Development & Humanitarian opportunities

Development and humanitarian work offers internships, volunteer assignments, early-career programmes, consultancies and staff posts. Typical employers are UN agencies and secretariat entities, multilateral development banks, international NGOs, research partnerships such as CGIAR, and foundations. The UN Careers site lists internships, consultancies and volunteer opportunities, and it promotes a Young Professionals Programme for nationals of participating countries. The World Bank runs its own Young Professionals Program, which asks for a graduate-level degree and a few years of professional experience.

Vacancies are normally posted on each organisation's own portal, and applying outside that portal is generally not accepted. A typical application has an online profile, a CV, one or two short written statements, and sometimes proof of enrolment or degrees. Shortlisted candidates face written tests or competency-based interviews, followed by reference checks. Internships may carry an allowance, a stipend or nothing at all, so the vacancy text should be checked, along with who covers insurance, visas and travel when applying from abroad.

Many posts are advertised on a rolling basis with individual deadlines, while flagship programmes keep a single annual window that can be as short as a few weeks. Frequent mistakes are ignoring nationality lists or experience ranges, sending one generic letter to every organisation, applying more than once where only one application is allowed, and missing a deadline because of time-zone differences. Any request to pay money for a recruitment process is a warning sign.