Working World

American University is holding its 10th annual Conference on Intercultural Relations March 12-13.  It seems like an intriguing event, complete with “varied, hands-on experiences for a niche group of individuals concerned with advanced intercultural relations,” and Carol Bellamy, the president and CEO of World Learning and a profilee in our book, as the keynote speaker (she’s pretty amazing). The price tag is pretty steep though, even for alumni.

Check out more on the conference on AU’s alumni website, and on the Intercultural Management Institute website too.

After looking at the 2008 Open Doors data and returning from a speaking gig at Notre Dame,  I brought up up the issue of short-term v. long-term exchange programs: which allows for a more in-depth, formative experience, especially for a career in international affairs? An article by Charlotte West in the latest International Educator brings up a related and equally important issue: single country v. multicountry study abroad and, again, which allows for a more in-depth, formative experience?

The article is definitely worth a read (it’s in downloadable PDF format on the NAFSA website, if you’re not a subscriber), as it lays out in plain detail the pros and cons of each model, as well as examples of multicountry study abroad programs that seem to be designed rather effectively, providing much more than a whirlwind tour that relegates students to studying tourists. West lays out the familiar arguments and debate by quoting a student who participated in a multicountry program:

In a single country over an extended period of time, one probably gets the benefits of really grasping the language and deeply indulging in the local culture. Yet, when one gets to see many different cultures they can better grasp the magnitude of the beauty which this world has to offer.

West goes on to comment that “one of the main arguments against multicountry programs is that full immersion is the best way to truly learn a language and a culture. However, studying in a single country is no guarantee that immersion will actually occur. In many cases, foreign students are grouped together in the same classes, held in English, and have little contact with the locals.”

West is right on here. Length does not always add up to a quality experience (I think about the classmate I knew who spent a year in Madrid, yet refused to eat Spanish food the entire time and only spoke Spanish if he absolutely had to—not exactly what the program was hoping for him to do, I don’t think).  Certainly the quality of a program—i.e., the manner in which it facilitates deep student interaction with the host country and its people—trumps the length of time in terms of importance.

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Reader GG doesn’t care for Doostang’s selectivity pitch:

I got the same email from Doostang. My guess is that they aren’t doing so hot. Like you, I created an account a few years ago, but never visited. When it comes to social networking, I’m not sure that ‘exclusivity’ is a good thing. I think it scares more people away than it attracts. Isn’t the whole point of networking to have a large, diverse group of contacts? I didn’t see that happening with Team Doostang.

GG spells out exactly why I think I’m more attracted to LinkedIn: less privileged, more diverse, more open—all of which makes it more likely you’ll forge a connection with someone you’d never have thought to forge a connection with, rather than hobnobbing with a crowd of people who are all exactly like you.

My friend Mike, an accountant in San Francisco, makes some valuable comments on our previous discussions, here and here, of how long young professionals “should” be looking to stay in any given job or with a particular organization:

Mark, I think your questions are what goes through a lot minds in our generation. At the firm I work for (not in IR), we consider the new college graduates to be from even a newer generation, where these questions/concerns are even on shorter timelines. Companies are aware that their younger employees aren’t planning on punching the clock for 40 years and then retire with a pension. That said, I think it’s fair game for a company to review a resume and ask why you’ve changed jobs every 2 years. If there is a good reason, then that should be acceptable to the company if they are interested in hiring you. If a better opportunity comes along after 1 year or 2 years at a job, then you can’t consider the future scrutiny of your resume in your decision to move on. I personally think there is no hard and fast rule, but I would advise someone to not settle for a job (or stay in one) when their passion or happiness is at stake. But it might be a whole other discussion as to whether that is easy to do considering the state of our economy. Thanks Mark, and keep up the good work…

It’s great to get Mike’s take on this issue, one that comes from outside the international affairs field but is also completely applicable to all fields, I think. His point about it being fair game for a potential employer to ask about your job switches is a great one and makes for an interesting exercise: if you’re unsure about making a career change/leaving the job you’ve been in for only a short time, ask yourself how you would respond to an interviewer’s question about your job trajectory. Can you clearly and compellingly lay out the reasons why you left your current job for another one after only 6 months or a year or two years?  If so, then it is probably a solid career move and no future employer would fault you for jumping up and taking a better opportunity. But if you can’t clearly lay out those reasons, if it’s not evident to you why you are leaving one job for another, then maybe that move isn’t the best idea after all.

Of course, as Mike says, there is no hard and fast rule, and this is all just an exercise in discussion and conjecture, which is not a bad thing but certainly never ends with one final answer. I agree with Mike that I would never encourage you to refrain from making a career move because you worry how a mythical future interviewer might interpret your resume. Mike hits on a key theme of Working World, a theme I was just posting on, when he says, “I would advise someone to not settle for a job (or stay in one) when their passion or happiness is at stake.” Of course he’s also right when he points out that the state of the economy throws a wrench in everything and perhaps might make it necessary to hold on to a stable though not awesome job for longer than you might want, mainly for the paycheck. I’m all for passion and idealism, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve also got way too much of my dad in me not to argue for practicality too.

I got an email yesterday from Doostang.com in which they let me know that they, and they alone, have the recipe for my “job hunt secret sauce,” which was a relief because I’d been wondering. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Doostang is a job and career social networking site, in a similar vein as LinkedIn.com: a place to create an online resume and profile, connect with various webs of professionals (by field, by interest, by alma mater, etc.), and hopefully get some tangible results, i.e. a job.

The difference with Doostang is that, since its inception, it seems as though it’s been a bit more…selective. Unlike LinkedIn, which anyone can join, Doostang has made it clear that it is “an invite-only career community started at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT” and requires that someone who is already a part of Doostang invite you to become a member. Now it seems that one can join Doostang not only through an invitation, but also through either a company or university network—although both of those lists of corporations and schools are very short and very selective. Indeed, if you go to Doostang’s homepage, you’ll find that they boast that half a million elite graduates are using their site, which makes me wonder what it takes to be one of the elite.  Sounds oddly like it could be an online Skull and Bones (I’m not the only one who thinks so: check out Liz Strauss’ three reasons why she wishes she hadn’t joined Doostang).

I’ve had both LinkedIn and Doostang accounts/profiles for about two and a half years. I use LinkedIn regularly, but logged into Doostang for the first time in months only after they sent me the secret sauce email, which I pasted below after the jump. I have 102 connections on LinkedIn, but only 4 on Doostang. I always encourage young professionals to join LinkedIn, but have never done so for Doostang. For whatever reason, I’ve found LinkedIn to be the more enticing option of the two, the one that feels more like a natural community rather than a secret society. It could be just that more people I knew were using LinkedIn, and so my network there grew faster and thus it became more enticing to use. It could be that in the “jobs we think you’ll like, Mark” section of my profile, Doostang recommended I check out both hedge fund associate and risk analyst positions, proving that they actually don’t know shit about what I’ll like. But I also can’t help think that some of the downfalls of Doostang that Liz Strauss points out aren’t also part of the reason I haven’t been more attracted to Doostang as a career resource.

But I’m certainly no expert on either one of these resources. What has worked for you guys? Do you find one of these career social networking tools better than the other? Or is there another, better tool out there that I’m completely missing?

And now, after the jump, the long awaited Doostang secret sauce email:

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Ariel Schierer, an old colleague of mine at American University’s Center for Asian Studies and now a doctoral candidate at Columbia, attended Friday’s session and had this to say:

One thing I think applies to many of us exploring international exchange/education/development is that we are interested as much in who we want to become, as what we want to do. I think Working World’s discussion of professionalism is particularly relevant to this concept — and I think any sequel (I do hope you have a sequel) might profit from a discussion of shaping yourself and your field.

Ariel gets right at a theme that Sherry and I tried to bring out in Working World the book, and still attempt to highlight in all our sessions on careers. That theme relates to the fact that we start the book by noting that it, and careers in these fields, are for idealists.  It relates to the question Sherry so often encourages job seekers in these fields to consider: “How do you want to spend your days?” While figuring out what you want to do is very important, for sure, as Ariel says, thinking about who you want to be is the equally important, if not more important, question–for all job seekers, yes, but somehow I think it takes on particular importance in the fields of international education, exchange, and development. Or maybe I just want it to take on that particular importance. Regardless, it is an important thing when plotting your career, or even just looking for a job, to give at least some thought to not only the question of what you want to do, but also the questions of what kind of life you want to lead and what kind of person you want to be.

Lauren Jacobs reminds me of another great part of last Friday’s discussion that I forgot to include in my round-up:

To add, if I may… there was a good discussion about everyone’s favorite sport: networking. Networking doesn’t have to be an occasion where you put on your finest suit, defy your shyness, and dole out business cards. One suggestion was to network within the group of people you already know and work with. You can rely on the fact that people usually like to talk about their work experiences to keep conversation flowing. Ask current colleagues to lunch and find out their backgrounds/career trajectories. Or, keep an eye out for opportunities with friends – you’d be surprised how many people you know have positions like “recruitment associate.” As Sherry suggested, a group of people can look at many more job opportunities than one person alone.

This also reminds me of a comment during this networking discussion offered by Ayesha Quirke, now the Program Director at the Miami Council for International Visitors in Miami, FL. Ayesha and I met at the NCIV conference two years when I was still on staff at NCIV. To be quite honest, I don’t remember exactly how we met or why we got to talking, but we did and when I found out she was from Miami and looking for international job opportunities there, I thought MCIV would be a great resource. So Ayesha followed up with me and I put her in touch with Annette Alvarez, MCIV’s fantastic executive director. And from there, funny and fortuitous things happened.

Not that it always works out that cleanly but: 1) for god’s sake, follow up on random networking encounters when they happen (just a simple email) because 2) you never know who you’re going to meet where and what it might lead to.

In response to a recent post about online job resources, reader Adam Garrard comments:

Another worthwhile mention in my opinion is Idealist.org. It’s good to see what’s out there if you are like me, searching for a ‘way in,’ for want of a better phrase. There’s lots out there.

He’s absolutely right. Idealist is a fantastic resource for all nonprofit job seekers, including international education, exchange, and development. If you’re not checking Idealist already (and chances are good that you are), then start right away.

In latest issue of the Atlantic, Barbara Walraff offers a novel way to learn new languages: by reading the fine foreign print on clothing tags, cat food packages, product assembly instructions, and other things found around the house. I’m not sure knowing how to say “turbobrush”in Finnish and Greek is all that practical, but I suppose it never hurts in our fields to know as much in as many languages as possible.

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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