Week 2 - Impactpool 10-Week Job Strategy Challenge - Understanding Job Grades and Contract Types

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by Impactpool

Week 2 – Understanding Job Grades and Contract Types

By now, you should have identified three organizations you’d like to work for. You also have a basic grasp of key terminologies, the roles that interest you and how your skills can transfer into these positions. This week, we’ll take the next step: learning how to read and interpret job postings effectively.

With thousands of jobs advertised at once, the process can feel overwhelming. That’s why we narrowed the focus to starting with 3 to 5 organisations, identifying your preferred job functions, and now moving to the crucial step of understanding grade levels.

Grades matter because they define seniority, experience requirements, and eligibility. If you don’t meet the minimum requirements, you may be screened out immediately. To help, we’ve compiled an International Organizations Grade System guide. Since grade structures vary across organizations, this tool helps you match your years of experience with the right grade level. We’ve also developed a job title-to-grade mapping table covering 70 job titles, so you can easily determine seniority without opening every single posting.

Below we explore Talent Pools, Rosters and Clusters, Contract types in the UN and EU and how they differ to one another. 

Contract Types

United Nations (UN)


The UN uses two broad contract categories: staff and non-staff.

  • Non-staff contracts include consultancies, flexible contracts, service contracts, volunteer roles and internships. These are generally easier to obtain but offer fewer benefits and limited career progression.

  • Staff contracts are career-track roles governed by UN regulations. The main types are:

    • Permanent Appointments (PA) – no longer issued but still valid for some staff.

    • Continuous Appointments (CA) – earned after several years of satisfactory service.

    • Fixed-Term Appointments (FTA) – usually 1–2 years, renewable.

    • Temporary Appointments (TA) – up to 2 years, for short-term needs.

Staff are also classified by grade, which determines seniority: General Service (GS), National Professional Officers (NO), Professional and Higher Categories (P and D), Senior Appointments (SG, DSG, USG, ASG), and Field Service (FS). Some grades are unique to New York and Geneva.

Understanding these structures is essential when planning your UN career, as contract type and grade directly affect mobility, benefits, and long-term progression.

European Union (EU)


The EU employs over 40,000 people across its institutions and 44 agencies, offering a variety of contract types. Most roles are open only to EU nationals, although some institutions (such as the EIB) extend eligibility to partner-country nationals.

  • Permanent Officials (civil servants) – recruited through open competitions known as Concours. Categories include:

    • Administrators (AD) – policy, law, budget, translation, and advisory roles.

    • Assistants (AST) – executive, technical, and administrative functions.

    • Assistant-Secretaries (AST/SC) – office management and support.

  • Contract Staff (CAST) – fixed-term roles for support or specialized functions.

  • Temporary Staff – for highly specialized or temporary assignments.

  • Interim Staff – very short-term roles (up to 6 months).

  • Traineeships – 3–5 months for graduates, with tasks similar to junior administrators.

  • Seconded National Experts (SNEs) – public sector staff temporarily working in EU institutions.

  • Parliamentary Assistants – directly contracted by Members of the European Parliament.

Recruitment for permanent officials is centralized through EPSO competitions, while agencies often use separate or CAST-based processes. You can read more about these in detail here. 

 

What is a UN talent pool, roster and cluster?

 

The UN and other international organizations increasingly use rosters, talent pools and clusters to streamline recruitment. These systems build banks of pre-assessed candidates to speed up hiring, improve diversity and predict future staffing needs.

  • Rosters: Lists of vetted candidates who can be hired without repeating the full recruitment process. They may be active (organization places candidates into roles) or passive (candidates must still apply). 

  • Generic roster recruitment: Based on common job profiles with high turnover (e.g., WFP, UNHCR). Being rostered increases chances but does not guarantee a job.

  • Cluster recruitment: Groups several similar positions (e.g., multiple HR or finance roles) into one advertisement. Unlike rosters, these are tied to real jobs.

  • Candidate pools: More structured than rosters, often used for senior or rotational leadership roles (e.g., UNDP’s Resident Coordinator pool). Candidates may be deemed ready, ready with training or not ready.

  • Talent pipelines: Specialized programs, such as the Senior Women Talent Pipeline (SWTP), designed to prepare underrepresented groups (e.g., women leaders) for senior posts.

For applicants, these systems mean fewer traditional job ads and more emphasis on being pre-assessed for rosters or pools. Placement does not guarantee employment, but it significantly improves your chances of being considered for future vacancies.

What’s Next?

 

It’s a lot to take in, so this week’s focus is simply to digest and understand contract types and grades - these will shape how and where you apply.

Next week, Career Coach Veronika Ambertson will guide us through a live navigation of the Impactpool job board. She’ll cover how to:

  • Read and dissect a job description.

  • Understand job requirements.

  • Distinguish between essential and desired qualifications.

  • Strategize around missing 1–2 experiences when applying for a dream job.