I want to join the UN, where should I begin?
How can I start my journey with the UN?
UN career, UN applications, UN internships ? How do I grab the opportunities posted by the UN ?
What should I begin with?
These are some of the questions that every UN aspirant has. The answer to all these question is,
there is no golden rule or recipe but luckily some tips and tricks that are useful and can save
you a lot of time. As one thing is for sure, the procedure is neither quick nor simple.
Depending on your ‘status’ there are various entry levels for candidates into the UN:
a graduate school student
a recent graduate
a professional with experience.
The typical opportunity with landing a job at the United Nations for the first category, a
graduate school student, is an internship.
For the second category, a recent graduate, the Junior Professional Officers (JPO) posts offer a
route into the UN.
To understand how to write internship application documents that stand out, one needs to
understand the objective of the United Nations system internship programme; namely, which aims
among others to offer graduate and post-graduate students from diverse academic backgrounds:
to expose them to the work of the United Nations, its agencies; and initiatives such as the
Sustainable Development Goals SDGs;
to provide the UN Headquarters departments and UN agencies with the assistance of students
specialised in various professional fields.
The duration of the internships varies from one UN organization to the other; the United Nations
Headquarters Internship Programme for example consists of three two-month periods of the year:
spring (mid-January to mid-March), summer (early June to early August), and fall (mid-September
to mid-November).
Most internships programmes at the UN system are a full-time programme which means the interns
spend five days a week carrying out their assignment under the supervision of a UN staff member.
When creating your cover letter for a UN internship you may also want to take the relevant UN
skills and competencies into consideration. The UN differs between UN organizational core
values, UN competencies and managerial competencies (such as e.g. leadership). And these
differentiations are among others extremely important for your UN job application and UN system
interviews.
As a UN employee its key to show commitment towards promoting, protecting, and fulfilling human
rights for all. Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment is a vital part for achieving
both, human rights and human development.
Want to learn more on how to spot relevant skills and competencies in a UN system vacancy or the
best method to convey your skills in a cover letter? Get in touch with one of our UN insiders
through India's First UN Mentorship Program. Enroll today !