I recently had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at the International Relations Career Challenge (IRCC), a week-long intensive program aimed at young professionals aspiring to get into the field of international development. It is a terrific professional development opportunity run by Young Professionals United Nations (YPUN), an organization helping young professionals build their international relations careers.
I spoke on the subject of independent consulting in the international development sector, a seemingly daunting path that generated plenty of questions from participants. Some focused on whether it is a path worth pursuing, how to get started, and what are the risks involved.
Let’s get this out of the way first – independent consulting is not for everyone, and I’ve written elsewhere about the downsides. It can be risky the first few years, when there is lots of uncertainty about finding enough assignments to earn a living with. However, it can be an attractive option for those who don’t enjoy 9-to-5 office life, have a set of marketable skills and the motivation to pursue a more independent path.
In this post, I’m going go over in more detail just one of the topics I touched on at IRCC: six ways of finding finding assignments. Three are active and three are passive.
Active methods
Responding to job announcements. The conventional way of getting most work, whether full time or consulting assignments, is applying for advertised assignments. You scan the relevant sites for job announcements and apply to the ones that look attractive and for which you feel qualified. For example, Devex.com lists short-term assignments, as do others, such as Indeed.com and Developmentaid.org.
Reaching out to your personal and professional network. It is a good idea to reach out to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to ask if they can introduce you to people working in your sector. Once you make a connection, arrange an informational interview, thereby getting to know an organization or company better, and putting yourself on their radar.
Cold calls. Today’s version of “cold calling” simply means contacting professionals in your field without any third-party introduction. This could be through email, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, organizational websites, or publications. If you are working within an organization, permanently or temporarily, you can simply send the appropriate person an email or, better yet, just knock on their door.
Passive methods
Seeding the Internet with your profile/CV. This is important in terms of making your profile, and availability known. You can post your CV on a number of jobs websites such as Devex, LinkedIn, and organization websites. You can also upload your CV to the websites of consulting firms that work in the sector. You can find a lot (though not all) of firms working on US government contracts at these websites:
Small Business Association for International Companies: sbaic.org/about
Socializing in the real world. Now
this is the easy and fun part. It involves randomly getting to know people during
the course of your workday, at events, workshops, seminars, conferences, embassy
soirees, cocktail parties, dinner parties, bar-b-ques and so on. You get the
picture. Face-to-face contact is hugely important (see knocking on doors,
above). It gives people a sense of your character, which can build trust, or at
least a willingness to risk hiring you. If someone gets a good impression of you, that
will separate you from the pile of nameless, faceless CVs. I don’t claim to
understand why, exactly, being in the same room with someone and being able to
look them in the eyes is so important. Ostensibly all the important information
about your experience and expertise is detailed on your CV. But that’s how the
world works.
Through referrals. The
final passive method is something that will take care of itself as you
accumulate work experience. Do a good job, prove yourself to be competent and
reliable, and managers you’ve worked with will recommend you – to colleagues or
others in the sector – for other opportunities. They may change organizations
and then come back to you for more, and voila! you have a new client.
The passive approach isn’t completely passive, of course. Some
minimal activity is still required on your part. However, two of the passive
methods involve a limited amount of up-front work, maybe a couple of days’
worth, after which they go on autopilot while you focus on other things. The socializing “method” involves you getting
out of the house and mingling with the rest of the world. It shouldn’t really
involve job searching or any sort of stress. Going to parties, events,
workshops and seminars is merely about you being in circulation and keeping up
with what’s going on. Then let serendipity do the rest.
What method works best?
If this were one of those so-called sensationalist click-baiting websites, I would have titled this post something like “6 Common Ways to find Consulting Jobs: You’ll Be Shocked that #5 works best,” or “Why You Should Go to Parties to Find your Dream Job.” Sorry, I just don’t have the stomach for it. And you’ll notice from the lack of ads that I don’t depend on this blog site for income.
However, passivity and partying are, in fact, very good
approaches. Similar to investing in the stock market, in the medium to
long-run, passive investing for your job search beats active investing by
far.
Early in your career or job search, you
can afford to invest your time in the active strategies. The opportunity cost
is low. That is, you don’t have many alternative ways of spending your time. However,
the more experience you have, and the broader your network, the more important
your passive approach to getting work will become. In any case, if all goes
well, you will be too busy to apply for work.
After a couple of years in the field, passive methods will dominate
In my first couple of years as a consultant I tried all six methods. And all, except the first, have paid off. All I got for my application efforts were a few interviews, during which I clearly didn’t, ahem, shine. They did not lead to work. Luckily the other methods have worked fairly well. And over the past 15 years or so, fully 100 percent of my assignments come from passive methods. That means I can devote most of my energy to the work I have and not looking for the work I don’t have.
And yes, for those who are curious, my stock market investment strategy is also passive…
In many fields, starting out can be daunting. This goes not
only for those who have graduated from university but for more seasoned
professionals interested in switching careers.
How do you step onto that first rung of the ladder in the
field of international development? Even though unemployment has hit historic
lows, and jobs are seemingly plentiful, you don’t want to get onto just any old
ladder that’s leaning against a wall — you want to get onto a ladder that
will get you over the right wall.
What are the barriers to entry and how can you overcome them?
In this post, I’ll take a look at four barriers to launching a career in
international development – experience, knowledge, confidence and name
recognition – and some things you can do to lower them.
The experience barrier
The experience barrier can be a maddening catch-22.
Employers want you to have experience, but how do you gain experience if you
haven’t been employed yet? For junior professionals, the experience issue isn’t
about the problem-solving skills. It is about whether you’ve done something
similar before — even just once — and whether you can deliver the
goods.
Through time, this barrier will fade as you build up a body of work. Meanwhile, you need to find creative ways to compensate for your (temporarily) limited experience. If you don’t have professional experience, you may have country experience or language skills from living or studying overseas. Other things that compensate for lack of experience could be your interest in, and commitment to, working in the international development field. Or, better yet, your interest (some call it passion) in a particular issue, whatever it is that keeps you up at night.
A good way of getting experience is to take field
assignments, even volunteer ones. You go to live and work in a country for a
period of time, test your mettle, and gain a better sense of how the real world
works. This is a great way of gaining a perch on the career ladder, while also
learning a new language, and accumulating some marketable practical skills
along the way. I recall a friend saying
that even minimal overseas experience helps.
Her international recruiter explained it this way: “Look, we just want
to make sure that when you get off the plane you don’t freak out and turn
around and come right back. This, unfortunately, has happened more times than
we care to admit.”
Being well-spoken, personable, and reliable, possessing good
analytical and writing skills are always good attributes to have. You can
demonstrate all these things in person and by sharing examples of written work.
And while having 20-30 years of experience in one area is highly valued and
opens doors, it is, of course, only expected of very senior professionals. For
junior professionals, having successfully performed a project once signals to
prospective hiring managers or clients that you can be trusted to do it again.
There is running a joke at the World Bank, where staff shift between projects
and countries at a pretty high frequency, that if you done something once, you
can be considered an expert.
The knowledge barrier
If you are a recent graduate, the knowledge you draw on will
be mostly theoretical. And much of it may turn out to be only marginally applicable
to the work you end up doing.
In the consulting field, technical knowledge relating to a
field or a method is what is most valued. Some examples are: rural water supply
systems, climate change mitigation, social behavior change, natural resource
management, data analytics, governance, and evaluation methodologies.
To build up an area of knowledge, it is advisable not to spread
yourself too thinly. Find a niche that interests you, and focus on building up your
expertise there. After a while, you may find that the niche area that you chose
has a lot of transfer potential, and you can apply it to other sectors. Teach
yourself about the economics of forestry. Learn a statistical software program.
Follow blogs and podcasts that cover a specific issue. All of that will make you more marketable. In
the meantime, you’re keeping your synapses active.
The confidence barrier
Not having worked in the field yet, and not (yet) having a wide
network of experienced friends and colleagues, may make you feel you are at a
disadvantage. It may sap your confidence. How can you compete with the
professionals you meet? My advice is to be bold. Suppress those misgivings.
Hide your nervousness, wear a confident smile. Most people won’t notice your
nerves. Remember that all these senior professionals also started out with zero
experience at some point.
I know of a young woman who was desperate to get her foot in
the door of New York’s high-stakes fashion industry. Freshly graduated, she cold called a
name-brand designer and was told there were no jobs. “Nevertheless,” as they say, “she persisted.” By the end of the call, she had wrangled an
internship, based on her years as a summer camp counselor, where, she assured
them, there was no crisis she couldn’t handle.
And if you are young, remember that you come with distinct advantages.
You probably possess some measure of energy, enthusiasm, resilience,
intellectual curiosity, and analytical prowess that many of us older folks wish
we still had! You also bring tech and social media savvy that you may take for
granted, but that may be valued by your employers.
The name recognition barrier
By virtue of being new to the field, you are unknown. You don’t have “name recognition” as they like to say in politics, because no one knows you. Bizarrely enough, we seem to live in an age where name recognition trumps competence, ideas, and even previously unacceptable behavior when it comes to politicians getting elected. The lesson for you, however, is not to see how much you can get away with and still get hired — the lesson is that name recognition is really, really important.
It is completely normal and understandable that people don’t
know who you are. You don’t have a big network yet, or a reputation. Maybe it’s
going too far to say that this is an existential barrier, but before they can
consider hiring you, people simply need to know that you exist…
That means finding as many opportunities as you can handle
to meet people and get your CV out there in the public domain where
organizations and people can find it. Devex, Developmentaid.org, Assortis.org, are
some of the bigger sites in the development field (and LinkedIn works, too) where
you can post your CV and profile and where employers can find you. In addition,
many consulting firms invite people to upload their profile and CV, which they
can then use to identify potential staff or specialists.
While you’re doing this online, nothing can replace
face-to-face networking – through job fairs, think tank events, conferences,
meet-ups and yes, happy hours and parties. I’ve gotten work simply because I
shared an office with someone, or was introduced to them at a bar-b-que.
Conclusion – Natural barriers
We can consider the four above-mentioned obstacles as “natural barriers.” They are part of the landscape. Everyone has faced them, and almost everyone who is working in their profession has overcome them (and gone on to face other obstacles in their career — but that’s another story).
The barriers I’ve described above are actually pretty straightforward, and there are established (and creative) methods for getting over and around them. Learn to enjoy the challenge. Don’t give up at the first rejection. Be resilient. (What you want to avoid doing is creating unnecessary barriers that you have inadvertently created yourself. More on those in a follow-up post.)
You may need to meet or get in touch with 25 people – remember,
name recognition! – before one comes back to you and says, “I’d like to talk to
you about a project…”
Communication, or rather lack thereof, is part of a power game. Whether we like it or not, calculations connected to power and status seem to lurk behind much of human interactions, as well as policy making (not just politics, as some might think). Not responding is a way of not cooperating, or a signal or non-cooperation. By not responding, one side essentially raises its status at the expense of the other side, at least temporarily. At a minimum, it leaves one side in a state of uncertainty as to what the silence signifies. It is a potent way of saying “I need you less than you need me.”
Silence when there normally should be an answer leaves the other party guessing, speculating as to the reason why. It can even lead to a fundamental change in the relationship, including its termination. To not answer is to break the golden rule of reciprocity. Some might do so intentionally, others unintentionally, but the effect can be similar.
The use of the non-response frequently plays out in the policy and diplomacy arenas. Silence becomes a strategy. It is a way of creating an information barrier.
Not very long ago I was in a country receiving aid from a development bank (like almost all the countries I work in). Years earlier, I had conducted an evaluation of a sector program. Multi-year efforts had been underway to formulate and promote reforms in the sector. This involved convening sector stakeholders at regular meetings to discuss their proposals, concerns, interests, etc. within the framework of the problems that were identified needed to be addressed. However, the agency responsible for managing the sector – related to natural resources – had a reputation for being corrupt. It did not welcome the reform attempts, although it didn’t reject them outright, either. It simply did not respond to invitations to join the discussion forums. Representatives never showed up.
The agency, or at least its personnel, were indeed the stakeholders with the most to lose. Serious reforms would have reduced rent-seeking and corruption, the “excess remuneration” the agency staff were generating for themselves. In not cooperating, in not accepting the invitations to engage in dialogue, they were acting rationally, from their point of view, anyway.
Years later, the sector reforms still have not been implemented and, according to my sources, corruption at the agency continues to flourish. By not showing up, the agency was employing a power play that ultimately worked in their favor, although to the detriment of many other stakeholders who would have benefited (and still can) from reforms.
How to respond to the non-response?
When first confronted with silence in lieu of a response, it is best to consider the possibility that the reason is benign and not intended as an adversarial signal. Perhaps the other person did not receive the message, or received it and is still intending to respond, but is taking a long time. Or, they never got around to responding, and feel guilty about it. Your message may have gone to junk mail. They may have changed their email address. They may have had a death in the family or, God forbid, have passed on to the great beyond themselves. Those are all reasonably good excuses, ranging from the acceptable to the, shall we say, unassailable. They are forgivable sins.
Giving the non-responder a second chance, with a friendly follow-up reminder, is thus a good idea. If you have tried again, and still get no response, however, it may well be time to reciprocate, by “answering” silence with silence.
Have you found yourself in a situation where you asked someone a question, especially in a face-to-face situation, and they simply ignored you? It is not pleasant. On top of all that, there is also a gender angle here, as my astute editor, Kitty Thuermer points out: over the years, women have complained about being professionally ignored, not heard, or marginalized by the men they work with. It is a most aggravating position to be in, and a most effective way of driving the nail in a relationship. (Although maybe we need to make an exception for the long-married couple, for whom a pattern of ignoring the other might be a habit more than anything else.) But in most other circumstances, ignoring someone is a power play, a signal of disrespect. I have rarely seen it used blatantly, I must add, but it is a very strong signal, with often immediate consequences for the relationship.
Sometimes, however, exit from the relationship is not a valid
option. Because of the nature of the professional or personal relationship,
there may be a compelling reason to keep reaching out in the face of silence.
For example, if the other party is in a position of authority in the
organization or network to which you belong, or where in order to move forward,
you absolutely must have a response. If you are in a dependent relationship, or
dependent salary and benefits, you may lack the power to reciprocate.
Still, it is doubtful such a situation cannot persist for
long without some sort resolution, as pressure build to move to a new equilibrium.
When not talking is justified
Sometimes, maintaining silence is about dignity. I recommend
not responding when people make inappropriate and unacceptable remarks. If they
are directing their words at someone else and they is unfair, demeaning, or prejudiced,
then you should, of course, respond. Not doing so would signal acquiescence.
This is not a tactic, it is simply the right thing to (not) do. But stony silence
can be a force for good in these cases.
Thus, talking is not necessarily always a good idea even if one’s intentions are good. Your choice
depends on the circumstances. You need to be discerning enough to know when to
talk and when to zip it. For a lot of
us, that can involve a lifetime of learning. And to re-apply the golden rule: Do not
do unto others that which you do not
want done unto you.
