About
This is a blog about getting your first job as a humanitarian aid worker. It is the distillation of hundreds of face-to-face, email and telephone conversations I have had with people about how to decide whether this is the right career for you and, if so, get your first job. It is the blog that I wish that I had access to when I was first looking for a job. If we’d had blogs back then, that is.
In the bad old days people printed things like this on dead trees, and you had to buy a copy before you could read it. Thankfully, this website is provided free of charge, but if you found it at least as useful as a book you might have bought, please consider buying something through one of the Amazon or Powell’s Books links, or by buying me an Amazon gift card.
You can reach me at humanitarianjobs (at) nickmacdonald (dot) net – I’d love your feedback and suggestions.
Nick
All content © Nick Macdonald, 2010. Use and/or duplication of this material is not permitted without express and written permission from the author. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Macdonald with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Hi Nick,
Fantastic site you have. Just wondering if were possible for you to do an interview or a chapter on refugees. In particular, I had some advice about anthropologists working with refugees and with this field being criticial to solving some of the issues they face. If you had any contacts or some research on the role of anthropologists in the are of refugee studies/assistance, I would be most greatful. Even some articles on refugee assistance in general would be fantastic.
Cheers.
Hi Nick ,
A brilliantly great site . I am a law student , and I am thinking about studying something different , I was wondering if it’s possible for you to tell me , if Sociology, Politics would be useful or anyways helpful to get me into the humanitarian and relief services ? Thanks alot in advance , regards
Glad you like it Suhayla, please buy the ebook etc etc!
OK – well, what to study? I’m pretty outspoken about this, and maybe need to go revise the page on this because I get the question a lot, but I think basically, unless your degree is vocational in some way (finance, medical, engineering etc), it doesn’t really make any difference what you study, at least in terms of getting your first job. That isn’t to say that what you study might be more or less useful in your work, but that I’ve never seen a recruiter make a decision based on the degree someone had.
What counts is that you get lots of field experience.
I don’t think it’s going to hurt to have a degree that suggests an interest in international issues, but its not a big enough factor to worry about.
Hope that helps,
Nick
Hi Nick ,
A brilliantly great site . I am a law student , and I am thinking about studying something different , I was wondering if it’s possible for you to tell me , if Sociology, Politics would be useful or anyways helpful to get me into the humanitarian and relief services ? Thanks alot in advance , regards
I was wondering if anyone can advise me about working in humanitarian field, I am a Syrian citizen and I have a master’s degree in practice of development from France, and I worked for a french association before.
I am searching from quite a while for an association where I can use my studies and my language capacities for humanitarian purposes.
Thank u for advance
Hi there Batoul,
I’m not very familiar with what implications there might be with bring Syrian – you will know better that I do about what issues that brings with it in terms of visas, but if you have worked with a particular French agency before then my first port of call would be to work that angle – if not the agency itself then contacts you made at the time – the Francophone development community is pretty tight nit, and there is always a need for good French fluent folks in Francophone Africa.
Sorry not to have anything more specific for you,
Good luck!
Nick