Hi there and welcome to the first introduction episode for the UNjobfinder Career Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by INTALMA, the social enterprise behind UNjobfinder.org My name is Magnus Bucht and I am the co-founder of INTALMA and UNjobfinder
At UNjobfinder, your career is our mission. This is what we’re all about - we want to support highly-qualified and motivated individuals around the world; to give you the tools and services that will increase your chances for having a career in the UN, European Union, Development Banks, intergovernmental or non-governmental organizations - and while doing this, we also want to support organizations and provide them with the best source for reaching top candidates.
This podcast is for all of you who are interested in a career within this field, which we to make it simple defines as the “international development”. We know that many of you who are using our website and tools UNjobfinder.org already are working within this field and we are sure that this podcast also will be useful and interesting to follow for as well. For those of you who haven’t yet discovered UNjobfinder.org – this is a service that we launched in 2014, where you are able to search for your dream job that really matches your experiences and interest, normally we have around 2000 jobs from all the major international organizations. We also provide, as we’re doing in this podcast, valuable career tips and resources that will increase your chances of landing that dream job.
By following the show, you are going to hear interviews with people who have had, or who are currently having, a remarkable careers within this field; to hear their stories about how they once entered into this type of career, choices that they have made, challenges that they have faced and not least hear what advice they can share with you! Initially you will meet many very talented people who are working with Human Resources Management in International Organizations. People who both know what it’s like to work in this field, but also can give some insights on what type of skills they are looking for and share their tips on how you can improve your chances being recruited or how to develop your career.
My own story is that I have been working in this field for over 15 years. After graduating I first worked a couple of years with Management Consulting for International firms. For many years I was dreaming about working internationally with the within the UN but never really made anything about those ambitions. Mostly because I did not know how that would be possible. In 2003 however, I got the opportunity to join the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees at their HQ in Geneva, Switzerland. UNHCR is a truly amazing organization and I loved working for them, but after a couple of years my family and I decided to move back to Sweden where I joined Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency which is Sweden’s governmental development agency. For Sida I had also the opportunity to be based in Mali, West Africa for a couple of years as the Head of Administration at the Swedish Embassy. Now, I most recently I have worked as the Global Human Resources Director for SEI, the Stockholm Environment Institute, an independent international research institute that has been engaged in environment and development issues at local, national, regional and global levels for more than 25 years.
So why did we start INTALMA and UNjobfinder? For many years, I, together with my co-founders, were frustrated that there were no good places where you actually could find updated vacancies from all the major organizations. The places you could find with similar services did not provide the opportunity to find jobs that were targeted for me, with my interest, experiences and ambitions. In short, we did not find any really good career platforms for the whole development sector. As HR professionals we were also were frustrated that there were no suitable, user friendly, modern, global places where we could reach the right candidates who were qualified and interested in working in this field – so that’s the short story why we created Intalma and UNjobfinder. We’re proud of what we have achieved so far and we have extremely high ambitions with the kind of value we want to deliver to both individuals and organizations.
I already now want to apologize in advance for not having a great sound in all of our episodes. The interviews are mostly done over Skype with people who are located on the other side of the world in their real-life situation when they are at work. We will strive to give you an improved sound quality over time and until then we hope that you will find the content valuable enough to stand the sound in the coming episodes.
We would love to get your tips on questions that you think that we should ask our guests or persons that you would like us to interview. We love feed-back! You can contact us via Twitter at @UNjobfinder, via Facebook.com/UNjobfinder or via the contact form that you’ll find at UNjobfinder.org/contact
Thank you for joining us at UNjobfinder.org, we truly hope that you will find the coming episodes helpful and inspiring for your career in the International Development sector. If you find value in this podcast and the message that we’re trying to share and spread, then please subscribe on ITunes and leave an honest review.
Bye for now and see you soon in the first interview episode, where you’ll hear me talk to Michael Emery at UNFPA.