In this time of career tumult, focus on what you can control

There is little sugarcoating the wholesale dismantling that the aid sector — and thus everyone who works in it — is experiencing at the moment. USAID has been practically wiped out, tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs, and millions around the world are at risk of losing lifesaving assistance. “This is disruption at a scale that’s unprecedented for most of us in our working careers,” said Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of the New Economists Foundation. “We believe in international solidarity, for example, which is why many of us got into development. We believe in justice, we believe in sustainability — and it’s those very things that we stand for that seem to be sort of being hacked away and vandalized.” While it may seem overwhelming, there are still many things within your control — and that includes learning how to transfer your skills to a new job or brand new sector, said Sriskandarajah and other development leaders at a recent Devex career event on what to do if you’ve lost your NGO job. “Focus on the things that you can control and not the things that you can’t. I think it’s very easy to get all-consumed by the news and the latest developments, and a lot of that is things that we can’t control,” said Louise James, managing director at Accenture Development Partnerships, or ADP, advising those who have lost their jobs to use this as a “time of reflection.” “You will have many transferable skills, but what do you actually want to do? This is a chance to step back and think about your purpose, what you want to achieve. ... So use this as an opportunity, as a positive opportunity, to also step back and think about where you’d like to be in a few years time,” James said. “Change is normal,” she added. “In the private sector, change is happening all the time. It’s very useful. It’s very normal to be transitioning through jobs. And I think sometimes in the nonprofit sector, what I’ve seen is people feel rightly so passionately about what they do, that change can be a little bit harder.” Alix Peterson, an executive in residence at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, calls it the “ability to sit in ambiguity.” “Try and make that one of your powers — that you don’t need to resolve ambiguity. It’s OK to be in discomfort, and that allows you to be a little bit more patient to see how things play out,” she said. In the meantime, Peterson and others said this is a time to work on reframing your skills to land that new position, whether it’s still in the NGO space, in the private sector, or somewhere in between. “What skills do you have that you can reframe … outside of our development jargon?” Peterson asked. “It’s absolutely not the case that the skills are not transferable,” James said. “I do think the point on language is super important. … Don’t talk about capacity building. That is not a word that translates across to the private sector. It’s training, it’s leadership development. What are the terms that you can use that speak to what a company is looking for?” Mia Perdomo, co-founder and CEO of Aequales, agreed that if you’re trying to break into the private sector, shift your vocabulary — and shed some of your nonprofit mentality. “It’s an entirely different language. It’s an entirely different world, and the objectives are completely different,” she said, noting for instance that people who analyze data are in high demand in the corporate world. “But you need to work this accordingly. How do you translate this into the data that corporations need and the KPIs and the profitability that they [need]? This might be a little weird at first. We’re not used to working exclusively for profitability, but we’re going to have to do it. This is just the way the world works,” Perdomo said. Sriskandarajah said this moment could also be a turning point in how the nonprofit sector works — specifically, shifting from reliance on governments and bodies funded by taxpayers to more income-generating social entrepreneurship. “If you think of it in a more optimistic or positive way, I think the future is for those of us who work in civil society [to be] less reliant on the state, and so that means going back out to supporters, inspiring them about the work that we do, or being creative about the income streams and sort of becoming more like social enterprises that can fund and scale our work,” Sriskandarajah said. “And that’s going to feel painful maybe for years,” he added. “But in some ways, what makes me most hopeful about this really dark moment that we’re in is that this is a sort of impetus for us all to sort of revitalize and reimagine civil society that’s less reliant on a state.” And remember, the world is constantly changing, and this isn’t your final opportunity to evolve alongside it. “You can change again,” James said. “Don’t try and feel like you have to solve your career until you retire at this moment in time. Just see this as a stepping stone. And you may decide that actually, the direction you go in is one you want to stay in, or it may not be, and you may end up pivoting back, for example, to work in development. ... So I would just take it one step at a time.”