Global Health Jobs
What to Ask at the End of the Interview
Published June 17, 2009 @ 08:56AM PT
In last week's discussion of job interviews, Evie Romero Montoya mentioned that she never knows what to ask when they say "Do you have any questions for us?" Since having some follow-up questions proves your interest in the position, you need to be ready with something. These are my standard questions. I have a lot of them, because I look at the interview as a chance to decide if the job is right for me.
1. What do you think that [organization name] could be doing better?
2. Why are you hiring externally for this job instead of promoting internally? (This one can sound combative, so only use it if you're sure the situation is right.)
3. What does [organization] do that you're most proud of?
4. [if you're being interviewed by a program person] What do you like most about working here? (I really like asking this question, because sometimes the answers are really surprising. I also once got an answer so good it convinced me to take a job I wasn't sure about, and that was a good decision.)
5. Mention a recent news article/blog post/press release about the organization, and ask for more details. Sample "So, I just saw that the World Food Programme has a new blog written by its field staff. Is that a brand new social media initiative, or an extension of existing work?"
6. How long have you worked for [organization]. How long do you plan to stay?
7. What major challenges do you think [organization] is facing?
8. How would you describe the organizational culture here?
9. How long does an average employee stay here? (This can be a very revealing question. If the answer is "a year or two," that's a bad sign.)
10. What does [organization] value in its employees? (Good answers are things like initiative and commitment. Bad answers are things like loyalty and good judgment.)
What do you think? Are these useful? Does anyone else have favorite questions they ask in interviews?
Five Things Not to Do in a Job Interview
Published June 10, 2009 @ 06:24AM PT
(Casually dressed guy playing it too cool. Photo credit: Billy Wuot)
1. Don't critique the technical approach of the organization you're interviewing with. People do this all the time, believe it or not. I think they are trying to demonstrate the depth of their technical knowledge and show they researched the organization. It's still a mistake. Your interviewer most likely takes pride in the organization, and your critique will not be appreciated.
2. Don't highlight your own flaws. I used to do this myself, to show how fair and honest I was. Now I know it just made me look like I didn't want the job.
3. Don't overstate your technical skills. If they hire you thinking you can use SPSS or train midwives to insert IUDs, and you can't, people will notice quickly, the organization will suffer, and you'll get fired. Faking it more dangerous in global health, where human lives depend on your skills. Focus on the skills you really do have; you want a job that will make use of them, not a job where you'll be constantly faking it and possibly harm people.
4. Don't play it cool. I know I said that different organizations have different cultures, but everyone wants employees who care about their work. Given the choice between two equally qualified candidates, I'll always take the one who is really excited about the job.
An actual example, contributed by Drew Conway via twitter. When asked why he wanted the job, the applicant answered "I don't really know; it was something people told me I should apply to." Drew's response was "You are not getting this job, and a bit of advice: In the future, only apply to ones for which you CAN answer that question."
5. Don't be too casual. I once suggested a friend of mine as a consultant for an agriculture project. He rolled into the interview in jeans, and treated everyone like old college buddies. It made my colleagues feel like he wasn't taking us seriously. It's easy to see a laid-back office and people wearing jeans and act too casually. That's an error. This is still a job interview. You are still being evaluated. They want to see your A game, and that includes formality.
If you get the job -whatever it is - there will be times when you need to meet with a local government official, an important donor, or the media. You'll need to act like an adult. Your interview is your chance to show that.
I am sure I missed things. Anyone have other suggestions for what not to do?
Interview with a Global Health Professional: Early Childhood Development Specialist
Published June 10, 2009 @ 03:33AM PT
This week's interview is with Anna Smeby, an Early Childhood Development Specialist with UNICEF:
1. What do you do?
I am an Early Childhood Development Specialist, which can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me it means working with Governments, with other organizations, and within my own organization to identify what each sector (Health, Education, Social Welfare, etc.) can do to address the unique needs of young children - so that all children can not only survive, but grow and develop to their full potential.
2. Where do you work? Is it a company, an NGO, part of a government, or something else?
I have always worked in the field of early childhood, though in a variety of roles, starting out with community-based organizations in immigrant communities in the US. I have been working with UNICEF for about 3 years, divided among 5 different offices including Headquarters, Regional Offices and, currently, a Country Office.
3. How did you end up working in global health? Was it always what you wanted to do?
When I was a kid, I wanted to become an obstetrician - and while I suppose this holds some relevance to my current career, I certainly can't claim to always having wanted to work in health. In fact, the issue that became my first passion - due largely to a college semester spent teaching primary school in rural Central America - was education, and its linkages to social and economic inequality in particular. A later experience working with Head Start (a free preschool program for low-income children in the US) and Early Head Start (for families and children birth to 3) showed me the extent of disparity already in place on the first day of school - and the complexity of inputs, far beyond preschool, that children need to develop and get ready for school.
While I can't quite say that I properly belong to the field of "global health," I can say that there was a day when I realized that the success of the Head Start model lies not in the provision of quality preschool alone to vulnerable children, but in the provision of quality preschool, family support, nutrition workshops for families, vision and hearing tests, toothbrushing and hygiene education, immunization campaigns, nutritious meals, growth monitoring, home visits and more to vulnerable children and their families. With this came the realization that I had a lot to learn, in particular on child health and nutrition, in order to effectively support early childhood development.
4. What is your favorite thing about working in global health?
Given the above, it should not be surprising that some favorite moments are seeing preschool teachers help parents check if child immunizations are complete, health workers encouraging and supporting families in responsive feeding, anyone from social workers to emergency response personnel working to mitigate the damaging effects for child development of maternal depression and constant stress in traumatic environments, medical faculty explaining that providing nutrition and stimulation to malnourished children is more effective than nutrition alone, and at any level from national policy to local implementation, seeing recognition dawn that more holistic approaches really do work better, and really can be operationalized.
5. What is your least favorite part?
I guess my least favorite part is how hard doing all of this really is. Integrating different sectoral components in policies and programmes can feel impossible, and building coordination across sectors can be similarly daunting. But when we make the assumption that if each sector provides the little piece of services for which it is responsible, and that the child will eventually get the whole pie, we are too often wrong. This results in missed opportunities for the survival, health, growth and complete development of our youngest children - especially the most marginalized - and so it is worth it to wake up and go to work each day, and to keep trying.
The Global Health Resume
Published June 03, 2009 @ 12:37AM PT
(photo credit: SOCIALisBETTER)
Global health resumes are a little different from your standard corporate version. Your jobs may have weird titles, or be hard to explain. Your technical skills matter; they're not just filler for the bottom of the page. You may have worked on a project with a name, implemented by an NGO with a name, funded by yet another name. There aren't any hard and fast rules for how to cope with this, but I've picked up a few tricks that may help.
Use a summary. Putting a summary at the top will frame the rest of the resume. It will tell people how to use the information you're about the give them. Call yourself a monitoring and evaluation specialist, an epidemiologist, a manager. Give them something to cling to as they read. Just don't call yourself anything the resume doesn't back up.
Use Bullets. I know, your job is hard to explain and you don't want to. Use bullets anyway. Everyone expects them, and they force you to think hard about what information is pertinent.
Use a Skills Section Put it right after experience if your skills are solid. You can lump together language skills, software like SPSS or EpiInfo, and techniques like LQAS or the Hearth model. I like to use two columns of bullets for skills, since they tend to be one or two words.
Keep your headings simple. Record your employment experience in years. No one really cares the exact months you worked. And 2007-2008 looks much cleaner than January 2007 - September 2008. Using the shorter version saves room for all the employers and projects you need to fit into your headings. Also, leave out the donor's name. It doesn't matter who funded the project; that didn't affect your work.
How to Leave a Job You Hate
Published June 03, 2009 @ 12:36AM PT
(photo credit: David Paul Ohmer)
My title was a little tricksy, because you leave a job you hate almost exactly the same way you leave a job you love. Get a new job, resign, say your goodbyes, do some final connecting to the colleagues you respect, document your experience. Your goal is to become a fond memory for the organization you are leaving, no matter how bitter an experience it was for you.
Get a New Job
Unless your job threatens your health and safety, stay until you find another job. Money matters. You don't want to use your savings unless you have to. If your job makes you cry on a daily basis, stay anyway. If it makes you vomit- that's your call. But stay if you can, and hunt hunt hunt for something else.
Resign
Once you get that new job, and establish a start date, you get to resign. Make an appointment with your supervisor to "discuss your future." Then, tell them in person that you are moving on because it's time for you to take on new challenges. This is all you should say. Do not vent about everything you hated. Give two weeks notice. (if you really need to vent, eat lunch off-site and call your mom or best friend) Follow up with a letter or email to HR saying the same brief thing.
Say Goodbye
Make a point of connecting with everyone who helped or inspired you, to thank them. I like handwritten notes for my goodbyes, as something tangible to show my gratitude. Writing the notes also helps me with closure. Don't forget people you supervised.
Connect
Connect to all the colleagues you respected on LinkedIn. Make sure they have your personal email address, and that they have yours. Make a date for lunch in the next month or so. You don't have to lose your peers because you got a new job. If you had subordinates, offer to be a reference.
Document
Firstly, document your job. You'll never remember everything, and you'll need the information later. Write it all down in a detailed job description. Make sure you capture all your accomplishments, and any quantifiable things you achieved. You will need this for future resumes, cover letters, and KSAs.
Next, document your organization. If you hated it, record everything about why you hated it. Budget mismanagement, ethical lapses, poor leadership, employee abuse, whatever it was. Write it down in as much detail as you can. If you loved your organization, document that too. What was so great? What were the organization's strengths?
Eventually, I guarantee it, you'll be working somewhere that wants to ally with your old workplace. If it's a bad idea, being ready with specific information will help you convince people not to do it. If it's a good idea, you'll have the data to structure the partnership as well as possible.
How to Research Your Next Job
Published May 27, 2009 @ 04:26PM PT
In my last post, I talked about matching your cover letter to the organizational culture of the organization you are applying to. This led to the obvious question of how to learn about organizational cultures. Here's your answer: 1) ask people 2) google 3) look at their funding.
Ask People Global Health is a small world, and people change jobs a lot. We also work on a lot of collation projects. Once you're about five years into your career, you know a little bit about almost every organization out there. So, if you don't know much about an organization, ask everyone you know about them. Chances are, somebody you know has worked there or can refer you to someone who has. If you're still in school, you can ask your professors. They love questions like that. You should also look at your LinkedIn network, and see if you've got any connections that way. If you're not on LinkedIn, go join right away. (If you've commented on this blog and said something intelligent, I am happy to be your first connection.)
Google Just googling the organization's name will just get you a lot of press releases. You need to be creative. Try Organization Name + Disgruntled. Or Organization + corruption. Or Organization + wonderful. You want to see what people are saying about what it's like to work there, or what host governments think. If it's all missionaries talking about your potential employer, that's a clue too.
Follow the Money I've mentioned this before, but funding sources have a major impact on an organization's character. Organizations that get almost all their money from the European Union have a decided European approach and culture. Groups that get a lot of private donations are able to be more outspoken on policy issues, and may see themselves as brave and scrappy. And places with mostly US government money tend to behave like little branches of the US government.
Writing the Perfect Cover Letter
Published May 27, 2009 @ 11:26AM PT
Our Global Health guest blogger Lillian Gu asked me to write about cover letters. Specifically, should a cover letter for a global health job be different from a standard corporate one? The answer, unfortunately, is sometimes. It all comes down to organizational culture.
Some global health organizations are very corporate in their approach. They focus heavily on numbers and costing, or consider themselves entrepreneurs. Population Services International is one example. Google.org was another, back when they still did health. For organizations like that, a classic numbers and achievements cover letter will get their attention. They want to know what you've done and how you can do it again for them. All about skills and accomplishments.
Other organizations, particularly those who use a lot of volunteers, want to know about your motivation. They want to find out if you have a passion for their work, and where that passion comes from. These tend to be organizations that use a lot of volunteers, or do a lot of advocacy work. Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and Project HOPE are examples. Cover letters to this kind of organization need to demonstrate your sense of mission. And, of course, your relevant skills and accomplishments. It's a more difficult letter to write.
It gets even more complicated from there. Organizations with a lot of turnover will want to hear that you are tough, because places with a lot of turnover rarely know it's their own fault. They think they keep hiring wimps. Organizations who believe that field work is what matters most will want to know you're committed to travel or field posts. DC/Geneva/London-based shops will want to hear you won't get bored with a headquarters job.
How do you learn all this about organizational culture? Stay tuned for my next post.
Now you're going to ask me if you really have to be this careful with your cover letters. And the answer is no. Very often, your cover letter will be ignored or thrown away. You can get away with using the same basic letter every time and changing three things to make it match the job you're applying for. When you're doing the kind of every for everything job-hunt blast you often have to do, it may be you have time for. But if you see a dream job, take the time to write the perfect cover letter.
