Aid Worker Careers: How to Find Your First Bad Job

While I'm traveling, my global health co-blogger Alanna Shaikh - also the blogger extraordinaire behind the development blog Blood and Milk - has kindly agreed to write a series of guest posts on aid worker careers. The second post is below.

It seems to me that for most people who work in humanitarian relief, the actual barrier was getting the very first job. After the first one, you’ve got relevant experience and contacts in your field. Also, you have a salary coming in which always makes the job search calmer and less scary. It doesn’t matter if you hop to your next job in six months; everyone knows this is a high turnover field.

So what you want to do is find that first job in aid, and then immediately start trying to find a better one. It really doesn’t matter how bad that first job is – how soul-crushing, badly paid, or meaningless. You just need to get it on your resume as proof that you understand the profession and won’t freak out in the field. If you’re lucky, your first job won’t be as bad as you expect. Maybe it will turn out to be a good job and stay for years. But it doesn’t need to be.

Luckily, bad jobs are easier to find than good jobs. No one likes bad jobs, so they leave after six months - just like you probably will - so organizations are always trying to fill them. For someone trying to get a first job in relief and development work, that is a blessing.

You can recognize bad jobs in a lot of ways. They will require either a graduate degree or surprisingly little “equivalent experience” and not much else. They will be with organizations that always seem to be hiring. They will not ask for language skills in the job description; they may not even specify what region of the world the job relates to. They will be strange laundry list job descriptions that you can’t picture adding up into a job that one person could – or would want to – do, or the descriptions will be so vague you can’t tell what the job is.

If you’re a mid-career professional taking the next step in your career, those are the signs to run away. If you’re new to the profession and need a way in, those are signposts pointing at jobs you may actually be able to get and build on. The minimal requirements mean you’re qualified. The scattered job description will mean you can honestly describe your job in lots of different ways on your resume. The rapid turnover means that if you can hack it for a year you’ll have shocking amounts of seniority.

(For more information about finding a job overseas, see here.)

[Photo credit - London]