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What it takes to build a career as a Medical Officer at an International Organization

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by Impactpool

Is your dream to work as a Medical officer, Medical Doctor, Health practitioner or Nurse at an International Organization? In this article, we give you the insights as to what it takes to make your profile eye-catching for a recruiter at an International Organization.

Medical expertise is in constant demand from International Organizations. However, one main challenge that recruiters report when recruiting medical personnel is that International Organizations have problems competing with the local compensation package. For certain countries, the compensation offered by International Organizations is far below what a doctor or nurse earns in their current role.

We are often publishing job opportunities for Medical officers, Health practitioners or Nurses at Impactpool. We can see a trend that Arabic and French-speaking talents are under the largest need. When applying for any of these roles, English is often a prerequisite.

To be considered for the role of Medical Officer or Nurse you must for most organizations have a minimum of 5-7 years of clinical experience. To catch the recruiter's eyes you need experience in an international environment. Recruiters we have spoken to say that most applications they receive lack experience from post-conflict and conflict areas. Therefore experience in field missions, humanitarian relief operations, military or similar environments is a significant advantage when applying for these roles.

If you are looking for a more senior role such as Chief Medical Officer, you will most likely need a minimum of 10 years of clinical experience including 5 years of combined clinical and management experience. For this kind of role, previous experience of managing international multidisciplinary health teams will be required. Also for these roles, experience in Peace-keeping missions, humanitarian relief operations, military or similar environments is an advantage. Also when organizations are assessing what applicants for Chief Medical Officer's are lacking, they often talk about the need of experiences in the conflict and post-conflict areas and lack of experience of managing international multidisciplinary health teams.

Gender inequalities

If you are a woman and eligible to apply for a Medical Doctors Role, you are in a very good position to land the job. In fact, to be a female doctor is a significant advantage when applying. For some of the organizations, we work with gender parity is as bad as 8% of women doctors and 92% men. If you can stop being a woman, with being able to speak French, you may have the golden career ticket in your hand.


Areas where the need is the most and where the demand is constant; 

  • Clinical medicine;
  • Medical administrative;
  • Occupational Health;
  • Tropical Medicine;
  • Primary Care;
  • Infectious diseases;  
  • Surgeons
  • Anesthesia
  • Paramedical
  • Pediatricians
  • Gynecologists, primarily female gynecologists
  • Dentists
  • Psychologists

Below is a few specific nurses profile that we constantly search for:

  • Acute & Adult Care Nurse Practitioners
  • RN and LPN, Staff Nurses, Advanced Practice Nurses,
  • Diabetes and Endocrinology Nurses
  • Cardiology, Clinical and Critical Care Nurses
  • Family Care Nurse Practitioners, Geriatric Nurses
  • Home Health and Emergency Nurse Practitioners
  • ENT Nurse Practitioners, Medical Surgical Nurses
  • Nurse Anesthetists and Nurse Managers
  • OB/GYN Nurses, Urology Nurses


Want to join our Talent Pool and receive customized job alerts?

Impactpool is building a pool of talents to help development organizations to speed up their recruitment and deployment process of Medical officers, Medical Doctors, Health Practitioners, and Nurses. If you are interested in receiving job offers tailored to your professional experience you should join too!

What happens while in the pool?
We provide you with our weekly international development job alerts, with job opportunities in your area of expertise. While on the pool we will also reach out to you when organizations actively search for your skills, in line with your own preferences.

The organizations we work for are all different, so are also the opportunities they offer and the locations they operate. To accommodate all their needs, we are looking for candidates interested in both short-term and long-term opportunities. The more resilient you are the better.

Instructions on how to apply:

Please complete a career profile on impactpool.org.

It takes no more than 2 minutes. With a complete profile, you will receive weekly job alerts tailored for your expertise and career level. We will also match relevant career resources for you. 

Find relevant jobs

 

Read More: Find out how UNICEF works with Health, WASH, and nutrition to increase child survival and which talents they are looking for. 


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Photo: United Nations Careers

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