Don’t apply to the UN unless you have this education and experience
It has been a while since I have done a video on tips for getting a job at the UN and many of you have been asking about what type of educational backgrounds and experience will land you your dream job, so today I am going to provide a few thoughts on the types of education and experience that are most relevant to UN posts.
UN Job Categories
The United Nations employs 116,388 people all over the world (CEB). This number is just staff, I couldn’t find statistics on consultants and interns so the number of people actually working at the organization is quite a lot higher. This staff number is broken down into a four main categories (UNA UK):
Professional positions are for people with specific professional qualifications in fields related to the work of the UN. This can be in administration, economics, information systems, finance, language, legal, library, public information, social development or statistics.
“International Professionals” are staff which require international recruitment, and they make up 35% of the workforce.
"National Professionals” are staff obtained through local recruitment and are 14% of the workforce.
"Field Service" are staff that aid in delivery of field operations and include staff that work in political affairs, legal affairs, human rights, election monitoring, humanitarian assistance, public information, general administration, procurement, logistics, civil engineering and electronic data. Field Service makes up only 3% of the UN workforce worldwide.
"General Service" category includes jobs like administration, secretarial and clerical support, trade jobs such electricians or drivers, security, and building management, this group actually makes up 48% of the workforce.
Within these 4 major categories you will see that there are a wide range of types of roles hired within them and therefore a variety of educational and experiential backgrounds that are sought after.
For all professional staff, it is good to assume that you will need at least a Masters degree and some sort of relevant experience to land one of those roles. It is extremely rare to be hired with only a Bachelors or right out of university. Of course all job posts will specify so you won’t be totally in the dark on where you might fit but remember, the UN doesn’t mess around with the requirements of a job post so if it says 5 years experience, it means 5 years experience.
Education
I tend to find most UN positions hire individuals with more of a social science background as opposed to a technical science or engineering background. I am not saying there are zero roles for people with more technical skills, as I said there are over 100,000 people working in the institution so there’s likely to be a little bit of everything but I am speaking more to the general trends. Some common Bachelor degrees that I have noticed while working at the UN are:
International Relations
Political Science
Economics
Law
History
Sociology
Communications
I myself have a Bachelor of Commerce and I have found it relatively rare to meet other people with more of a business-focused background. However, I am finding that it is becoming more common to see business background as the UN is exploring more private sector partnerships and areas of work like the Global Compact, UNEP Finance Initiative, UNDP Private Sector Hub, etc.
Another educational background that I have been seeing more of in recent years is related to technology, computer science, information management, and data science. As I am sure you can imagine, integrating technology and information systems into the work of the UN is increasingly important so these roles are being hired for more and more often.
Of course for Masters degrees there is so much more ability to focus in on specific topics, so this is where you often see people standing out by getting a lot more specialization in areas the the UN works on like human rights, peace, security, international development, environment, statistics, public policy, urban planning, journalism, social innovation, governance, anthropology, linguistics, diplomacy, humanitarian action, medicine, I mean the list could really go on. When choosing what Masters to pursue, so much depends on what type of work you want to do. An entity like the World Health Organization, for example, is going to favour people with medical or health systems backgrounds, whereas an entity like the High Commission for Human Rights will favour those with legal and human rights backgrounds. This is why I think it is a good idea to know what field you want to work in before getting your Masters.
I do think it is also worth pointing out that a large percentage of the UN workforce is also that General Service category, and this is more the administration of the organization and conference or building management. So if you are less interested in the technical substance of the UN and more interested in its kind of bureaucratic functions, there is a lot of opportunity as well. Having said that, it is very difficult to switch from the General Service to the Professional Service so if you are thinking “hey, I’ll get my foot in the door as an administrative assistant and then move into policy analysis or something” this is really not a good strategy. You would be much better off focusing your attention on getting your foot in the Professional Service through an internship for example.
Experience
Now if we shift over to the experience that is useful, again so much depends on the specific post but there are three types of experiences that I think are really stand outs in the UN system:
Field Work - some sort of experience working in a country or a context that is very different from the one you grew up in. So this is generally seen as working in a fragile, developing or emerging country if you are a from a developed country, for example I know a number of people in the UN system who did the Peace Corps program in the US. It doesn’t always have to be working in a different country though, it can also be working in a different context within your own country. An example I can give here is I hired an American who had started a social enterprise working with indigenous people to bring their handiworks to market. So this was in the US but it was with a population who is marginalized and therefore showed an understanding of how to enhance economic opportunity in collaboration that group. For someone who comes from a developing country or context, this upbringing is very relevant experience in and of itself. So it can be very valuable when paired with an experience in a developed country like university abroad or an internship. Or you can aim to be hired as a National Professional in your own country.
Government or Policy Work - the UN at its core is a group of member countries so having experience working within a government or with governments on policy development is very valuable in the UN context. I think a lot of people, myself included, see the UN as this big kind of social good entity but ultimately it is a mechanism for cooperation amongst countries so knowing how governments work is very helpful.
Trailblazing Work - I struggled to find the right label for this but what I mean is work that it shows some sort of initiative that was taken that is unique and involved vision or pushing for change. I myself started an NGO when I was in with two friends and while it was quite small when I applied to the UN system, the person who hired me told me it was a differentiating factor. I think ultimately most hiring managers in the UN want people who are passionate about the work of the UN so having something that shows initiative and mission is very valuable.
Keep Learning
Here are a few great resources for further reading and learning: