Last Friday (March 22), nearly 450 jobseekers joined with more than 50 hiring organizations for our Fifth Annual International Development Career Fair in Washington, D.C. While the news has been filled with talks of sequester, unemployment rates and diminishing foreign aid funding, the mood was nothing but optimistic as hundreds of professionals and recruiters came together to discuss career prospects across the industry.
To start the day, recruiters from the 50-plus hiring organizations congregated to discuss hiring forecasts for the year and how current trends are affecting their recruitment practices and strategies. I had the opportunity to moderate a panel of recruiters from GRM and Futures Group, Mendez, England and Associates, and IBI International to chat about how their respective organizations are responding to the issues of the sequester, the USAID Forward strategy and the increasing push for hiring local.
While the sequester has not yet affected any of the organizations represented (all of which implement projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development), the panelists contend that the impact may not be felt until down the line, when projects may not be renewed or could be delayed or reduced in scope. Working in countries that are a priority for U.S. interests and diversifying their funders are all ways these groups have helped shield the impact of potential funding cuts. While USAID Forward has a goal of funneling 30 percent of funding directly though country channels by 2015, this has not, to date, had an impact on the international non-governmental organizations and consulting firms. Indeed, the goals seem to be more rhetoric than actual practice at this point. The recruiters expressed both the desire and the difficulty to hire locally, especially when pay disparities and out-of-date or inconsistent guidance on salary scales from donors make it a challenge to attract top local talent.