Young Professionals Guide to a Career in International Affairs

For some, breaking into a field as challenging as international affairs can be a rather time-consuming process, and it is not uncommon to hear about people who have spent years trying without success. This process can be pretty demoralising, especially after having spent so many years dedicated to studies within this field and likely having invested a small fortune into education in the process. With this kind of potential timeframe, it’s no wonder that a lot of fresh graduates put their dreams on hold and choose different routes. Taking a detour, re-evaluating your direction or adjusting your goals is by no means a failure during this process - it’s rather a necessity, and this often means jumping at interim jobs as a means to build experience and polish off your profile. For some, this also results in a permanent diversion from international affairs, as sudden new venues open up and captivate them.

In some instances, a sharp profile, luck or networks might open the right doors at a very early stage, and I know plenty who have had a job lined up even before donning their cap and receiving their diploma. For the rest of us, the process might require a few stepping stones to get there, and while easy can be great, the best things in life tend to require a fair bit of work before they pay off, so don’t worry too much about the timings. In both instances however, it is quite clear that resting on your laurels can cause career stagnation, and that continuously investing in yourself and your efforts can pay off some serious dividends down the line.

Just because you took longer than others, doesn’t mean that you failed.

This article is the final part of a three-article long series on breaking into the international affairs domain. The first article focused on the early steps that students can take to prime themselves for the big job hunt ahead, making the transition easier. In contrast, the second article addressed the immediate challenges of fresh graduates, settling in for the trials ahead. This third article is thus the chronological conclusion, focusing on establishing yourself in the international affairs domain as a young professional, both for those trying to enter the field and those already settled in, and both with a common goal: healthy career progression.

Experience

As a young boy, I was told that sitting on my ass would get me nowhere in life. Naturally, this was in a time before computers took the place of prominence in our lives, as you can get far by sitting down these days. But the sentiment behind it remains. If you are unable to gather relevant experiences that support the career you wish to pursue, then you will be at a severe disadvantage when you start lining up against the competition. However, getting off your ass is not a simple process. Gaining relevant experience can be a tough cookie to crack, namely because it is highly dependent on what you want to do. If your dream is to be a front-line peacebuilder or humanitarian, then relevant experiences could be international experiences in fragile state contexts, for example. If you have grand ambitions for a life in diplomacy, then concrete training and expertise in negotiations or mediation might be a big help when it comes to achieving this. In general, jobs in international affairs also tend to favour those with an international profile, so if you haven’t studied abroad, it might be something to include in your considerations when you are looking for interim positions.

Mapping

In my previous articles, I put a fair bit of emphasis on self-reflection, the need for personal research and being a bit critical about what you read out there, including this series. But doing a bit of desk research is a piece of advice that is never bad to have, so I can highly recommend that you go through a self-reflection process again and figure out a few milestones for yourself.

Milestones in this context would ideally be the next few steps into the international affairs domain, and I would recommend using the United Nations Professional Levels system as a basis for this. If you have just hit the job market, then you are likely working towards a P2 or P3 position, requiring two and five years of relevant experience, respectively. The P-level system is somewhat widespread, albeit under different names depending on the organisational context. Still, this is an excellent way to figure out how to correlate years of experience to a relative level of positions within the international affairs system, based on rudimentary thresholds that are in everyday use within this field.

Based on this, you can spend some time searching out positions that you find attractive and fill a notepad or spreadsheet with all the requirements. With a bit of fiddling, you can categorise common traits such as skills, experiences or education, and see what the most sought-after skills are. From there, all you have to do is acquire them.

Skills

There are two classifications of traits which are requested for work in international affairs; generalist skills that are complementary to what you do, and specialist skills that are unique to the specific niche of foreign affairs that you are pursuing. Ideally, you will want to develop yourself in both skillsets but of the two, specialist skills can be increasingly hard to acquire.

In my experience, general skills related to languages, project and programme management, communication, report and analysis/analytics tend to be recurring desirables no matter if you wish to work in international relations, international security or in humanitarian development. Baseline skills such as these support your profile and the best part is that you don’t need to gain these skills in the context of foreign affairs. Acquiring such skills is an absolute bonus, worth keeping in mind and actively pursuing. Using your time off on language courses or certifications is time well spent, and there are many ways to gain experience in technical skills.

Specialised skills tend to be a bit trickier to learn, especially when we are talking negotiation or mediation skills, or highly concise specialist skills with snappy acronyms such as WASH, MEAL, CASH or SSR, DDR, SALW. For most, it is possible to take basic courses or certifications for free, but if you want concrete experiences with these things then you often have to look at internships or volunteering. Suppose you are the type of person that leans towards getting your hands dirty and making an impact where it is noticeable - you will likely need experiences from fragile state contexts. For this, you have two main options beyond getting a job within the field: internships/volunteering or taking a slightly different route by opting for military service and deploying to conflict or post-conflict environments.

Solutions

Gaining experience can be tricky, mainly as most of us will be inclined to focus on getting these experiences from within the actual field. But thinking outside of the box can be an excellent path, especially if you are good at selling these experiences later. For some, a non-field workplace might have projects that overlap with your learning goals. If at all possible, you can push towards these in your workplace by suggesting that you assist with project management, communication or whatever else you might wish to pursue. Taking the initiative is rarely punished, and more often than not, I see managers who are quite willing to listen when it comes to requests for increased responsibilities. If this is not possible, then you can commit yourself in your spare time and gain these experiences pro bono by joining local organisations on a volunteer basis. Beyond achieving a certain level of expertise working within your field of interest, this can also open doors down the road, as there tends to be a significant overlap between interest parties and practitioners in the IR-related civil society. As a bonus, it can also be both fun and rewarding to engage yourself in civil society, and I for one have benefited immensely from this.

Taking it a step further, then you can also try to get full-time volunteer positions with United Nations Volunteers, European Youth Portal, European Solidarity Corps or EU Aid Volunteers. Or maybe by checking out the options with national chapters of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières or other major NGOs, be they international or domestic, that operate near you. In many cases, volunteering for any of these may get you a tiny bit of money and cover your costs of living, while also representing possible avenues to bolster your profile immensely. However, with noticeable benefits comes competition, so don’t rely on this as the means to solve everything.

Internships can also be a good option, but as I have discussed the value of these (and notably, the benefit of doing many) in my previous articles, I will refer back there. In short, internships are a valuable method of gaining very concrete experiences and skills, but jumping from one to another might not be an ideal solution to accumulate years of relevant experience.

What you can pursue is naturally individual. If you have someone covering your cost of living and ensuring that your tuition loans are paid when due, then the world is your oyster. However, if you are a single parent, it might not be possible for you to fit in any of these options, as your obligations are already set in stone.

LinkedIn

In each of my earlier articles, I referenced the importance of networking and sharpening your profile; both of these activities are part of an overall scheme to improve your personal brand. A strong network can be of immense use, both as passive support but also as an active asset that you can tap into when you need it. At the same time, a strong personal brand can be quite a door opener, especially if you can show how dedicated and engaged you are within your field of expertise. With this, you have a much easier time explaining why you are suitable for a specific position, but also why you are the type of person that recruiters can approach for opportunities, on those rare occasions where it happens.

LinkedIn is the premier platform for professional networking, and it is a topic that I get recurring questions about, especially in response to the last two articles. As such, I will try to cover what I can about the platform based on my knowledge and experiences.

Having the basics covered, as I have mentioned in my last article, is pretty much a must these days, and there is a tremendous passive value of using LinkedIn as you have everything collected in one place. With this in mind, you can link back to your profile when you are tailoring your concise CV so anything omitted from the CV can be found easily. Recruiters and hiring panels will look you up, so don’t be surprised if you get questions about your background that are not covered by your CV. So again, having an all-star profile is a must, and I can highly recommend that you check out some of the excellent guides on how to maximise your potential on LinkedIn.

Connections

A specific question that I get a lot is when is it okay to add people to your network? It is a tough question to answer, as it is very subjective how you should deal with this. If you boil the issue down, then you have two general directions that you can go with this: strict networking and open networking, and naturally, finding a compromise between the two.

Strict networking would mean that you only connect to people that you know, so mainly family, friends, colleagues and external partners, with whom you have proper working or personal relations. The benefit of this is that it gives you a robust network that should be quite supportive of you, though it is often restricted in size.

Open networking is often known as LinkedIn Open Networking or just LION. You might come across people with this tag in their name or their profiles, and the general idea here is that quantity beats the quality of a network, so you add as many people as you can. With this comes a massive network at a relatively high pace, but often at a cost. Common issues tend to be a cluttered feed, low engagement levels and an increasing influx of spam.

I am not a fan of the LION approach, but I am not a strict networker either. My middle path is to add the people I meet either in person or online, and accept relevant connection requests such as students or professionals from my own, or related fields. Occasionally, I will also add people with whom I have a more strategic interest in being connected. For the latter, then it can be useful to attach an invitation note to the request, explaining why you are adding them. Invitation notes increase acceptance rates immensely, so it can be worth the effort to use this option. Most important when it comes to your network is not the size of it, but rather its engagement level. An active and engaging network can quickly signal boost your important posts many times over, and with this your network of 200 connections might reach 20000 people if the engagement is high enough. The ability to reach so far is one of the main perks of LinkedIn, as your profile can travel far and wide, despite not having an extensive personal network yourself.

Committing

If you want to actively sustain your network, then you naturally also have to be just that: active. The best way to go about this is by sharing occasional RELEVANT content, interacting with your network, recommending and engaging with people in your field.

A key thing to understand is that LinkedIn echoes everything you do onwards to your network, so your behaviour can have a considerable influence on how you are perceived. Negative behaviour such as interacting with inappropriate or irrelevant posts and memes is a widespread problem these days, and often this results in your connections unfollowing or outright disconnecting from you. So please, think before you like I meaningless content such as memes or inspirational quotes on LinkedIn, it's just not the place.

On the flip side, your positive interactions can cause the opposite. If you post relevant content that your network interacts with, if you engage with your network, if you write articles, if you like posts, if you connect with people, then you get rewarded. The rewards are partially from the LinkedIn algorithm that will treat you more favourably as the pro user you are, but more importantly, your network will be active with you in return. This mutual-activity could come into play when you share meaningful content, such as asking for help or advice, as every single like and comment will carry your message far and wide through the signal boosting that occur with every interaction. So don’t hold back on meaningful and relevant interaction on LinkedIn, it can absolutely pay off.

Metrics

Performance and insights are quite useful to gauge how you are doing on LinkedIn, and there are a few ways that you can go about this to gain an impression of how it’s going and to see how effective your actions are.

Profile views are your primary gauge for how much attention you are getting, and it is often highly dependent on how active you are on the platform itself and what kind of ripples you make in the waters outside. It is relatively self-explanatory, and ideally you would like to see many people visiting your profile as this means that there is a general interest in you.

Post Insights are great for figuring out whom you are reaching with your content, notably the organisations it has spread to, and which professionals have seen it. It also gives geographic data, but this is less important. The further the reach, the more people have a chance to engage further with you or your content, and random encounters such as these can do quite a bit if you are looking to make a name for yourself or catch a break.

The Social Selling Index is a metric that not many people know of. It is a compound score that is continuously updated based on your activity and engagement level, and it’s quite interesting to see it develop. I am not sure how much value you can put into this, but it gives you a quick idea of how you are performing across four sets of metrics and how you compare to your network and your field of work. I quite enjoy having this data available, but it’s not something that I fuss about at all.

Premium

A final question that occasionally comes up is the value of having a Premium Career account, and again, this is a highly subjective question. If you are not active on LinkedIn, then paying for a subscription is needless. However, if you spend a fair bit of time on the platform and you need the essential features that you gain from premium, it’s a different story. To me, the three most important benefits are the In-Mail credits, which let you cold-contact people outside of your network; Visitor/Search data, showing exactly who has been visiting your profile and how much you are popping up in the search results; and Applicant Insights, which visualise how you fare amongst the competitors based on your skills, and how many applications have been sent for a LinkedIn listen position.

For premium, the best way to decide is by opting for a free trial and checking out the actual value it might have to you.

Maximising

If you are deadset on making the utmost of your time, then there are additional things you can do to increase your odds of success in this field. To me, one of the most beneficial things that you can do is to stay informed, both about your area of expertise, but also about its inner workings, its recruitment methods and developing issues. If you are well-informed, then you are better prepared to meet whatever challenges you might face, be they related to your work or hunting down the next stepping stone.

If you are employed, but not in a directly relevant subset of international affairs, then it’s essential to show that your bread and butter might come from your job, but your passion is for something else. One way to do this is through publications, lectures or by participating in conferences and events related to what you wish to do.

Publications do not have to be the cumbersome mini-theses that are often the standard for academic journals; it can also be facilitating complex policy topics to the general public. Tailoring technical content to laypeople can be a challenge, but it is an important skill to have, and it is something you might come across as a desired expertise. Venues are plentiful, especially if you sit down and search for calls for contributions and relevant papers and magazines.

Public speaking in the form of lectures and the like is tricky, as it is mainly a matter of being invited as a speaker or a panellist than anything else. For me, it was initially a mix of niche interests in IR and a dash of luck that got me out there, and over the last few years I have had a handful of speaking engagements per year. For me, this is good fun, and I can see the clear benefits of doing it, but I also realise that this is not an option for everyone. If you get the chance and you feel up for it, then I can highly recommend that you go for it.

International affairs is a domain of passion, and the sheer volume of highly interesting events reflects this. No matter if your interests are international relations, security or development, there is bound to be a lot of great options for participating in value-adding events. Skills-based workshops, simulation games, conferences and lectures are all great ways to show your engagement in the field, to network and to gain valuable skills, so please don’t hold back, it can be truly great investments down the line.

Guidance

As mentioned, knowledge is exceedingly valuable when you are pushing for an ambitious career in a field as competitive as this. Beyond doing your homework with a bit of desk research, there are two useful sources of information that I find to be valuable in this context: sparring with established experts in your field, and learning from the organisations you dream of working for.

If you want to know about working in your field of interest, the best way to get this kind of insight is by asking someone has been through all the hoops to get there. Beyond having served as a mentor for a few years now, I have also benefited massively from expert advice and sparring myself. I work in a relatively niche field, and I have been grateful for all the tips, insights and discussions that I have gotten over the years. Don’t be afraid to ask for help: most people in international affairs are passionate about what they do, and these kinds of people tend to be happy to share their experiences with others, especially when it comes to those interested in entering this interesting field.

Understanding organisations can also be a great way to move ahead. Some international organisations, such as the OSCE, maintain webinar series that address organisational culture, functions and roles, and essential guidance on the recruitment system. If you have never undergone a competency-based panel interview and the rigorous testing often performed for these positions, then you might want to listen in so you know what is waiting ahead. Much of this information is universally useful, but please bear in mind that there can be a significant difference between how it is approached by different organisations: what the UN does one way, I can assure you that the EU does another. You might not need these things right away, but chances are that you will need them eventually when you are ready to make a go at your professional-level jobs in international affairs.

Final Words

With the young professionals’ segment now covered, this concludes my article series on pursuing a career in international relations. Much of what I covered in these articles is repeating tried-and-true mantras and reinforcing common sense ideas, but despite this, I hope it has been useful. I know how tough it can be to have ambitions in international relations, both from my own experiences switching to this domain and from mentoring students, graduates and young professionals over the last few years. There is no golden route to all of this, and while reading these articles gives a lot of useful pointers, it is up to all of us to make it happen. Sadly, it is a fact of life that you can do everything right and still not succeed, but I do believe that dedication and determination will eventually get you where you need to be.

Best of luck!

Alexander Borum?is a Liaison Officer with the European Union Capacity Building Mission to Somalia, working on the EU's Integrated Approach and Security Sector Reforms. He dedicates part of his spare time to mentor both students and graduates on their early-stage steps into international relations.