Professor Maria Rodriguez Alcala, Agricultural Economics, shared the following very helpful tips regarding a career in international development:

I recently attended the seminar by Douglas Casson Couts, Senior Advisor to the U.N. World Food Programme. He provided eight very helpful tips to those consiering a career in international development and specifically, one with the United Nations:

1. Find your passion. 90% of development type jobs = passion. Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?


2. Linked to the issue of finding your passion, ask yourself: Do you want to make a difference? If so, at what level, scale, how much hands on?

3. Do you see yourself more as an office or a field work person? This is key in planning strategically your minors, majors, internships, languages and study abroad programs to build your career.

4. Personal flexibility. How flexible are you? Flexibility not just in terms of moving around, but in accepting different work environment (i.e. different colleagues, different way of doing things, different accents, etc.).

• U.S. Peace Corps experience is a great place to start to later get into the U.N. (basically the U.N. now is hiring from other institutions around the globe that will already provide the initial experience they need. Peace Corps is just one of them).
• The U.N. itself offers a similar program as the Peace Corps, the U.N. Volunteers (http://www.unv.org/) . By the way, the assignments for these are from 1-2 years. However, there are some short-term assignments that are from 6 to 12 months long.
• He also recommended the Peace Corps Master’s International program (http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=learn.whyvol.eduben.mastersint).

5. Are you interested in long-term development or relief (emergency) type of jobs (90% of the World Food Program funds go to relief). It does matter to make this differentiation, the careers in each are very different worlds.

6. What specific major or courses should students choose? It DOES NOT matter. In the past they hired people with different specializations. Now that’s history; specialists are outsourced (i.e. hired as consultants for short-term periods to address a specific need or question). Most people in development jobs are generalists, they have a broad view of the world and issues we need to treat.

7. Education, basically two main things needed:

• Master Degree. A MUST. Very, very few undergraduates are hired by the U.N. today.
• Fluency (not just read and write, but involve in a conversation) in 2 U.N. languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, French, Russian). I asked him more about his recommendations, and here are some tips if you want to learn another language:
  i. You first need some basics (i.e. levels 1,2 and perhaps 3 of college levels of any language, High School levels are not enough).
  ii. You need to go to a foreign country and spend at least 2-3 months without ANY exposure to English. On this he recommended a program he himself used in Canada called the “immersion program” and he mentioned three countries where he knows the programs are good: Mexico, Guatemala and Canada (Quebec Province). You actually spend 2-3 months far from the main cities perhaps in the middle of nowhere where nobody speaks a word of English.

8. There is no luck. You create your way, and you need to be strategic early on. That’s why, the earlier you discover your passion, the better you can plan.