Six ways of finding work in the international development field

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:
  • Large USAID contractors: usaid.gov/results-and-data/budget-spending/top-40-vendors
  • 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…