What to know before applying for USAID consulting roles

As the world’s largest aid agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development offers many consulting job opportunities through the many projects it funds. But applying for these roles is far from a straightforward process, and may be especially confusing for those who are new to global development. When it comes to how recruitment works for USAID consulting projects, “You can really put them in a couple different categories, and it's really important to understand how they are different,” Susanne Barsoum, founder and CEO of KeyLime International, which specializes in USAID proposal and project management consulting, said during a Devex digital event held in December. To help job seekers understand the different stages of recruitment for USAID-funded projects, Barsoum explained how they work and identified important things to know in order to increase one’s chances of success when applying. Understanding the proposal stage When you come across a job posting stating that the role is “contingent upon award,” or something similar, that means that the job is at the proposal stage, so “an organization is recruiting for potential consultants for when the project is awarded. This means they do not have a project yet and really they're just going to feature your name on a list of potential consultants,” Barsoum said. While accepted applicants may sign a letter of commitment, “This is not where you want to be spending a huge amount of your energy, nor expect too much to come out of it, because once the proposal is awarded, it may or may not go to the organization that you [applied] with, [and] that list may never actually be revisited,” Barsoum explained. However, there are other job opportunities to consider at this stage, as “organizations do hire a lot of consultants to help them prepare their proposal,” Barsoum said. But unless you have prior experience working on USAID project proposals as a writer or a cost preparer, you may have difficulty landing these short-term roles. “Proposals are not the time that most organizations are gonna do a lot of experimentation in terms of testing people out for new roles, so this is not where you're going to kind of cut your teeth in a new role, because they're so short in duration and the stakes are really high, Barsoum said. Determining eligibility for project work Once an organization has been awarded a project, recruiters will be able to commit to preferred candidates for many different kinds of jobs, including key personnel like chiefs of party and directors of finance, and several more technical roles. But in terms of who will ultimately land a role, “a lot will depend on [the] contract or cooperative agreement, [which] is going to govern a lot of the decisions that the organization is going to be making about the terms of an assignment,” Barsoum explained. This will determine whether an organization is able to “hire an in-country consultant, or an American, or a third-country national, because USAID differentiates between those three types of consultants,” she said. It’s important to pay close attention to these particular requirements of a job posting to make sure you are eligible before putting more time and energy into an application, as there is no flexibility when it comes to legal work authorizations that may be required. Home office vs. field office opportunities Barsoum emphasized some key differences to keep in mind when it comes to finding roles that are based at an organization’s headquarters as opposed to being in a field office. “Most organizations have one process for headquarter or home office consulting and then each field office or country office may have its own procedure, and that's important to know because if you apply for a position in a field office, it doesn't always mean that you're on the radar of another project or country or the headquarter office,” Barsoum explained. For example, different field offices or country offices may advertise available roles in different ways, such as local websites or publications, and not necessarily on the organization's main website. This is especially true of the larger organizations like DAI and Chemonics International, Barsoum said. The “bottom line is, if you're looking internationally [for available roles], there might be quite a few different places you can be looking, and each of those types of consultancies may take a different pathway, even if it's actually within the same organization,” she said.