability to write well. This means conveying information, no matter how complicated or specialized, clearly, succinctly, and grammatically. If you want to build up your public speaking skills, I highly recommend joining a Toastmasters club near you. I have been a member of Toastmasters since 2011 and find it highly useful.
5. Commitment
Commitment to doing the work is just what it sounds like. This is probably what people in the business world refer to as “passion”, which I myself consider a wholly inappropriate quality that should be kept for the opera or the bedroom. Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times even argues that it is dangerous in the professional field. Emotional teammates are not the most reliable or stable. No, what you want to have is a commitment to doing top quality work, to meeting deadlines, to developing new skills, to learning new things, to being there when your colleagues need you. It is part of having a good work ethic.
The portfolio approach
These five qualities form the bulk of your portfolio of skills. Consider them the tools for building a career. Good luck!
In just the past few weeks, I’ve received online requests to fill out surveys from my bank, my newspaper, an airline I flew with, a hotel I stayed at, Best Buy, the DC regulatory agency, several graduate students, and my dentist’s office. I’ve been going to the same dentist for almost 15 years – an indicator which suggests I’m quite satisfied with her care. So why am I asked to fill out a survey after every single visit?
Because designing and implementing surveys is one of the things I do for a living, I tend to sympathize with whoever prepares these online surveys and is hoping for a high response rate. However…
Providers of goods and services want customer feedback for marketing purposes and, presumably, for improving their performance. I understand that. Yet, because it is so easy now to conduct surveys via the internet, we are getting bombarded with them. Surveys are just too easy to create and disseminate. All these companies and researchers are asking us to give them our precious time without, however, offering anything in return. Well, for a while, a hotel chain I frequently used would at least offer 250 award points for every customer survey I completed after a stay, but they eventually stopped with that incentive and I, quite rationally, stopped responding. The deal was off. In fact, I’ve mostly stopped responding to any surveys at all, at least of the online variety.
Indeed, people in general are responding less and less willingly to surveys; over the last several decades, there has been a steady decline in survey in response rates. This is apparent in annual or quarterly surveys which seek to elicit information on incomes, expenditures, and assets – the type used by the government and researchers to gauge changes in national wellbeing, or inequality. To take one typical case, whereas in 1990 just 12 percent of survey people did not respond to the US Census Bureau’s Consumer Expenditure Diary, in 2009 the share had risen to 29.7 percent, as reported by Roger Tourangeau and Thomas J. Plewes. In their 2013 book, Nonresponse in Social Science Surveys: A Research Agenda they note that survey nonresponse is a growing issue not just in the US, but in all wealthy countries. Of course, this is also the period over which we’ve seen the rapid rise of internet access. Is it a coincidence? Maybe not.
One can easily imagine how survey, or interview, fatigue has become an issue. Survey fatigue generally refers to the phenomenon of a respondent tiring before she has answered all the questions. (Remedies include reducing the number of questions, and making them more interesting and relevant. Tourangeau and Thomas J. Plewes also cite studies showing that female interviewers get higher response rates to surveys, but we’ll save an analysis of the gender angle for another time. ) However, another type of survey fatigue, which I can personally attest to, comes from being surveyed just too darn often.
Because they are so cheap and ubiquitous, survey proliferation could be creating problems for researchers attempting to get a better sense of the attitudes, or merely trying to track economic and social trends over time. If non-responses are more common among very high income households inequality may be underestimated, a point that Nobel-prize winning economist Angus Deaton has highlighted. It’s hard to say for sure. We would need to do a survey, to ask folks if they’re tired of being surveyed! While the meta-nature of such an endeavor appeals to my sense of irony, it might be tempting fate.
In the meantime, if you’re as tired as I am of clicking on those ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘don’t know’ boxes, try to be more selective. Think about who’s asking you for information, and who’s going to benefit. Is it a firm, which has already squeezed your wallet a bit and now wants to squeeze your brain as well? Or is it some other sort of research which, potentially, is somehow targeting the greater good?
Edited July 10, 2019