Q&A: UNFPA talent scout's insights on applying to the agency

Last month, Victoria Fernandes, head of strategic sourcing with the U.N. Population Fund, joined a Devex webinar to share her insights on landing a job with the United Nations. In addition to discussing current and upcoming hiring initiatives, Fernandes spoke about opportunities for professionals willing to work in hard-to-fill posts and shared tips on how candidates can best talk about their transferable skills and experience. Following the webinar, Fernandes took some time to respond via email to your top questions on working with UNFPA. Her answers have been edited for length and clarity. During the webinar, you spoke about a leadership pool. Could you tell us a little more about this pool and the types of positions it recruits for? The leadership pool concept aims at strengthening UNFPA’s succession management and ability to attract a diverse, mobile, and flexible workforce, with successful candidates being offered the opportunity to join our global leadership team. The leadership pool is a preassessed group of candidates, readily available to fill future international rotational leadership posts including country representatives, deputy country representatives, and international operations managers. Successful pool members will benefit from tailored development opportunities to enhance readiness to assume leadership posts and enable the successful delivery of our mandate. Some of the key responsibilities include strategic direction; planning and management; program leadership, coordination, and representation; national capacity development; partnerships and advocacy; and resource management. What level of experience or seniority you are looking for in candidates for the leadership pool? And is the pool open to both internal and external candidates? External candidates are encouraged to apply, and make up around 40 percent of the leadership pool. Level of experience varies pending on the role applied for, ranging from P-3 level international operations managers (5-7 years relevant experience) to D-1 country representatives (minimum 15 years relevant experience): Members of the leadership pool are expected to serve in a variety of functions and locations, including crisis countries and nonfamily duty stations, so candidates who apply for the pool should be ready to take up a post in these locations. When is the next call for applications to the leadership pool? Applications are on hold currently, pending selection of a new vendor to run the assessment center portion of the application process. The application will be advertised externally, normally for around a month. Within UNFPA, what kind of opportunities are there for professionals who don’t come from a traditional development background and who have worked in other sectors such as communications, economics, the private sector? UNFPA recruits for all of these profiles and cross-industry. We have many staff members from the private and public sectors at the U.N. If a role is on our job site, then it is open to all to apply regardless of sector. We have operations roles in HR, finance, IT, communications, fundraising, public relations, and more. Aside from a master’s in international development, what other master’s courses are considered valuable? It depends entirely on the profile being applied to. Any master’s will be considered as long as it has relevance to the role. For a technical role, epidemiology, economics, statistics, gender, human rights, public health, international affairs etcetera, are all relevant. If it is an operations role, then a master’s in business administration, in human resources, a qualification as a certified public accountant, in communications, IT, etcetera, [will be considered useful]. What advice do you have for more senior professionals who are applying from outside the U.N: How can they position themselves and translate their experience to show that they could succeed in the U.N. system? The key is to highlight the transferable skills that you have as a candidate. We are looking for people with leadership skills such as strategic thinking, people management, and project management — these are highly transferable. Highlighting skills such as working with diverse teams, geographically dispersed teams, and being able to speak another language all help. For posts that involve working in places such as Yemen or South Sudan, are there any particular requirements around years or types or overseas experience or any additional training? The years of experience are dependent on the terms of reference or job description, but even for a surge assignment [humanitarian first response], we do not accept persons with less than three years experience in a humanitarian setting. We have specific intervention areas in emergencies and the training is highly dependent on what the person is required to do. For example, a sexual and reproductive health professional needs demonstrated understanding of the minimum initial service package — [a series of crucial actions required to respond to reproductive health needs at the onset of every humanitarian crisis] — and typically clinical experience in obstetrics, gynecology, and would probably have either clinical training or a master’s in public health. A humanitarian coordinator or country representative that is required to serve in a high-risk setting would need an in-depth understanding of the humanitarian system, principles, and architecture including the cluster system, and then demonstrated experience in leading large scale response efforts. Their training could be diverse. What soft skills is UNFPA looking for and how do you recommend that candidates demonstrate these on their CV or in the application? We are looking for people with leadership skills such as strategic thinking, people management, and innovation. These can be highlighted in terms of specific interventions which lead to performance uplift in a team, or a new process or system introduced and demonstrating the impact of this. Diversity and inclusion are key, so being able to demonstrate working successfully in multicultural, intergenerational, and gender-diverse teams are important. Agility, highlighting where you have taken on a new role or new location and been successful, [as well as] resilience, demonstrating how you overcame a challenge, and the results of this [are all positive to stress in the application process].