Following your comments and suggestions after the publication of our research paper on Russian soft power Attega Consulting has developed a comprehensive guide on how to get a job or internship at the United Nations.
Internship is the easiest way to gain your first international (or at least national) experience within the United Nations and facilitate your future UN career. internships are available at the UN Secretariat HQ in NY, its regional offices in Vienna, Geneva, Beirut, Santiago and Nairobi as well as in the main UN agencies HQ and local offices.
Duration: from 2 to 6 months.
Requirements: being enrolled in a Master's or in a Ph.D. programme, or in the final year of a Bachelor’s programme. Fluent in English or French.
Conditions: not paid. UN does not either reimburse travel, visa, insurance and other expenses.
Application: apply directly to the selected UN agency.
Links:
After regular complaints by UN interns who balanced at the edge of poverty line in such expensive cities as NY or Geneva, some of the UN agencies started to reconsider internships conditions and introduced small compensation packages.
One of the biggest operational UN agencies, UNICEF offers paid internship for students starting from third year of studies and graduates during first two years after completion of their degrees. Taking into account wide operational area of UNICEF interventions, there are enough offers for almost all disciplines.
Despite its narrow specialization in atomic energy, IAEA hires interns among students and recent graduates in diffent subjects, including social sciences. (here is the complete list of disciplines accepted).
For its internship programme UNOPS accepts students and graduates in disciplines related to its sphere of competence, including project managers, infrastructure engineers, HR, finance, administration, logistics and procuremt specialists.
UNSSC which is specialized in residential and distance-learning courses for UN staff, offers internships for Master, PhD and last-year BA students.
Alliance that covers such thematic areas as education, youth policy, migration and religion offers paid internships for students to support its programme and research activities, organize events and manage communication flows.
FAO that provides technical assistance in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and land and water resources offers paid internships for students aged from 21 to 30 enrolled in an under-graduate, graduate degree programme or recent graduates.
ILO internship programme is open for last year of a graduate degree students or those who graduated in the year preceding the application. There is no age limit for interns.
IOM internship programme is open students in various disciplines approaching the end of their programme or recent graduates between 19 and 36 years of age.
Every year UNV programme recruits thousands of volunteers for regional UN offices, humanitarian agencies and peacekeeping missions. If you did not have an opportunity to land in the UN internships, UNV offers you second chance to start a UN career.
UNV with traditional leaders in Cote d'Ivoire. Photo: Evgeny Kuznetsov
Conditions: With the exсeption of salary size, absence of educational grant and United Nations Laissez-Passer, in practice UNVs are practically equal to UN international staff. They recieve monthly allowances (2K to 3K USВ at average depending on duty station), travel tickets and medical insurance and settling-in grant. Additional compensation is provided for serving in hardship duty station and for dependent family members (read more about UNV Conditions of service)
Some duty stations are suitable for volunteers coming with their families. In this case, UNV programme will cover also travel expenses and medical insurance for all family members.
Majory of UNVs is serving in Africa, while others are equally distributed among other continents, including Western Europe.Duration: starting from 6 months. Usually contract is signed for one year and could be extended up to 4 years of continious service.
Requirements: age 25 and above, university degree and at least 2 years of relevant working experience, good working knowledge of English, French or Spanish. For some duty stations, type "B" driver's license is required.
Application procedure:
In addition to UNV there are few other volunteer categories.
There are some UNV job opening that are available only for citizens of specific UN member-states, such as South Korea, Ireland, Norway etc. There positions are advertized via UNV Special calls
National Volunteer serve in their own countries. Compensation package in this case depends on duty station.
The only difference between this category and UNV is the age limit: 22-29 years. At the same time no working experience is required.
Online volunteers work from home supporting UN agencies and their NGO partners in translation, web-design and developing of projects proposals. It is assumed that online volunteers would be ready to spend from 1 to 20 hours per week. Work is not paid but certificate of acknowledgement will be provided. Online volunteers apply for specif assignments advertised via main UNV portal .
If you're lucky to be a citizen of one of the 36 countries that support JPO programme, you can get your first-hand UN experience directly at the level of UN international staff. Although JPO assignment does not guarantee your further employment at the United Nations, it will be crucial for your UN career. JPO applications should be sent directly to your home country (usualy via Foreign Ministry). Each country sets up a specific dead-line.
National Officer are UN staff members (NO-A, NO-B, NO-C, NO-D, SB categories and also GS for general staff) who work in an UN office in their own country of citizenship. Unlike UN international staff they are employed according to the national labor laws and are deprived from such benefits as educational grant and UN pension. However, UN salaries for national staff usually are higher than the average in the country.
This is the top category in the UN job ranking. Extremely high competition (for some of political affairs jobs it could be up to 800 applications for one opening) and requirements are compensated by decent salary, medical insurance and other benefits.
Conditions: Salary is calculated on the basis of the professional category, duty station, number of dependent family members and UN working experience.
Duration: from 3 to 6 months ( for temporary appointments) and 1 to 2 years for longer contracts.
Requirements: advanced university degree (Master's degree or equivalent). A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree. A minimum of two years of progressively responsible experience (for P-2, five for P-3 and seven for P-4). In most cases international experience (including one or two year with te United Nations) is a must.
Application:
The most reliable info is found only on the web-sites of the specific UN agencies, funds and programmes. If you're interested in the particular organization we advise you to check regularly career section on its web-site and subscribe to career newsletters. Jobs at the UN Secretariat, OCHA, UNODC and several other smaller agencies are advertized at the INSPIRA career portal.
Another option is to use aggregators that collect vacancies from the UN agencies and sort them by organizations and job families. Here are the main aggregators: UN Jobs, UN Career, UN Joblist. Some of these sites advertise also NGO jobs: Reliefweb, Devnet Jobs, Devex and Impactpool.