Working World

Sherry has been buried in work for the past month and a half preparing for the NCIV National Meeting, which kicked off tonight in DC with an entertaining presentation by Rick Steves, the globetrotting author of more than 30 bestselling guidebooks and the host of several public access TV and radio shows (I wrote about him after he spoke at Georgetown back in October). The NCIV conference is definitely a unique meeting of international relations professionals and volunteers from across the United States. The common thread that binds them all together is that each of their organizations hosts visitors from the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Yet many of NCIV’s 90 plus member organizations also have many other functions in the IR world: as World Affairs Councils, as Sister Cities members, as intercultural consultants, etc.

It’s often said that international organizations are only in New York, DC, LA, or San Francisco. And while many of them are, NCIV’s members prove that many, many communities throughout the U.S. are not only internationally engaged in a serious way, but also offer opportunities for jobs, and even careers, in international education, exchange, and development.

So check out NCIV’s member list and, if you live in or near one of these communities and are looking for a way to get more deeply involved in international activities but maybe don’t know how, contact the org in your area. They are the ideal partner to help you find out more about what is happening internationally in your community.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Sherry and I will be giving a Working World presentation at the NCIV conference on Friday afternoon. Attendance is for registered participants only, but if you’re near 999 9th Street in Chinatown in DC around 3:45, I’m sure no one would mind if you slipped in…

An op-ed by Col. David Tohn, an Iraq war veteran and National Security Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, appeared in yesterday’s Miami Herald.  Col. Tohn argues for increased support and funding for soft power and international exchange programs, relaying the story of a potential jihadist turned Fulbright Scholar to support his case.

Fulbright is indeed a powerful program, in its capacity to both bring foreign scholars to the U.S. and to send U.S. students and scholars abroad. If you’re looking for an opportunity to gain valuable experience abroad, definitely check out Fulbright, here and here.

I met yesterday with a family friend who just finished up a stint interning and is now on the job search in DC. She’s doing all the right things—talking with everyone she knows, getting the word out that she’s looking for a job. You know, networking. But she’s also not exactly sure what she wants to do or where she might want to work. She has ideas, she has passions, but where she’d like to end up is much harder for her to visualize right now.

I suggested she try searching to better be able to visualize. What I meant is: spend some time on Indeed.com and other large job search engines, just searching. “Seeing what is out there,” for lack of less hackneyed phrase. It is much easier to visualize how you can turn your interests and passions into an actual job if you have a heightened awareness of what jobs and organizations exist that you might want to do or join.

Joanne Tay gave an idea of how to do this in her comment to a previous post: she found the Working World blog, along with other international exchange resources, by Googling [international education and exchange + blog]. She’s got the right idea. Try any number of different search term combos in Google or Indeed.com, based on what you’re interested in and might want to do, and see what comes up. You never know what you might find.

The downside of this kind of blind searching is that you’ll be forced to sift through a lot of crap, and that it’s easy to become overwhelmed very quickly. However, the upside is that you’ll probably discover interesting organizations and positions you had no idea existed—and you might actually get a job (I found my job at Georgetown, the one I’m leaving tomorrow [single tear], by this kind of random searching on Indeed.com, hence my fondness for this particular search engine).

Check out this post on JibberJobber for ten of the best job search resources where you might give “seeing what’s out there” a try.

From Garrett Kuk, who comments on this post, saying he believes my fears are unfounded and Working World is not adding to the “clogosphere:”

I can only imagine this field will grow in popularity as the cultural, linguistic, and communication barriers continue to fall. Finding an untapped segment of conversation and stepping boldly in to fill the void meets a need and adds tremendous value where there was none, as shown by the previous comment.

I appreciate Garrett’s belief that we’re bringing something valuable here. Sherry and I will just keep plugging away under our shared belief that the fields are extremely important ones, now and for the future, and that charting a successful career in them is a topic worth discussing.

As an added bonus, Garrett passed along some tips on how to make your blog stand out and worth reading.

As with my last post, I’ll again put up some of Sherry’s thoughts for her, since her time these days is not her own as she and her staff finish preparations for NCIV’s biggest event, the annual National Meeting. She recently had a short email interview with International Educator magazine about the importance of foreign language skills in international careers. I think Sherry’s answer is an affirmation of how essential foreign language skills are for those of us in these fields, even if we are not using the language(s) on a daily basis.

Q: Is language proficiency an increasingly desired skill in today’s global workforce, and if so, why is that the case? Are more and more employers looking for candidates who are fluent in more than one language?

Sherry: I believe employers are looking for people who are fluent in several languages not so much because they need those languages on a daily basis (though in some cases, of course, they do) but because mastery of another language often reflects the cultural competence and political sensitivities many international jobs require. The willingness to study another language, in most cases, is an indication that a person has the genuine desire to learn about another country and culture that is the primary prerequisite for success— that capacity for authentic curiosity is vital for people whose jobs necessitate interaction with international colleagues.

Sherry emailed me the other day, apologizing that she hasn’t been able to contribute as much as she would like to the blog. “We are literally swamped here with National Meeting planning,” she wrote. (NCIV’s annual National Meeting takes place from February 11-14 in Washington.) But she also mentioned that she is attempting to further her ongoing blog education (blogucation?) by diving deeper into the blogosphere and consuming more of its content. She has been enjoying her forays into this world, but admitted she was daunted by how much is out there:

I remain amazed by the volume and think where do people get this kind if time? Then I realize that it is a commitment, like preparing an op ed piece. It is the price of a type of communication that is growing increasingly effective, but I am still staggered by the volume of it all….

Always the optimist, Sherry ended the email with a chipper: “On a bright note, I love my iPhone.”

Sherry actually asked me to turn her thoughts from this email into a blog post—largely, I think, because she viewed it as an intergenerational issue: it’s easy for me, as the young, technologically adept one, to consume this vast tundra of content without breaking a sweat, whereas she as the older professional struggles to keep up. Perhaps there is truth to this on some level, but to feel daunted by the sheer breadth of news and blogs and other information on the Internet…I’m pretty sure it happens to everyone, and it certainly happens to me.

For example, one evening while following a few leads on potential blog topics, I stumbled upon the site Alltop.com, a self-described “online magazine rack”—basically a giant, never-ending list of blogs by topic. While at first I thought this was a pretty fantastic discovery (everything in one place!), it quickly turned ugly as I became absolutely overwhelmed by the volume and my head threatened to explode, kind of like in Scanners. How do you sift through them all?

Then it got me wondering—Working World is a relatively new blog: are we actually doing a service by putting yet another blog out there, or are we just adding to the “clogosphere” (the cheesy yet for some reason still endearing term used by some blogger out there, which one I couldn’t even begin to tell you)?

My searches on Alltop for more blogs related to jobs and careers in international affairs didn’t yield much, actually, and helped reassure me that Working World is relevant after all (as there are very few, if any, sites or blogs out there devoted to careers in international affairs, at least that I could find). After the break, the results of some very unscientific research on Alltop.

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My colleague Mark Rebstock at NCIV passed along information about an upcoming Global Volunteer Fair hosted by Google. What to expect:

Individuals considering volunteering in another country can learn more about programs and global opportunities offered by over 30 volunteer-sending organizations.

Workshops on topics like “International Volunteerism 101” and “The Cost of Doing Good: Affordable Options for Volunteering Abroad.”

The fair takes place next Tuesday February 3 at Google’s office in Washington, DC, 1101 New York Avenue, NW.  See Idealist.org for more details.