My dream job: Overseas development
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Written by: Barney Jeffries
Matt Wingate from Oxfam's humanitarian department gives the low-down on his job in overseas development.
So what does your job involve?
I work on Oxfam's Southern and West Africa Desk and am one of a team of three covering the whole of the Southern and West Africa region. The work is really diverse and challenging. I support the set up, implementation and closure of humanitarian programmes, usually responding to natural disasters or conflicts such as the 30-year-war in Angola. We help decide what response Oxfam should make to a particular situation and then facilitate that decision. I also get to make field visits, for about six weeks each year.
What do you find the most and least exciting about your job?
The job is extremely varied, involving everything from finance and logistics to policy development and human resources. It is also very challenging, with new tasks and tight deadlines emerging on a daily basis. I might be attending a meeting on Liberia one day, commenting on a new proposal for a flood response in Senegal the next and interviewing for new staff in Angola the day after. I also love field visits and the huge array of people I get to meet from almost every country and background.
At times the job can be frustrating too. Working for a big organisation sometimes makes you feel that your skills as a bureaucrat and politician are more important than those as a development professional. The hours can be long, the money's not great and you can sometimes be dealing with impossibly depressing situations that leave you feeling quite helpless.
What's your best memory of an overseas project?
When members of a displacement camp in Liberia who had fled their homes with nothing clubbed together to provide us with drinks and food to thank us for the seemingly-small contribution we had made to their lives in the camp. The dancing and partying went on until morning!
Have you ever been in a life-threatening situation?
Any decent humanitarian organisation should give a high priority to the security of its staff but there is always some element of risk involved. In my last job I was an office manager for a new humanitarian programme in Liberia, a country that has been involved in civil war for over a decade. It is essential to always take the situation seriously when working in a country like that and you need to take responsibility for your own movements and communications. The likelihood of serious incident may be slim but the constant radio checks, armed road-blocks and curfews can be enough to keep the risk just within touching distance.
What experience helped you to get your current job?
I have been working in Oxfam's Humanitarian Department for a couple of years, but before that I was a graduate placement volunteer (Oxfam's version of an internship) in their Birmingham Campaigns Office. This gave me some administrative and marketing skills, local media experience and taught me the lingo of development agencies. This meant that when a vacancy came up for an administrator in Oxfam's Humanitarian Department, I applied and got it. I've since spent time in Peru, Liberia and Sierra Leone before working in Oxford.
What skills are essential for working in overseas development?
You need all the skills required in any other sector, with a few extras thrown in! Whether you like it or not, development work is a multimillion pound business (albeit a not-for-profit one) and requires professional and efficient staff. Only a handful of Oxfam's staff are generalists like me and there are always many more opportunities for people with technical skills like finance, logistics, human resources, engineering etc.
The extras you need are a strong commitment to your work, sensitivity towards other cultures, a genuine interest in global issues and I'd say flexibility and a sense of humour are crucial too. Language skills are also a big asset, particularly Spanish, French and Portugese.
Does having a postgraduate qualification help or hinder your chances?
I don't have one but I do think it helps, particularly the higher up you go. In other aspects of development work, like policy making, I don't think you can get far without one.
What are your top tips for landing a dream job in this sector?
Volunteering and internships can be a great way of entering the field. You aren't necessarily guaranteed a job at the end but you will learn a lot about the work and the organisation, and gain access to internal vacancies, vastly improving your chances of actually landing a job! It is essential to get to know the sector and gain some work experience. Don't assume that the skills gained in other sectors are not relevant to this one because they definitely are.
For overseas development work it can be hard to get round the vicious circle of no experience without work, no work without experience, but you could try working for a while in a UK-based job or checking out agencies that sometimes recruit without overseas experience. Try Merlin or BOND who have a good mixture of vacancies, training opportunities and advice.
Finally, getting into a development organisation can be the hardest bit. If you persevere however, once you are inside, it's generally possible to move between jobs and departments and to have a really exciting, dynamic and rewarding career.
Oxfam
www.oxfam.org.uk
Merlin
BOND
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