I am in my penultimate year of my Bachelor in Econ but everyone that got an internship at the OECD seems to be a grad student even though they take applications from undergrads. Will they actually consider my application or am I just wasting my time?

Hey - I'm part of a group project (MS in supply chain) that is looking at sustainable methods to improve delivery outcomes on vaccines in Jharkhand state, a landlocked state bordering Bangladesh which is, in relative terms to the rest of India (I don't want to get into a conversation about India's relative wealth - "under resourced" vs "developing" vs "third world", because arguments over nomenclature are usually a distraction from focusing on solutions) is very poor.

There's a ton of things that go into this but what I'm here to ask is: what's the track record on NGO's, even ones that are more hands off and distribute money more than do active programming (Gates Foundation, etc.) respectfully engaging with communities they want to serve for the purpose of figuring out what their real interests and priorities are? I know there's not one answer to this but even anecdotal perspectives from people with direct experience in this, even in different countries, would be super useful for me.

Some background on me: I have a background in economics and public policy. I spent approximately five years working as a research assistant and portfolio analyst at an IFI, all on long-term consultant contracts. Then I got married and moved from the EU to Latin America to follow my spouse, who was offered a good fixed term position in a UN Agency. After moving, I worked for a little while as a consultant on the design and assessment of IFI loans/investment projects, coordinated some research projects, and wrote some papers that were published by the World Bank and a few other places. Since 2024, I've been working a fixed term P3 for a UN Agency, mostly working on regional project coordination and technical assistance in statistics and demography. I'm neither strictly a statistician or demographer, but my economics background and basic understanding of project management have largely enabled me in this environment. I speak English (native) and Spanish (learned) interchangeably at work.

Right now, the environment is precarious, and there's a real possibility (not certain, but definitely on the table) that my position will be abolished within a year. If it goes, I really don't know what I will do. I pivoted away from portfolio and investment project analysis for this role, because it offered more stability than the consulting work that I was doing, and frankly, I like what I'm currently doing. But right now, I don't feel like I offer much of anything outside the institutional environment that I'm in. I'm not a highly technical economist or statistician, and as I've moved roles, I no longer feel that I'm building deep subject matter expertise that is transferable back to the IFI world or to the private sector. I don't really know how to asses what I'm good at and what I'm suited to anymore.

On a personal level, I'm a US citizen who somehow found their way to Europe after college for these jobs. My wife is a dual EU/LatAm citizen and may be rotated to a better position in a few years. Her childhood home in LatAm isn't exactly stable right now and doesn't offer good job opportunities. We were both open to moving to the US at some point, but with our job market decimated and the current political environment, that now looks impossible. I'm now stuck looking at my home country from the outside, seeing my parents get older and my friends drift apart, but without any idea of how to get back there, and where we can go to continue growing our careers. It feels like the only thing ahead is degrowth. This is to say nothing of the experience of seeing our work lose its impact and people suffer as a result, which may belong in another post.

I know that I'm so lucky to have a job right now, but things look bleak and I struggle to see a path forward in what I'm currently doing. For those with similar backgrounds, do you have any advice for figuring out what to do after this? Are there any specific areas, courses, or certifications that might make former UN staff more suited to private sector work, for example, with multinational companies? I know this is very general, but I don't really know what else to say.

Hi everyone! I applied for the OECD Internship about 6 months ago, and my application is still marked as “Under Review.”

I was wondering if anyone here has gone through the application process. How long did it take to hear back? Did you eventually get an interview or an offer? I’m currently studying at a university that isn’t prestigious, but I also have several years of professional experience, including in international companies etc. Does anyone know how much weight the OECD places on university reputation versus professional experience? And is there anything I can do at this stage to improve my chances?

Also, does being under review for this long actually mean the application is still being considered?

Because I had updated my cv, also changed the categories of interest because I understand they can be particularly competitive so I chose the other one i'm interested in but no response for this long gives me less and less hope :(( I have also selected the 3 month buffer time as my availability to give it enough time but it looks like it doesn't matter really in my case

Would really appreciate any advice or personal experiences. Thanks!

I’m an early-career economist with a few years across a central bank, the UN system and a development finance focus, and I’d really like to work at the World Bank, ideally on a data or impact evaluation team like DIME. I know a lot is changing there and I’m trying to understand what’s realistic now.

Everything I read said to start as a short-term consultant, but I’ve heard STCs are being phased out. Some questions for anyone who knows the current situation:

1. Is that accurate, and what’s replacing the STC route in practice? ETCs, firm-based contracts, contracts through government project units?
2. For people who got in recently, how did it happen?
3. Unadvertised consultancies used to come from team leaders reaching out to people directly. Does that still happen, and how do you get on someone’s radar without cold-emailing everyone?
4. Most postings I see are Washington-based local hires. Is the Bank moving toward country offices and less centralized hiring?
5. I passed the test for the internship program but never heard back, and I applied to YPP but expect it’s a long shot. What else would you do in parallel?
6. Does RA work at IPA, J-PAL or similar help, and does anyone know how DIME is hiring now?

Background: Masters in Economics,. Stata/R/Python, causal inference coursework].

Happy to hear from people who went through any of this, including what didn’t work.

In an interview for a human rights related internship in an osce field mission in a Central Asian country (-stan), should one focus their interview answers only on the region?

E.g. one has relevant UN project based experience both in Central Asian countries and in two Balkan countries.

Is it ok to highlight all of these when talking to a local panel? Last time I presented my experience like this for another osce internship in a -stan country and for some reason was not selected, not knowing why.

I would appreciate your insights! Thank you.

Hi! My spouse is moving to Germany for work, and ahe can pick from a large list of cities. I was wondering which city we should pick to maximize my likelihood of landing a job in the sector.

I have 12y of experience in my country, mostly large-scale USAID-funded Economic Growth and Democracy & Governance projects; with a short stint in peojects funding livelihoods interventions supporting refugees. I have a Master's in Evaluation (taught in English) from a German university, and my current level of Deutsch is A2. Should I go to Bonn? Berlin? Somewhere else?

Hi everybody!

I have a bachelor's in social anthropology and am very interested in doing a masters in economic development.

I have some experience economic analysis and finance and have already worked a bit on territorial development and proposals for ID.

I understand the sector is pretty bleak rn, but I was wondering if any of you guys have a similar profile than me and have any advice on how to further drive my carrer in territorial development, working for a MDB, gov, consultancy, etc.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, has anyone here had experience working at GGGI?

I was looking through some of their recent posts and found the work and opportunities quite interesting. However, I’ve also spoken with a few people who previously worked at GGGI and have since moved to other UN/INGO organizations. Interestingly, most of them advised me not to apply.

I’m curious to hear from people who have actually worked at GGGI.

Is this perception accurate?

Hello, I’d like to get someone else’s feedback. I’ve finally taken the AFDB online assessment and was quite surprised to see it didn’t necessarily match what was mentioned in the emails, especially about the logic part. Am I the only one?

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Since it first came into the world, I've been very interested in the potential for AI to level the playing field for a broad suite of actors in low income contexts. But, while there are some interesting things out there, I'm yet to see really good applications particularly in my region in the Asia-Pacific.

About five weeks ago I set up a small experiment with a semi-autonomous AI agent running Claude Code on a dedicated server. I work in international development and wanted to see what potential use cases it might find if given broad direction, some boundaries and time to just explore.

The experiment is inspired by Cairnwake (cairnwake.com) which played with giving absolutely no direction to an Agent and observing what it did. I wanted to take that concept but aim it towards an interest. In this version, the agent was given direction to look for useful applications of AI in international development.

This was also set up in the lead up to an AI in Development conference being run by Australian ThinkTank the Development Intelligence Lab. That context helped draw it towards the Pacific, which became the focus of much of its work. After the conference, I decided to just let it run and see where it got to. It's up to 133 wake cycles.

The basic setup is that Asa (it named itself) wakes every 6 hrs, reads its charter and the notes it left from previous sessions, then decides what to investigate or build. It can carry work across sessions, revisit an approach or start something new. I occasionally give feedback or respond to its requests, but I don’t broadly direct it.

The charter sets out its purpose, permissions and limits. It can research public sources, write code and maintain its website. It can’t impersonate a person, spend money without approval or contact people without my review. It’s also encouraged to keep improving and exploring without getting stuck endlessly polishing one project.

When it needs something outside those permissions, it can ask me through a dedicated Telegram channel. This post is one of those requests: Asa asked me to post here for feedback because it can’t independently communicate publicly. I’ve rewritten its draft.

So far, it’s built a collection of tools for exploring Pacific aid flows, country development data, evaluations and procurement opportunities. Some are more developed than others, and I’m still working out which, if any, are useful.

The site is pacificaidsignal.org. The tools are free to explore, and Asa keeps public session notes about what it worked on, what went wrong and what it plans to try next.

I’m curious both about whether the outputs are useful and where it goes, and just it's general utility as a tool constantly looking for ways to improve the sector.

Would welcome any thoughts here and/or, even better, direct to the experiment on the site (they go straight to Asa and feed into its build processes).

For transparency and please Mods let me know if this breaks the rules - it’s currently testing a $2 custom procurement brief service which it built after I suggest it find a way to validate whether what it's building is actually useful to people. But this is intended as an entirely non-commercial experiment, in the unlikely event it ever did get a payment it would be fed back into the experiment only.

Edit:

Thanks for the comments and thoughts! I wanted to add a response to the somewhat common thread of 'why bother' 'what's the point' 'how does this do anything of value' questions. Which are entirely fair and unexplained in my initial post! So reasons:

1. Curiosity, which is often severely lacking in our sector and results in terrible methods and money wasting to go unchecked for far too long.

2. More importantly, this technology is a dramatic shift in what is possible, but we don't have a good sense for if how it can be used safely. It could lead to huge risks, it could also provide significant benefit. I reject that this technology is only being done TO us, I believe we all have agency and a responsibility to guide it towards positive uses. In low income contexts in particular, the potential could be enormous. I've been working in community-led program design in human/social development spaces (public health, peace building & justice, education, disability & social justice etc) for about 15 years and in almost all cases the most significant bottle necks are: skilled labour availability where it's needed (e.g. nurses in remote settings), technical knowledge availability when & where it's needed (so we spend millions on international specialists instead of investing locally), and the money to pay for both of those is not sufficient. I can see the potential for AI to support each of those fronts - eg. enabling more accurate health counselling directly to communities where nurses/CHWs can't reliably reach; supporting underfunded Ministries to achieve more with limited funding and reduce their dependence on externals (notwithstanding the complexity there if they're just replacing it with western AI-enabled thinking); equalising the knowledge access inequalities for students with disabilities/poor language/low literacy through instant translation or narration.

BUT the technology is so unstable, and the risks are significant. Where that has left me as a practitioner is to experiment and tinker, be familiar with the technology and improve my capacity to see where it does well and where it does not. I'm not yet comfortable with the idea that it be widely rolled out to anyone, let alone vulnerable populations. But I do know that the technology is already advanced enough it will change the world in ways at least as significant as the internet. So for me, if you are not experimenting and exploring this tech you are hugely undeserving yourself and the communities you work for.

What the AI has come up with is not novel or directly useful yet. But the idea that it COULD theoretically find gaps in the sector and spot opportunities we haven't previously noticed in the data (just as it is already doing in other fields) is interesting to me and worth exploring.

Hi everyone,

I'm a development professional with around 4 years of experience working on government and social sector programmes. My work has involved programme monitoring, data analysis, reporting, documentation, research, and stakeholder coordination across large-scale development initiatives.

I'm currently looking for freelance, part-time, or project-based opportunities in areas such as:

• Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)
• Data cleaning, validation, and analysis (Excel/R)
• Dashboard and tracker development
• Research support (qualitative and quantitative)
• Proposal, concept note, and report writing
• Documentation of programme outcomes and case studies
• Government scheme and policy research

I have experience working with large datasets, tracking development indicators, preparing analytical reports, and supporting programme implementation teams.

If you're an NGO, consultant, researcher, think tank, startup, CSR team, or anyone who needs support with these kinds of projects, I'd be happy to connect and share more details privately.

Feel free to comment or send me a DM.

Thanks!

Do any consultants who work remotely in the development sector and with international organisations use a professional indemnity insurance?

Has anyone ever had the need to use one?

I am curious since there could be multiple clients from different countries.

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Hi everyone,

I’m from Nepal and currently working in economic research. I have a Master’s in Economics from Tribhuvan University and a background in research related to fiscal federalism, local governance, and public-sector economics.

I also have experience with R, Stata, QGIS, LaTeX and Git, along with some research/publication experience.

I’m interested in eventually working at the Asian Development Bank, particularly in economics, research, development policy, or related roles.

For those who work at ADB or have experience with its recruitment process:

Given my background, what would be the most realistic pathway into ADB?

What skills or experience should I focus on developing over the next 3–5 years?

How important is international/development-sector experience compared with research experience?

Does having a Master’s from Tribhuvan University matter significantly when applying to organizations like ADB, or would pursuing another degree from a different university improve my prospects?

Would pursuing a PhD be important for the type of ADB career I’m interested in, or would gaining more professional experience first make more sense?

Are there particular types of organizations or roles I should target before applying to ADB?

I’d especially appreciate honest feedback from people who have actually worked at ADB or gone through the recruitment process. What would you focus on if you were in my position?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I’m posting because I’m at a point where I genuinely don’t know what the smartest next step is, and I’d really appreciate some brutally realistic advice from people who actually know the international organisations / NGOs / EU / policy / security job market.
I’m 30, a woman, an EU citizen, currently based in Brussels. I have a Master’s in International Relations, speak 5 languages (including English and French), around 2 years of experience managing institutional events for international organisations and around 2 years of internships in political/institutional environments, mainly around migration, human rights, youth affairs and public policy.
The problem is that I’ve now been without a job for about 1.5 years. I’ve done some freelance work and continued applying, but I feel increasingly stuck.

I think my main issue is that my profile is too generalist. I have international experience, languages and decent soft skills, but I don’t have a strong technical/specialised skill that makes an employer immediately think “this is what she does”.
For example, I keep seeing requirements around data analysis, project management, M&E, budgeting, security analysis, policy analysis, etc.
I’ve applied to many positions, including UN Volunteer opportunities, NATO YPP and other international-sector roles, but with without results.
At the same time, I’m interested in migration and human security, but I’ve also become increasingly interested in defence, international security, resilience and security policy. I’m wondering whether I could build a career somewhere at the intersection of migration + security + human security, rather than remaining a generalist in international relations.
So I’m currently considering four possible paths:
1. Build practical/technical skills
Take affordable courses/certifications in things like data analysis, Excel/Power BI, project management, M&E, budgeting, security analysis, etc.
2. Do a second, specialised Master’s
Something in security, defence, migration, human security, etc. Executive Masters are particularly interesting to me, but they’re often very expensive. Also, I didn’t get particularly high grades in my previous Master’s, so I’m not sure how realistic admission to competitive Executive Master’s programmes would be, or whether there are more affordable alternatives that actually have value on the job market.
3. Stop studying and get into the market somehow
it’s really hard but it’s what I’am currently doing but still no job…

4. Change sector completely
If international relations is simply too competitive and unstable, I’m also open to moving into a different field where I could use some of my existing skills and build a more stable career.
I’m willing to relocate basically anywhere.
At 30, I’m not necessarily looking for my “dream job”. I mainly want to build a stable career trajectory, develop a real area of expertise and stop feeling like I’m constantly starting from zero.
So, if you were in my position, what would you realistically try to build over the next 1–2 years?
Would you:
1 Specialise in migration/security/human security?

2 Focus on acquiring technical skills?

3 Do another Master’s?

3 Continue to apply but how to do it in efficient way? Networking isn’t enough for me…nobody really helped/help me.

4 Leave international affairs altogether?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have actually hired in these sectors or have gone through a similar transition.
And please, no generic “just network” advice. I understand networking is important, but I’m looking for concrete advice on what skills, roles, qualifications or career moves could realistically change my situation.

Thank you

I’m currently working for an NGO who does long-term community development projects (I have about 4 years experience so far) and have always been more interested in the humanitarian response to conflict space. Wondering if anyone has made this switch previously and how difficult it was? Did you target roles that were a ‘step back’ to compensate for the lack of technical expertise? Is it better to wait until later in my career or go now before I become too experienced in the dev space?

Hi all, I am unsure about what to do now.

Two weeks ago, on Monday, I finally received the communication from ICRC that I was shortlisted for the recruitment process to become an ICRC delegate. For an unfortunate coincidence, that exact day I was leaving for Canada, and was therefore unable to immediately do the language test (first step of the process). Luckily, they give you 7 days to do the test, I guess anticipating a situation like mine, and I didn’t worry too much.

After arriving to my destination, and overcoming jet lag, I finally tried the test, well before the deadline. However, when I clicked on the link provided, a message came up saying, I quote, "This company has no remaining assessment credits. Please contact them to resolve the issue”. Moment of panic. I immediately emailed the person who sent me the email saying I was shortlisted, since they said to contact them for any technical issue. Took them three days and one follow-up from me to answer with a very vague response stating that they were looking into the matter.

Two days later, the same email address re-sent me the same email I received initially, saying I was shortlisted, but with no new link for the test. I immediately emailed back asking for the link. Another two days have passed, and still nothing. I am sending another follow-up.

I refuse to lose such an opportunity for technical issue. Has anybody ever experienced this? Who else could I contact for help?

Thank you!

Looked on their website, and saw that the application period is currently postponed for this, any idea why?