Global Health Jobs: Selling Your Writing Skills

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-08-05 12:21:00 UTC
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(photo credit: Letcombe)

Question:

I stumbled across one of your blog postings at the Damsels in Success blog. In it you lay out a convincing justification for why INGOs and the like do not hire expats for a lot of the positions that expats would dearly like to fill.  You leave the door open, though, for those of us who have decent writing skills; you state that this is one of the things NGOs most need in order to keep the funding coming in.  How would you recommend selling oneself in this regard?

I've been an avid writer forever, and spent two years in college writing a pair of columns a week for our weekly newspaper -- during the second year I was the managing editor for two of the paper's four sections.  I have also taken a course in grantwriting. Unfortunately, I've been out of school long enough that the standard "Fill in your last five jobs" fields on résumé-collecting websites forcibly exclude such experience...so I have no idea how to package it and present it to folks who might be interested in hiring me on those grounds.

Answer:

First of all, every resume should have a one sentence summary at the top. Put your writing skills in there. Next, put it in your cover letter. Just about every online system now lets you add a cover letter, and you should always do so. Mention your writing skills and experience, and then give an example or two of when your writing has been valuable to an employer. Make sure your cover letter and your resume are good enough to stand up to your claim.

Alanna Shaikh
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