The day before Kabul fell to the Taliban, Salima Mazari, district governor near Mazar-e-Sharif, said this to the Associated Press:
“There will be no place for women. In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes.”
Other than former colleagues, I don’t have a personal connection to Afghanistan and have never been there. The closest I’ve gotten was standing on the banks of the Amu Darya River on the Tajikistan side, looking south across the border at the legendary country and “graveyard of empires”. But it is hard not to feel that what is happening in Afghanistan affects us all.
Scenes of desperate Afghans crowding outside of Kabul’s international airport have dominated the news as the US and NATO military withdraw. In pulling out, the West is abandoning its incomplete state-building project. It is also abandoning most of the people of Afghanistan to their fate.
What is shocking about the unfolding crisis in Afghanistan is that it has happened so rapidly, and to so many people at once. 40 million, to be precise. First the swift takeover by the Taliban. Then the shutting down of the country’s borders, and now Kabul’s international airport.
With the near complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan evacuees and refugees are the lucky ones. They’ve made it out. Everyone else is waking up in a country that could turn into the world’s largest open-air prison.
And Afghan women potentially face a triple exclusion. They will be prevented from leaving the country, prevented from working, and confined to their homes.
With the Taliban in control of all border points and access to the airport, virtually all Afghans are being blocked from leaving the country. Not being allowed out is a particularly severe form of exclusion. Ask any prisoner. Or anyone from the former East Germany, or North Korea, or Gaza.
It could well be that Afghan women will no longer be able to participate in professional and civic life. Reports are emerging that women have already been sent home from schools and workplaces.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said that women should stay home, for their own safety.
Depending on who joins or allies with the Taliban, people will sort themselves into either guards or prisoners.
And, as in a prison, it seems likely that neither privacy nor property rights will be respected. People are vulnerable to searches of their homes and cell phones anytime a man with a gun shows up at their door. Under previous Taliban rule, women were not even safe in their own homes.
Even worse, this could be a prison full of untrained rogue “guards”. It is an open question how much control the Taliban leadership has over its men.
Now, just take a moment to picture the Taliban training its forces on how to deal with and speak to women. Try not to laugh…or cry.
It is one thing to end a war and leave in haste. It is another to condemn the country’s citizens to become prisoners in their own land.
Let’s assume that no country is going to be able to defend humanitarian rights in Afghanistan. The leverage that the outsider world still has –the Taliban need money to govern – will be used to ensure internal stability and avoid more chaos that would contribute to an outflow of refugees.
So, now the fundamental question becomes: What can other countries do, from outside the prison walls, to help the Afghan people, and in particular, its women and girls?
I don’t have an answer.
In the meantime, @LinaAbiRafeh, intrepid women’s rights activist, is posting ways you can help.
Over the past eight years, I’ve evaluated a number of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) projects, about two per year, on average. This and a follow-up post (to come) sum up things I’ve learned.
The post is mainly aimed at evaluators who haven’t conducted USAID evaluations but are interested in doing so, or are just curious about how the process works.
I’ll go over the somewhat dry, but important nuts and bolts issues of doing USAID evaluations as an independent consultant. The next post on this subject will cover implementing the evaluations.
Some context
For those who may not have great familiarity with it, USAID is the largest U.S. bilateral development agency. It devotes budget resources to helping countries in the name of U.S. national security and economic prosperity . These days, that amounts to over $19 billion worth of foreign assistance. (The Department of State manages a similar amount.) That’s a tiny slice of the total U.S. annual budget of $4.4 trillion, as of 2019.
Interestingly enough, after four years of the Trump Administration, both USAID and its budget have survived largely intact. Given the attitudes expressed by the President on the subject of foreigners and the countries they live in, this might seem surprising. However, foreign assistance is generally a low priority for most American presidents, and quite possibly off the radar for the 45th.
Although USAID funds hundreds of projects that vary in focus, scope, size and geographic location, they have one thing in common: at some point, they all get evaluated. That’s where evaluators come in.
USAID’s guidelines call for its country offices to spend between 5 and 10 percent on personnel resources for performance management and, out of that, to earmark about 3 percent on external performance and impact evaluation. A rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests this is equivalent to somewhere between $14 and $28 million per year on evaluations. Dozens of companies vie for these contracts, and they rely heavily on independent consultants to put their evaluation teams together.
Nationality
Work on USAID evaluations is not restricted to US citizens. It is qualifications, not nationality, that matter.
Often, evaluation team members hired by consultant firms are not even based in the US. I’ve been on teams made up of colleagues of all nationalities, who live all over the world, and we only meet in the country of the assignment to do the field work.
Some firms have a policy of prioritizing the hiring of country nationals. This makes sense, as there are no international travel costs, locals know the country better and are well-connected, not to mention that their rates are lower, reflecting the local labor market conditions. COVID-related travel restrictions have created even more opportunities for country nationals.
English language skills are important for evaluation team members, but not every team member needs to be proficient in written English.
A typical team includes a mix of international consultants and local consultants. I’ve been on teams as small as two and as large as eight, not including any surveyors responsible for collecting quantitative data.
The diversity that comes from a mix of international and local perspectives improves the quality of an evaluation. International consultants bring experience from work in other countries, while local consultants know their own country better than anyone from outside.
Contractual arrangements
On evaluations, individual consultants are contracted under what is referred to Short Term Technical Assistance, or STTA. The alternative would be to work as a full-time staff for the consulting firm.
Individual consultants never work directly for USAID on evaluations, in my experience. They are always sub-contracted by private firms or NGOs that have contract with USAID.
Sometimes the staff from the firms are part of evaluation teams, but usually they provide managerial support, directing and managing the evaluation process. This includes liaising with USAID, handling administration and logistics issues, ensuring deadlines are met, quality control, report formatting, etc.
Daily rate
USAID contracts pay by the day. That means they are based on a daily rate, and on a set number of days agreed to in advance.
In development lingo, contract days are referred to as “level of effort’ or LOE. The term actually makes sense, since the number of days signals the amount of effort you are expected to put in. It should guide you when managing your time.
For example, if you are subcontracted as a STTA by a firm (the contractor) to do a USAID evaluation, you may get 40 days of work (your LOE is 40), which is what you have to finalize all the work. I’ve had contracts from 22 to 60 days, with 45 being the average.
On their invoices, however, normally consultants are asked to bill by the hour. Most consulting firms will have their won combination invoice/timesheet template which consultants are asked to complete and submit on a monthly basis.
There is a maximum USAID rate, or “USAID max,” above which contractors will almost never go. In 2020 the USAID maximum was $698 per day. I’ve only heard of one case where a consultant refused to take USAID max, which was well below her standard rate. She told the firm that wanted to hire her, “This my rate, take it or leave it.” She got the contract. That type of case seems to be rare, however. It is up to you whether you are willing to work for USAID max, try to negotiate more, or not work on USAID evaluations.
Beyond the total amount you receive in fees (your daily rate times the number of contract days), all your expenses will be covered. This includes hotel, meals and incidentals, communication, and transportation. You will also normally receive a standard per diem (set by the Foreign Service) to cover meals and incidentals.
Firms usually place consultants in very decent hotels. This is not Peace Corps work where you live in a village for months and years at a time. There is little chance of going native while doing an evaluation.
The biodata form
USAID uses what’s called a biodata form (technically the Contractor Employee Biographical Data Sheet) also referred to as the “1420 form.” As a consultant, you need to fill it out by listing all your employment or assignments going back three years. It only gives you three lines, though. So, if you have had more than three assignments during that time period (which applies to most consultants), simply attach an addendum to the form listing the rest.
In the past, the 1420 form had a column for salary or daily rate for each assignments. Asking about salary history is no longer legal in many US states, as it puts the consultant at a disadvantage, so the form no longer has a column for salary. However, consultant firms will probably still ask you to provide a rationale for why you are requesting x for your daily rate.
The contractor role
The firm that hires consultants normally provides good management and back-office support. It may also provide one or more of the team members. The firm will manage the schedule, arrange travel, hire local firms or consultants, manage the relationship with USAID, and relieve you of other administrative matters. This allows you, as a core team member, to focus on the substantive aspects of the evaluation.
There are firms that take good care of their consultants and are professional in managing the entire process. If you have a good experience with them, and they have a good experience with you, chances are high that you will work with them again. There are also bad firms that you will want to avoid. Working for an unfamiliar firm means taking a risk. Sometimes the risk is worth it.
Evaluation schedule
USAID doesn’t tend to dawdle, at least once the evaluation is ready to start. It is best to approach USAID evaluations in a spirit of ruthless efficiency. The entire evaluation may be completed in 3-6 months and you may only get 10 days or less to draft a final report. This is in stark contrast to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) timelines, where an evaluation can drag on for years and years.
How to get work on USAID projects
A question that comes up a lot is, how can I work on a USAID evaluation if I haven’t worked on one before? That’s because consulting firms, when hiring for a USAID evaluation, are looking for prior USAID experience. That can be a hurdle. (USAID vets the proposed evaluation team, by the way, and can ask a firm to replace a consultant if they don’t believe he or she is qualified.)
Of course, logic dictates that, at some point, every single person working on a USAID evaluation (or a USAID project, or at USAID itself, for that matter) initially had no USAID experience. My advice is, get as close as you can to the real thing – maybe you were on a project that partnered with USAID, or have done an evaluation project with a different US agency, or worked on an assignment for a similar bilateral agency? Those are all possible entry points for the would be novice USAID evaluator.
It can also happen that a firm is simply desperate for someone with your qualifications, and that will be enough to force the door open. It also never hurts to demonstrate your enthusiasm and eagerness to do the work. Recruiters like to see that spark of interest, and it can make you stand out. I find that the work is, in fact, often interesting, and usually enjoyable.
Having worked on a number of USAID evaluations, I’ve come away with an overall positive impression – the work that’s done is, by and large of good quality, and really does seem to help people. Which, as a U.S. taxpayer, is good to see.
The COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us many hard lessons. One is that flow – not just of money but of all sorts of things – is fundamental to a functioning society. On both the material and non-material level, life is enabled by circulation, by constant movement. One could even say that relentless movement is one of modernity’s main characteristics. Charlie Chaplin, frantically trying to keep up with his tasks on the factory assembly line in Modern Times is emblematic not just of work (the kind of work which few in high-income countries experience anymore) but of many people’s daily lives.The coronavirus has now jammed up the gears in that machine.
When COVID-19 arrived, my work-life routine, like that of billions of others, was upended. I cancelled my flight to Dakar just hours before take-off, and instead spent the next week getting up at 5 am for marathon meeting sessions with my Senegalese counterparts. My first virtual business trip. A long-planned Italy vacation – scratched and postponed indefinitely. Dinners with friends, meetings with colleagues, leisurely morning café outings: delete, delete, delete. Maybe the only thing that didn’t change was my newspaper landing on my front steps every morning. The presses didn’t stop rolling. Yes, a throwback to earlier days and a relief for eyes which spend the rest of the days staring at a computer.
The effect of the pandemic has been to block or slow the many streams that comprise daily life. The virus, like humans, thrives on flow and exchange. Perhaps few of us paid much heed before to the pulsing undercurrent of money, goods, public transport, people, knowledge, and much more, until these things began to suddenly back up with the onset of the crisis and government responses. So, fairly soon (although not soon enough), starting in the city at the epicenter, Wuhan, China, governments began to curtail movement of anything that would aid its spread.
Money turned into molasses as commercial activity ground to a halt, shut down for the safety of workers as well as shrinking as consumption suddenly dropped off. Spending on the non-essential stuff, plummeted. Remittances, the money migrants send to their home countries, shrank by about 20 percent compared with 2019, with ripple effects in the home economies. And with their fall, a huge number of people who relied on them are expected to slip back into poverty.
Many supply chains were disrupted, or seized up, as industries halted production to keep workers safe. Other supply chains couldn’t cope with spiking demand. Toilet paper is now back on the shelves, but just try buying a bicycle these days, or a dog! There’s a long wait-list. A bicycle store in Florida first saw a boom in sales when the crisis hit as many people saw biking as an ideal pastime. A few months later it had to shut down when it was unable to source more bicycles, as manufacturers couldn’t keep up with demand. We now know that cycling is, well, counter-cyclical, in pandemic times, at least. But stop and think for a moment – when else have you heard that because demand for an item was so high, the store that specialized in those items went out of business?
A corollary to the rise in cycling was the fall in motorized vehicle traffic, to the extent that the skies cleared in many cities, and wildlife made a tentative steps into urban areas, to check out what had happened in the years since their habitat had been paved and built over.
The flow of knowledge imparted to growing minds has been curtailed with the closing of schools and universities. Online learning, if a child even has access, acts as a poor substitute and some wonder whether there will be a lost generation as an estimated 90 percent of school age children have been affected. Of course, this assumes that all those children were getting a decent education in the first place, an assumption that doesn’t always hold. In some countries, teachers don’t show up, and textbooks are outdated if they even are available. (I’m not offering this as a solution, but can mention in passing that I went to a Waldorf school, where we didn’t have any textbooks at all until high school. We had to write and illustrate our own “main lesson” books.)
In many cities around the world, the streets emptied as the flow of pedestrians petered out under lockdown measures. The seasonal tide of tourists virtually disappeared as international travel was sharply curtailed. In May 2020 international tourist numbers were down a whopping 98% compared with the previous year. Given that before the pandemic, the new buzzword was flygskam, Swedish for flight shame (stemming from the carbon emissions produced by flying) that would seem to be a silver lining.
The importance of a constant and steady flow will be familiar to most homeowners. In my experience, the vast majority of house repair problems stem from either too much or too little flow. Almost all the headaches we’ve had to deal with in our house over the past 10 years have been linked to electric current, gas, water, sewage and air (conditioning) not working, i.e. not moving through the system as they should. The normal circulation of the elements stopped or was rather in excess, when it came to water and, er, sewage. The optimal is an even, well-managed flow.
The COVID-induced economy and societal blockages are logical, if, at least in most cases disastrous for many people. COVID spreads through interactions and contact and the less of this there is, the safer we all are and the sooner the virus is beaten.
If we consider the factors that that inhibit the circulation processes vital to society and economy, both positive and negative examples come to mind. Among the negative: a heavy-handed bureaucracy which, for example, hobbles government service provision; trade barriers which reduce optimal allocation of capital, and increase the cost of goods; regulations which limit commercial activity. Unrelated to the pandemic, the US mail delivery service is another example of systemic flow that has been impeded. (Many suspect an ulterior motive behind the introduction of cost-cutting measures so close to the November US elections, when the use of mail-in ballots will be widespread.)
People in poor countries, however, don’t need a virus to slow life down and make it more difficult. Barriers to flow are par for the course. Inadequate or dilapidated infrastructure that blocks things from moving smoothly – roads, railways, electricity lines, water supply systems, and so on. Sluggish bureaucracies that dam up public service provision. Supply chains with key nodes missing.
In a way, with the onset of the pandemic and its accompanying precautionary polices, populations in developed countries, especially the poor and marginalized in these countries, have been experiencing a taste of low-income country lifestyle. That is, how inconvenient and difficult life can be when movement is inhibited. (A key difference, generally speaking, is that in low-income countries the poor form a much larger part of the population than in high-income countries.) Asian and African countries, meanwhile, are coping quite well, occupying the bottom half of the country list of fatality cases per population. Senegal is doing much better than the US.
It is hard to see how Western nations will come out of this crisis better than before. Combined with the massive recessions sweeping the world, we may be witnessing a convergence, of sorts, between the Global North and, Latin America excepted, the Global South.
This blog post proposes — based on my experience in international development — the key qualities of a good colleague or team member.
People come in packages made up a vast set of qualities, attributes, skills, quirks, and what have you. The seven I present here for your consideration just seem like the essential ones to me. Quite possibly, a few will apply outside the international development field as well.
Twenty years looking back
It’s now been 20 years since I began working in this field. (Back then, when looking ahead, 20 years seemed like an almost endless expanse of time; looking back, the period seems oddly brief. Anyway…) In May 2000 I arrived in Albania for an internship that turned into my first consultant job. I hit the ground running, unleashed after an unsatisfying career stretch alternating, sometimes daily, between a dead-end finance job and pursuit of a pie-in-the-sky acting career in New York City. Enrolling in a Master’s degree program in international relations was, finally, the pivot that launched what would become a far more rewarding career.
Two decades, several dozen countries, and thousands of professional relationships later, I can say that I fully subscribe to the following received wisdom: it’s the people who make or break programs and projects.
Fair enough, you say, but what kind of people? What sort of qualities do well-rounded professionals, the kind of people you want to work with and for, embody? And…what sort of qualities will make other people want to work with me?
Seven key attributes
1) Professionalism. I use this as a catch-all term to encompass the range of behaviors considered “normal” in the work sphere, from reliability and trustworthiness to responsiveness and collegiality. There are many unwritten codes of conduct but it isn’t necessarily difficult to act in a professional way. Observing more seasoned colleagues is not a bad place to start. Nonetheless, I’m still surprised how some people fail to follow up with a “thank you” after an interview, or fail to respond to an email request. If you’re too busy, a simple one-line response along the lines of “I wish I could help, but I’m tied up with other work at the moment,” would not seem a lot to ask. Beyond the work itself, acting in a professional manner has implications simply for maintaining good relationships.
2) Management ability. This ability is useful for everyone, even those not in charge of teams or departments. I refer to management in the broadest sense — using the available resources, or finding additional ones, to achieve a goal. You may not be in charge of other people if you are, say, a junior staffer or work independently, outside an organization. However, even then, if you can’t manage tasks, or your time and work relationships, you are inviting unnecessary agony into your life. Plan and prioritize what needs doing, in whatever way that makes sense to you. Plenty of people still keep handwritten daily and weekly “to do” lists. I get much satisfaction out of crossing off tasks as they get done. Managing relationships may be more of an art than a science, but it is a skill no less important for all that.
3) Technical skills. These are the specialized skills for which we are usually hired: e.g. setting up a health clinic, running data analysis software, analyzing electricity tariff structures, conducting cost-benefit analysis, and so on. Such skills are developed through a combination of education, book learning and experience. With some adjustments, they can be transferable. Knowing how a state-owned water utility operates helps in understanding how a state-owned electric utility works. Early in my career, I conducted a fair amount of socio-economic analyses of World Bank-financed projects. That stood me in good stead when I later expanded to USAID project evaluations.
4) Critical thinking. We can also call this common sense. I include here abilities such as seeing the big picture, connecting the dots, asking the right questions, applying logic to a problem, seeing things in a new or useful way. Data analysis software is hugely important and has greatly facilitated our ability to analyze vast amounts of information. However, even in the context of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the performance of the human mind remains formidable. It has been estimated that our brains can process anywhere from 10 to 100 terabytes of information. While supercomputers now have faster processing speeds and storage capacity, the human brain is vastly more efficient. And humans can think and imagine, while computers can still only retrieve information and run algorithms. We probably still have a few decades before we’re overtaken by machines. Use the time to your advantage.
5) Writing. Not very distant from — and rather dependent on — critical thinking, is writing ability. Your colleagues and managers will be very grateful for your clear, succinct, and grammatically correct prose. This applies both at a structural level and at the level of sentences and even words. The gold standard in the English-speaking world, at least, is clarity: you should be able to explain things in a way that your grandmother could understand. I once asked a World Bank manager what, for him, was the most important quality he looked for in a consultant. Without hesitation, he replied “good writing skills.” Once you’ve finished the job, the documents you produced may often be the only tangible thing attributable to your efforts. If they are made publicly available, they will last and may influence the work of others.
6) Experience. Essentially, this is the ability to apply the past to the present, and to place the current situation, its problems and opportunities, within a broader context. By definition, experience takes time to build. However, that doesn’t mean every person with 20 years under their belt has the same amount of sagesse. Not all experience has the same value. The more work you do in a given time period, the more experience you will collect. That’s basic math. The more attentive you are, the more you will learn as you’re doing it. If you mindlessly play a piece 100 times on the piano, you probably won’t memorize it. If you practice with intent, however, you will learn it by heart even while playing it less. Diversity of experience, across countries, clients and sectors is key. As the author Stephen Covey pointed out, “Some people say they have twenty years, when in reality, they only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”
7) Energy and enthusiasm. None of the above counts for much if your work makes you tired, cynical or lazy. This the ace that young people have up their sleeve, to compensate for their lack of experience. The term “passion” is often used in this context, but I admit being lukewarm on the concept. In my experience, the people who bring too much passion to their work tend to be less than emotionally stable. You can’t sustain passion forever, and so it’s not something that can be counted on. Or, the passionate types are also ruthlessly ambitious, elbowing their way up through the hierarchy. Generally, colleagues or counterparts that run on passion are hard to be around. (Save your passion for the bedroom or the ballpark.) However, energy and enthusiasm channeled toward a project are very welcome traits in colleagues. They can be infectious, and even enhance the quality of everyone else’s work. They also go a long way toward compensating for weaknesses in other areas. The trick is staying motivated. Having a clear, overarching goal – which could be as simple as “I want to produce the best report on this topic that’s ever been seen” – doesn’t hurt.
Some reflections on the above
There are, of course, other supremely useful attributes, e.g. leadership ability, diplomatic nous, negotiation skills, foreign languages, and sheer grit. They make individuals stand out in the crowd and open all kinds of doors. They are not absolutely essential however. You can have a satisfying and productive career without them.
If you are the type of person who has a yen for self-improvement (which, since you’re reading this blog post, I’m guessing you might) you can do a little exercise: rate yourself along the above attributes, say, on a scale of 1 to 5.
If you feel particularly deficient in one area, various strategies can be pursued. One is to diligently work on the areas you are weakest. That could entail reading, taking training, talking to people, as well as just being mindful. Another is to overcompensate, in a positive sense – aim to become brilliant and exceptional at one or maximum two things. A lot of senior experts, for example, may be bona fide curmudgeons, but they are valued — and tolerated! — because of their vast technical knowledge and experience.
Very few people will score top marks across all attributes. The good thing is it that no one is expected to, either. That’s why most work is done by teams, not individuals. Even a book with a single author is almost always a team effort. Just take a look at the acknowledgements section to remind yourself of this. It’s not a bad policy to be honest with people about what you can and cannot do.
A corollary of the above is that the stronger you are in one area, the more tolerance others will have for your weaknesses in other areas.
Keep in mind that these attributes are relative, depending on the circumstance and who else is in the room. On one project, for example, your 15 years may make you the most experienced person on the team, whereas on another, they may pale in comparison to your senior colleague’s 30 years.
Concluding thoughts
Every now and then I find myself working with someone who seems quite brilliant in all of the above attributes, and the question arises — is this person for real? Almost always, however, after getting to know them better, their weaknesses emerge and they turn out to be human after all… The weaknesses weren’t visible at first, or were not that irksome. That’s a skill too, of course, being able to conceal one’s faults.
It’s pretty difficult to be both human and perfect. And that’s okay. Not worth the effort, really. It’s good to remember that robots and AI come with plenty of built in flaws, glitches and annoyances, too (and that includes ridiculously macro-heavy MS Word and its I-know-better-than-you-what-formatting-should-be-used-here-but–maybe-I’ll-change-the-font-and-spacing-halfway-through-the-document attitude, pervasive flaws which Microsoft has not bothered to fix for over a decade).
Finally, possessing the seven attributes I’ve described here is not just good for sake of doing exemplary work. It will also make people want to collaborate with you again.
For writers, the road to perfection passes through the review purgatory.
The fact that the review process is collaborative makes writing both easier and harder. Easier because the burden of improving the writing is shared. Harder, because you as the writer are exposed to the scrutiny and criticism of others.
In this blog post I will propose some ways of smoothing the rocky passage, from the perspective of both the giver of feedback and the receiver.
In the fields of international development and evaluation, sharing written drafts for comment is standard practice. While essential to good quality outputs, it is also a laborious process. When a report is developed, it can go through multiple rounds of revisions over a period lasting weeks, and even months.
A silent dialogue
Imagine, in this fast-paced world, a slow-motion conversation in which the speaker takes as much time as he or she needs to reflect and ruminate on a given subject. It is an extended back-and-forth dialogue with the audience that starts…and…stops…and…starts…and…goes…on…for…weeks. The dialogue continues until…no one has more to say, and it is finally over.
On top of that, imagine that the issues under discussion are technical in nature, and would mean little to most people listening in.
Such a conversation might sound agonizingly dull. But it mirrors the way good reports get written. Most of this dialogue is not spoken, of course. It takes place on the page. The back-and-forth is the writing, reviewing, commenting, editing, revising, and rewriting that happens in the “document space.” It is usually very effective. I have seen plenty of reports transformed from sub-par to excellent as a result.
A far from dull process
Being the responsible writer in this ‘dialogue’ is far from boring. It can, in fact, be nerve-wracking, waiting to see/hear what the other person thinks, knowing they will find and point out weaknesses (which is their job), and wondering how tough they will be.
If you are the primary team member responsible for the writing, after you have labored over your draft, there’s always a moment of trepidation after hitting the “send” button. Is the report on the right track? Is it broadly acceptable? How difficult will the comments be to address? How many comments will there be? Should I have spent another day revising before sending it in? If you are a consultant, you may even be wondering, Will I ever get hired by this client again?
In the fields of evaluation and development, you will be in the role of reviewer as well as reviewee. You need to be able to dish it out as well as take it. That is, to give and accept critiques of the reports that you and others write. These are skills most development professionals learn over the course of their career.
(I should note that the word “critique” is not normally used in these circumstances. It’s a little too loaded, perhaps. The preference is for “comments,” “feedback” or “review.” But critiquing is essentially what’s happening.)
When I first began working in this field, I was delighted to find weaknesses in a given document. Being asked to review the work of others gave me the sense that I had arrived, that I could hold my own among colleagues, most of whom were older and far more experienced. It gave me a confidence.
Unfortunately, it also occasionally caused me at times to become a bit cocky in my reviews. I may have expressed my reservations in language that was a little too harsh. I’ve learned that, on the written page at least, while being straightforward is fine, being severe is unnecessary and unhelpful.
Who comments?
Comments can be generated by the client, the manager overseeing the task, other members of the team, and by specialists from outside the team. For official publications, an editor will be hired. For certain documents, the feedback process may be formalized as a peer review process, as is done for academic journal articles.
If you are new to the field, you’ll need to get comfortable with feedback, because it will always be there. If you don’t receive feedback from someone, it is not because you are brilliant, I’m afraid. It’s because they either didn’t review your draft, or didn’t read very carefully.
On the flipside, you can always find constructive ways that work written by others can be improved. It may take a couple of read-throughs, but issues will come into focus, like those magic eye pictures or autostereograms that reveal a 3D image if you stare at them long enough.
Receiving a lot of comments means additional work, of course. But you want substantive feedback: it will make the report that much better. What you want to avoid is receiving feedback along the lines of “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do here” or “this is not what we were expecting” or “the quality is unacceptable.” That generally means you need to start over.
Then there is the pedantic reviewer, who finds fault with every minor issue or who gratuitously asks for everything to be explained ad nauseum, which can also be stressful.
Below are a few things to keep in mind:
On receiving feedback
All comments from the client or your manager will need to be addressed, either by incorporating them in the text or by making a good case for why not.
Other than the above two cases, you don’t need to address every single comment. Indeed, some comments may contradict one another.
When deciding the order in which to address comments, consider plucking the low-hanging fruit first. Addressing the easier comments first will give you an encouraging sense of progress, and additional time to reflect on how to tackle the trickier feedback.
Keep in mind that it is good if you get no feedback suggesting that the work’s approach was wrong, or if they don’t ask for a complete redo.
Before sharing your work with others, it is paramount to edit one’s own work. That is one way of reducing the amount of comments you will receive.
To avoid going down a cul-de-sac, it is a good idea to communicate with people who will be reviewing the piece before you send them the final draft to review. Share ideas and outlines with them early on, and incorporate feedback. This generates interest and buy-in for the work.
Don’t take criticism personally. It’s not you, it’s the writing.
On giving feedback
As you review, ask yourself:
Is the piece addressing the stated objectives, the questions it poses?
Is anything important missing?
Does the structure work?
Does the work flow in a natural progression?
Are certain elements underemphasized or overemphasized?
Are there any errors?
Avoid framing comments in a negative way, e.g. “this is incorrect” or “you didn’t understand.” Positive turns of phrase include “I suggest” or “think about phrasing it this way.” You don’t want to demotivate the writer with harsh criticism.
Although you probably have not been asked to copyedit, if you do come across grammatical errors or typos, it’s not inappropriate to simply make the correction. When I do that, I’ll add a note to the effect “that I took the liberty of doing some light editing” or that I “made a few edits along the way.”
There will be reports which are poor quality, or completely miss the mark. Remedial measures may be needed, including a complete rewrite, or even another person to write it. Even this situation should be handled diplomatically.
You can write comments directly into the report, and also include general comments in the body or in your email response.
Use the sandwich approach — start with what you like about the report, and end on a positive note. Highlight the strengths. That’s encouraging for the writer.
As a general rule, feedback makes everyone’s work better. It is the essence of quality control. Having more eyes poring over a report, more brains scanning it, is effective for uncovering issues before a written work is signed, sealed and delivered.
Sometimes it may feel as though you are getting hammered by critics. If your critics are insightful and forthright, what they’re really doing is helping you hammer your work into shape. And that’s a good thing.
On the face of it, independent consulting in international
development is not an appealing career choice.
You’re on your own, with no institution to back you up. You’re an outsider, a transient professional,
an interloper. You touch down for a few weeks in a foreign country and have
little time to acclimatize or develop relationships. You often find yourself counting on team members
who up until yesterday were complete strangers. You have to pray that they’re
competent.
Of course, there are plenty of independent consultants for
whom their career path was less a choice than a default position. It might have
been thrust upon them. They may have originally sought the stability, structure
and institutional opportunities that come with being part of a big development
agency or a consulting firm of whatever size. But that didn’t happen.
Freedom is not always a blessing
Certainly, independent consulting comes with a lot of
freedom. But freedom is only a positive thing insofar as you enjoy being
untethered and don’t mind not belonging. There are a lot of reluctant gig
workers out there.
Although it is rarely acknowledged, there are non-negligible
advantages to being told what to do. A professional life where you can mostly
focus on completing the tasks you are given. There is less decision making and
need for self-discipline. Plus there is no need to file estimated taxes every
quarter (as the self-employed in the US must do).
If, in addition to being an independent consultant, you are so “unlucky” as to work as an evaluator, you can expect to enjoy several additional drawbacks. While it is true that someone is paying you to look into a program or project, to collect data and information and ferret out the truth, a lot of people involved in that program won’t exactly appreciate your poking your nose around and asking sometimes uncomfortable questions.
They say evaluators play the role of “critical friend,” the person you can trust who will also point out your faults. Not everybody is reconciled to that concept. Who likes a party pooper? Who likes to get a diagnosis that they aren’t as healthy as they thought?
In other words, independent consulting ain’t for everyone.
But if you must…
Still, there are rewards to be had. A few of us are out there doing this type of work, after all, and not all of us plan to throw in the towel…
If you happen to fall into the sub-sub-sub-category of a) being a consultant who, b) works independently, c) is active in the field of international development, and d) conducts evaluations; then here are a few observations on what you might face.
In the article, we discuss common divides and some useful competencies that consultants that belong to the sub-sub-sub category use to navigate them.
We consider various divides that consultants likely deal with while working abroad. We identified divides along cultural, power, gender, national–international, language, geographical lines. None of these are insurmountable but, in one way or another, they require a bit of navigation.
Language is a common and obvious divide. Not speaking the language won’t necessarily prevent you from getting an assignment (except in French or Spanish speaking countries). However, relying on interpreters does pose some risks. Things do get lost in translation. It adds yet another a layer of complexity to your work.
Because you are not part of the system, probably lack a deep understanding of the country, don’t have the relationships, or necessarily speak the language, you come with a built-in disadvantage.
If you are young and female, you may face further
challenges. You may find, at least in some cultures, that you are not taken as
seriously as your male counterparts.
Privilege and power – those perennial aspects of life that insinuate themselves into so much of our political and social life – are part of the equation, too. Independent consultants have both more and less privilege and power than meets the eye. On the one hand, as professionals who are independent, well-remunerated, and often based in Western countries, we have certain advantages. On the other hand, we face limitations. As outsiders, (often) not knowing the local language, not have the connections, not the institutional backing that our full-time employed colleagues do, our influence is certainly limited.
Most of the divides we identified spring from disparities between you, the consultant, and the social, political and cultural environment you work in.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
I’ve emphasized the difficult and less
appealing sides of independent consulting for two reasons.
If you have doubts about this path, maybe
reading this will help you clear them up, and push you in a different
direction.
However, if you still think it’s a good
idea, then embrace the challenge with open eyes.
On a related note, I like the concept of cognitive disfluency. It refers to the benefits that come from the mental effort of completing a task. If something is too easy to do or to learn, your mind is, according to the theory, less likely retain it. Learning to play the piano is hard. But by practicing day after day, you improve. The same applies to many other skills people acquire. Although a more nebulous skill than mastering a musical instrument, wWorking as an independent consultant, at least until you get the hang of it, is fairly effortful.
This brings me back to our article: we conclude that the very process of overcoming these divides and dealing with these issues can strengthen you as a professional, while also making the work more interesting and enjoyable. There is satisfaction to be had from overcoming life’s tribulations.
———-
*Junge, N.,
& Negroustoueva, S. (2019). Bridging divides and creating opportunities in
international evaluation consulting. In N. Martınez-Rubin, A. A. Germuth, &
M. L. Feldmann (Eds.), Independent Evaluation Consulting: Approaches and
Practices from a Growing Field. New Directions for Evaluation, 164,
127–139.
The issue of social exclusion in its various forms has been on my mind lately. The contrast between the liberal rhetoric to promote greater social and economic participation on the one side, and the countervailing rhetoric about walls and keeping people out, on the other, seems to be starker than ever. However, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that these dueling tendencies – to band together or to fend off outsiders – are both timeless aspects human nature.
Today’s entry will mark the beginning of a new blog series
devoted to exploring the vast subject of exclusion.
Why talk about exclusion in a blog devoted to evaluation and international development topics? For one, because the contrast between the recent extremist exclusionary talk and behavior in politics (in the U.S. as well as globally) and the more inclusive rhetoric pervading the development aid world is so striking. Another reason is related to domestic, U.S. attitudes. A significant share of U.S. society doesn’t seem to believe in inclusion, in helping others get in. Given the support for President Trump’s rhetoric on building walls and keeping out migrants (88 percent of Republicans approve of the job he is doing, according to the August 1-14, 2019 Gallup poll), what does this portend for a foreign aid policy that, up until now, has pointed mostly in the other direction?
Rhetoric spills into action
Exclusion manifests itself in many ways: moats, walls,
xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, racism, sexism, tribalism, ethnic cleansing,
genocide. It can range from the relatively passive — such as barring “others,”
like migrants, from entering — to the active, such as expelling
members from a group, to the awful, destroying those perceived as not
belonging.
What prompted these reflections — which I will expand on in
this and posts to follow — is the extreme form that this will to exclude has taken
in the U.S. In the recent El Paso mass shooting a young white man killed 22 Hispanics
at a Walmart store, and injured even more. His purported motive was to kill
immigrants, and defend the country against an “invasion” by immigrants, i.e.
outsiders.
This was but the most recent of a spate of U.S massacres targeting minorities. African Americans, Jews and gays have all been slaughtered on U.S. soil in recent years because of who they are, and because their existence posed a problem.
The shootings can be seen as an extreme manifestation of the desire, as expressed by white nationalist groups and their sympathizers, to rid the U.S. of those who don’t conform to their retrograde vision of who is allowed to be here.
Huddled masses need not apply
Ridding the U.S. of ethnic minorities has a long and
ignominious history. As Michael Luo writes in the August 17, 2019 issue of The New Yorker, the U.S. Senate passed
a bill back in 1882 to bar Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. The Chinese
Exclusion Act, as it came to be called, was not repealed until 1943. Now the
government is at it again, with new regulations to deny permanent legal status,
or green cards, to immigrants likely to need government services.
This is but the latest in ongoing efforts to reduce
migration flows to the U.S. It has been accompanied by rhetoric and full-blooded
condoning of these views. This exclusion rhetoric has risen dramatically under
President Trump. It started with his announcement of his candidacy and its blatant
anti-immigrant message, calling Mexicans criminals and rapists.
The logic may appear infantile and full of holes, but it
resonated with enough Americans to win him the election. And now there are
those who have reached the conclusion that, if Mexicans are coming here to rape
and commit crimes, then they don’t deserve to live, ergo it is okay to kill
them. It is a vision of keeping the U.S. homogenous, and pure, and returning to
a (relatively small) window in time when most of the settled population was
white —
having killed or enslaved “outside” groups such as native Americans or people
brought over from Africa.
The El Paso killer’s statements on social media conformed
closely to attitudes and language used by Trump supporters and Trump himself.
In July 2019 Trump launched verbal assaults against four Democratic
Congresswomen: “Hey if you don’t like it,
let them leave.” Soon after, supporters at Trump rallies were chanting
“Send her back,” although the President has tried to distance himself from the
chant, if not the sentiment.
Is it simply human nature to exclude others?
First of all, it is true that the phenomenon of one group keeping
outsiders out is neither new nor particularly remarkable. I suppose it has been
with us as long as we’ve been a species. The formation of tribes and nations is
as much about outsiders as it is about members.
I will go further, and argue that exclusion of the many by
the few, or of the few by the many, of casting out and keeping out, is one of
humanity’s leitmotifs. The Bible’s key events often center on exclusion in one
way or another: the fall from Paradise, the Great Flood, the Exodus out of
Egypt, the Chosen People. And the history of the 20th century is
full of myths which fed genocides against minorities, facilitated by modern
organizational capacities of the Nazis in Germany and Central Europe, of Serb
nationalists in Bosnia, of Hutu power in Rwanda, and so on.
Yet as ancient as it is, and as horrific as the 20th
century was for millions of people, it feels like we live in a time where the rhetoric
around social exclusion has entered the political mainstream. Accounts of
political leaders demonizing others feature prominently in the daily news. In
both the U.S. and Europe, rightwing parties have galvanized supporters with
anti-immigrant rhetoric. It has become acceptable again for sizable minorities to,
if you’ll permit the oxymoron, openly embrace the exclusion of others.
Development efforts to promote inclusion
Flipping the coin over to the other side, many of the
international development projects I evaluate aim, among other things, at increasing
inclusion. It is part of their underlying rationale.
Increasing access — to things which many of us in the “developed”
world take for granted — is seen as the key to lifting people out of poverty, and
opening up opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise. In other words,
development assistance is about inclusion, and not just economic growth.
In recent decades, economists have come to the realization that growth isn’t sufficient
if the gains are not sufficiently dispersed through society.
The World Bank’s mission is “shared prosperity”. The UN
Sustainable Development Goals are replete with the terms “inclusive” and
“access to.” Inclusive growth is now a term. Investing in modernization is at
the core of development efforts in poor countries striving to catch up with
rich ones. It is about reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots. It is
about letting more people in on the fruits of civilization and modern society.
It doesn’t always work out, and the rhetoric is often far ahead of the reality,
but the rhetoric matters. Project goals refer to it and, at least in part, are
often linked to it.
The mechanism for reaching these goals are investments and
policy reforms which expand access to, for example, electricity, healthcare
services, clean water and sanitation, markets, education, and political and
civic inclusion, by way of voter registration programs. The expansion of access
is generally aimed at those who have been left out: the poor, women, youth, disabled
persons, etc.
It is true that development aid will not generally help
people join the most, shall we say, “exciting” tribes that humanity divides
itself into, i.e. those which are defined along ethnic, racial, or religious
lines. That would be antithetical to development aid’s raison d’etre. It
is also true that there are probably not enough resources for the many
currently excluded to access. For example, in 1994 when Malawi adopted a policy
of free primary education by abolishing tuition fees, one unintended
consequence was a severe drop in educational quality, as the system was
overwhelmed. There simply were not enough teachers and schools to handle the
influx.
Even when ineffective or focused on issues other than
access, however, international development never aims at exclusion, at keeping
groups of people down and out. After all, the point is to invest in public
goods, which by definition are both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
On the whole, development programs do try to increase
capacity to participate in society and its rewards, by reducing some of the
most basic obstacles.
Don’t expect the rhetoric on exclusion to disappear
Now contrast international development policies with the prevalent
desire, among certain outspoken parts of country populations and their
political leaders, to exclude others. Even leaving aside the violent and
genocidal tendencies displayed by fringe groups, and some mass shooters, the basic
desire to keep others out appears to be fairly widespread in the U.S. and many
other countries. Fully one third of the U.S. population believes that migrants
do more harm than benefit to the country. That’s less than the 39 percent who
believe the opposite. But it still amounts to a view held by over 100 million
Americans.
Populist parties in Europe rail against immigrants.
Hungary’s populist and self-proclaimed illiberal Prime Minister Victor Orban has
said that “countries that don’t stop immigration will be
lost,” and keeps winning elections. The UK’s Prime Minister Boris
Johnson, as an MP, based part of his pro-Brexit rhetoric on fears of 80 million
Turks invading the UK. Fallacious, but effective.
It is clearly human nature to think in terms of us and them.
There are just too many people for everyone to be “us.” Someone has to be
“them.” There will always be insiders and outsiders, those who belong to a
group and those who don’t.
It seems that Republicans and Democrats have staked opposing
positions on this terrain. I find it curious how many U.S. Democratic party
positions focus on inclusion, on expanding rights and access for those marginalized.
Consider where Democrats stand, not just on migration, but on health insurance,
abortion rights, voting rights. It’s about bringing people in, not kicking them
out. Social inclusion, in other words.
Republican focus on helping small businesses might be
described as promoting economic inclusion. In my view the effort is a
bit desultory, given Republican handouts to corporate America. And how feasible
economic inclusion is without social inclusion is a matter for debate.
In any case, it is a safe bet that the tension between allowing more people in and keeping them out will never disappear. If those of us who believe in inclusion can at least prevent exclusionary tendencies from turning into genocidal tendencies, that is worth something worth fighting for. And as climate change reduces the ability of populations in some regions to manage, or even survive, you can bet there will be a fight.
Will U.S. foreign aid now succumb to exclusionist impulses? Stay
tuned.
First of all, negotiating is about more than getting as much
as you can. It isn’t really even about getting what (you think) you’re worth.
Many factors come into play and it is worth spending a little time thinking
them through. After you’ve signed the contract, assuming your negotiations land
you at that point, you want to feel good about what you’ve agreed to.
When it comes to work, money isn’t everything. It’s one element among many that gives satisfaction. Why else would people volunteer, or work for low pay at organizations they believe in? In other words, when you are negotiating, the dollar amount (or whatever currency you’re getting paid in) is not the only thing you should be thinking about.
In this blog post I am going to suggest 12 things to consider when negotiating your rate. The goal is to help you be more conscious of what exactly you are negotiating about, as well as more strategic.
This post is longer than normal, so if you don’t have the time or inclination to read on, here are the main messages: Know thyself. Think about what the number (your daily rate) means. Decide what matters to you.
The scenario
To make it more realistic, let’s build the discussion around
a typical scenario.
I’m going to posit that you are a consultant working in
international development, although some of what follows applies more broadly.
The basis of your remuneration is your daily rate, because
you undertake short-term assignments, rather than full-time, salaried work. The
daily rate and number of contract days are normally the basis of short-term
contracts in this field.
You have entered into discussions with an organization over a short-term assignment. Let’s call them Acme & Partners International. They are a consulting firm based in Arlington, VA and they submit proposals to organizations like the World Bank, the UN, and USAID, and they subcontract consultants like you.
They found your profile on Devex.com or assortis.com, they’ve checked out your references and contacted you. You’ve had a few exchanges. It turns out that, yes, you are available and there is mutual interest in having you on the project. Your role and responsibilities have been defined. You’re expected to spend part of your time working from home and part of your time onsite, i.e. overseas. So far so good.
Because you haven’t worked for Acme before, you need to
agree on remuneration. The subject might come up as part of their initial
inquiry as to your qualifications, interest, and/or availability, or it might
come up later.
Like most organizations, Acme has a standard range —
and upper limit — for the daily rate they are willing to offer their
subcontractors, i.e. independent consultants like you. It will be based on some
combination of their fee structure or guidelines, what they pay similar
consultants, and the demand for your services.
Now that we’ve got the preliminaries out of the way, what
factors should you take into consideration when negotiating your rate?
1. Any previous assignments may be used as reference points
If you have previous consulting work experience, you will
probably have received different fees, and thus established a range. For the
rest of the discussion, we’ll think in terms of your range. That range can be
wide or narrow.
If you are new to the field of consulting and have not yet
had an assignment based on your daily rate, ask around for advice. Ideally, ask
another consultant. If you’ve been employed full-time somewhere, do not
divide your salary by 250 (the approximate number of working days in a year) to
arrive at your rate. Why? You will
arrive at a figure which is too low, because the full-time nature of salaried
work, the benefits, and the overhead covered by the employer, do not generally
apply to independent consulting work.
Especially as a beginning consultant, you will probably not
be working a full 250 days. It took me about three years working as a
consultant before I was able to corral enough assignments to keep me more or
less busy year-round. And, as noted, you need to take into account the fact
that you will not be getting benefits — health insurance, vacation, sick
days, etc. —
with this rate.
Also, bear in mind your personal overhead —
i.e. the time you spend on activities associated with your work for which you
cannot bill a client. These activities include things like updating your CV, applying
for assignments or responding to inquiries, planning and organizing your
schedule, managing your taxes and accounts, developing your technical capacity,
maintaining or building up your professional network, etc.
Unless you’re a superstar in your field or your skills are
hard to find, you will not be able to unilaterally declare your rate. The vast
majority of us live and function in a world of constraints. That requires self-knowledge
and intelligent negotiating.
Ideally, the rate you eventually agree on with Acme will be
toward the upper end of your own range. However, there are a number of reasons
you may accept a rate that is toward the low end of your range, or even below
it. Read on.
2. How much do I want or need this assignment?
Have you been trying to get work with Acme (or the UN or the
World Bank) for a long time, and this seems like your chance? Have you always
wanted to go to South Africa, and this is your opportunity? Have you been
trying to get experience on refugee issues?
The more attractive the assignment is, the more willing you
may be to agree to a rate that is toward the bottom of your range. On the other
hand, if you’re feeling lukewarm about the assignment, think about how much
they’d have to pay you (and under what conditions) for you to say “yes.” In
other words, anything below that — you’d be willing to walk away, no
regrets.
3. Are there any opportunity costs?
What if you accept this three-month assignment —
which perhaps you’re sort of interested in, since you need the money, but you’re
not enthused by — and then, a month from now a much better one comes along?
It might pay better, or it might be more aligned with your skills or goals, or
it might just be more interesting. Will you have to forgo the better
opportunity because you’ve committed to Acme already? If yes, then that’s your opportunity cost.
The higher your opportunity cost (i.e. the chances of
missing out on something better) the less willing you should be to accept a
lower rate. Of course, you may be able to say yes to both, and fit them both into
your schedule.
I tend to have multiple assignments going on at once.
Juggling is part of the deal. Here’s a bonus trade secret —
it is very common for projects to start later than planned. If the whole
discussion so far has been about starting the work on September 1, don’t be
surprised if it actually starts in October.
4. Will this assignment lead to other opportunities?
Some organizations are difficult to break into. Maybe this
Acme contract is with USAID, whom you’ve always wanted to work for — either
directly or indirectly. USAID, like other organizations, likes it when
consultants have previous USAID experience.
If you think this will indeed open up other doors, then you
may not feel like negotiating too hard. But be a bit careful here —
see Consideration #5.
5. Will this rate determine my rate for all future work with this company or organization?
The answer to that is usually yes. You won’t lock yourself
in, but future increases will be based on this first contract. We can call this
“salary path dependency.” If you start too low, you potentially are giving up a
lot of income down the line. It’s true that $20 per day may not seem like a
substantial amount on a 50-day contract. However, if you end up working off and
on for Acme over the next 10 years, for an average of 50 days per year, that’s
500 days, i.e. equivalent to $10,000.
A low daily rate at Acme won’t necessarily depress your
ability to get a better daily rate elsewhere. Most organizations won’t
generally ask you about your previous rates but some might. (USAID is the
exception, requiring the so-called bio-data form which asks you to list your
salary or rate for the past three years — but note that in some states asking
about previous salaries is now illegal.)
However, a good daily rate can be used as leverage in
negotiations with other organizations.
6. Are there other benefits?
Maybe the daily rate is only part of a package. For example,
the Asian Development Bank typically includes a fairly generous lump sum per
diem amount for every day of onsite work in its contracts. The per diem
includes both accommodation and ‘meals and incidentals’ (most organizations
provide a per diem only for meals and incidentals), so it can be substantial.
If you don’t splurge by staying at a luxury hotel and eating at fancy
restaurants, you can come out ahead. This might lead you to accept a lower
rate.
Another benefit might be that this particular assignment
includes a lot of flexibility — in terms of when and where and how
the work is done. If that is important to you, factor that into your
thinking.
7. Are there any creative solutions lying around?
Sometimes managers may be happy to pay you more, but they
have to work within their organization’s fee structure, which maybe doesn’t
align with your range. The budget is there, and both the manager and you want
to move forward.
In such a case, sometimes more days can be added to your
contract, effectively increasing the total amount while not exceeding fee
guidelines. The outcome might be that, instead of the initially mooted 20-day
contract you get a 25-day contract.
Another option is to enter into a lump sum contract, with no reference to any daily rate at all. A lump sum contract refers only to a total amount, and does not break out expenses for travel, accommodation or other items, which you must cover out of the total sum. You are not required to submit receipts. With a lump sum contract you can avoid being constrained by a low daily rate, and work the number of days that is appropriate to the total contract amount, taking into account expenses. Lump sum contracts are not very common, however, in the international development field.
8. Do I have to pay taxes?
Because Acme is a private company, the answer is yes.
However, at some organizations, such as the IMF and World Bank, international
hires do not pay taxes, only U.S. citizens do. That means U.S. citizens need to
try and ensure their daily rates are about 25-30% above what their fellow
international consultant rates are.
If you are a U.S. citizen and are earning the same amount as
an international hire, you are effectively paying a tax penalty, because, come
next April, you will owe a cut of your income to Uncle Sam, while they will
not. In theory, this would put U.S. consultants at a competitive disadvantage.
However, as a rule, I have not found this to be the case. Hiring managers tend
to have budgets that are elastic enough to enable them to focus on
qualifications.
9. Do I want to help this organization out?
Let’s say you really like Acme and the work they are doing, because they’re a small outfit, doing incredibly meaningful work to help _______ [fill in the blank with your favorite cause]. Maybe they simply don’t have very much budget for the work they’re asking you to do.
In this case, you may be happy to charge them less than your
normal rate or range. That’s absolutely fine. However, I suggest stating up
front that you are giving them a ‘discount’, so that this doesn’t set a
precedent. Thus, if you normally would be asking for x, then charge them 50% of
that. That way, your standard daily rate has not gone down, you have simply
given this particular organization a one-time rebate.
There are some assistance programs that rely on pro-bono
work. They recruit highly skilled senior specialists in a particular field to
work pro bono, i.e. for no fee at all. These might be, for example,
contract lawyers, horticulture specialists or infectious disease specialists
whose day job is academia or at a government agency. The program only pays for
their travel and expenses.
I’ve even heard that work done pro bono can exceed
the quality of paid consultants. The money motivation is just not there;
they’re doing it because they enjoy solving problems, engaging with
counterparts abroad, and making a difference.
10. Is the marginal difference important to me?
It could be that the marginal difference of a higher rate
isn’t meaningful to you. Maybe you don’t even need the extra income.
For example, you’re approaching the end of your career and
the extra income that a 10% higher rate would bring just doesn’t make a
difference. Or maybe you have reached your annual income target, if you have
one. This also highlights the fact that at different phases in your career
different considerations come into play.
Likewise, the pro bono assignments described above
may be more accepted by professionals who have the income or accrued assets to
the extent that they are willing to work (occasionally) for free.
11. Should I always negotiate?
Yes (while bearing in mind the previous considerations).
12. Won’t negotiating make me seem difficult, or greedy?
No, it won’t. Negotiating, if conducted in a reasonable way,
is considered normal and is expected. It may also be as simple as a few emails exchanging
offers and counter-offers.
Keep the tone pleasant, be reasonable and make a good argument. The organization may or may not be able to meet your request, but they won’t hold it against you that you asked for more. There is a side-benefit to the negotiation process: the back and forth over daily rates and other aspects of the contract gives both you and Acme a chance to get to know one another better before making a commitment. And that’s always a good thing.
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…”
