How to find your first job in the Field (Humanitarian and Emergency Response)

This article is about the strategic moves that you can take to increase your chances of getting a job overseas in relief and development. All of them are good, but I’m going to give away the farm right now and tell you that overwhelmingly there is one thing that I think works better than anything else: Get experience living and working in the kinds of places you want to find a job. 

Sure, there are people who break into this line of work in other ways, but they do it largely through luck or existing connections – they are standing around at the right time and chatting with the CEO of an organization, and he takes a chance on them, or some other connection gets them noticed. Good luck to you if you can make that work, some people do, but not many. If you have the kinds of connections and skills to pull this off, you don’t need my advice.