You can go two ways on this (at least) and it depends on your basic skills and aptitude.
The first option is acquiring some hard skills. Engineering, nursing, IT, and teaching or training are good examples. An appropriate terminal degree, combined with a minor in a foreign language (not French or Spanish unless you can become fluent. Turkish and Urdu are good choices for poor language learners as they are a little easier to learn and yet are exotic enough that no one expects fluency. If you’re good with languages, go with one of the major difficult ones – Russian, Arabic, or Mandarin Chinese) or international relations will open a lot of doors.
The second option is to study international development and/or its related disciplines. This will require a graduate degree and it covers a lot of different study options; I’d include international or public health, public policy, conflict studies, “development studies” and the big one, development economics. The trick to this path is that it can be very hard to go abroad with these kinds of degrees, because you’re not really doing anything a development project needs in the field. You run the risk of getting tracked into headquarters-based jobs – academia or think tank if you’re lucky, program backstopping if you’re not so lucky. The best way to mitigate that risk is to acquire whatever hard skills you can (grantwriting is a good one) while in school, and intern as much as humanly possible. Abroad if you can, of course.
Anyone want to talk about their own study and where it led them?
ETA: Ethan Zuckerman commented below and mentioned a big thing I left off – time overseas. If you want a job in the developing world, people will feel a whole lot better if they already know you can hack living there. I talk about this in my Damsels in Success post a bit. One useful thing to say here: STUDY ABROAD. It’s the easiest way to fully immerse yourself in another culture. And choose somewhere tough. Auckland or Paris does not count. I did my own study abroad in Cairo, and I know that employers saw that as clear evidence that I could adapt easily in other places. (And they’re right – if you can live in downtown Cairo, you can live almost anywhere.)
Great question – I end up fielding this one often as well.
I think there’s a ton to be said for the hard skills route. It’s worth remembering that in the IT world, a terminal degree is worth less than a strong project resumé – if you’re a seasoned SQL hacker, there’s work in the international sector, whether or not you’ve got the PhD.
While language matters a ton, so does travel. I’m always skeptical of resumés that don’t include a sustained period of time living abroad – how’s this person going to handle a developing world environment? Hard for me to know unless that person’s already been field tested.
I agree completely on the hard skills. If I had my life to do over, I’d have an undergraduate nursing degree instead of a basically useless BS in Middle East Studies.
Given the current food crisis, I would also say agriculture is a good hard technical skill to have. Of course, I’m biased… I’m an agriculturalist. Other good skills are in microenterprise, business development, etc etc.
And I echo Ethan in the living in developing countries thing. It amazes me how many times a wannabe aid worker freaks out when the realisation hits that it’s gonna be pit latrines and cold bucket showers. Plus the isolation, etc etc etc.
Regarding languages, I would say don’t bother with Chinese unless you are willing to spend one year in immersion training. I know of people who do a degree in Chinese, and don’t have the same level of fluency as me… and trust me, I am not that good.
Good point. I wasn’t really thinking you could get good at Chinese in the time of an undergrad education. More that you’d have more Chinese than the other shiny new graduates, and it would demonstrate your commitment to doing difficult things. I did for years of Arabic, and my Arabic is lousy, but it does make my resume stand out and I can manage a taxi and a restaurant in Amman or Damascus without a handler.
I think agriculture background is going to be in high demand for a long, long time.
Yeah, I know what you mean about having enough of the language to get by. I got my first job because I speak Chinese (intermediate, not fluent). Even though I’m almost illiterate in Chinese!
I also discovered that some people lie about their fluency about a language. There was this woman who said she spoke ‘good’ Bahasa Indonesia. Then she showed up, and I had to spend one week being her translator.
I hear that ICRC now do language tests to avoid this. A friend of mine had to have her whole interview in French. Not easy for technical terms!
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