Working World

I recently ran across Upwardly Global, a unique career site designed to help “highly-skilled immigrants, refugees, and asylees reclaim their careers here in the United States and help American employers discover and understand this hidden talent pool.” While I presume that most of the readers of this blog (all 12 of them) are American citizens looking for international jobs and to build international careers,* for all you non-American readers of Working World, Upwardly Global strikes me as a useful job hunting, networking, and cultural assimilation tool.

And for “established” American professionals working in any field (international relations or otherwise), Upwardly Global is looking for mentors and advisees who can help immigrants swim the waters of the American professional environment. Meet someone from somewhere else. Establish more professional contacts. Help someone with their career. Sounds like a good gig.

*I probably shouldn’t assume this, especially given the fields we’re talking about here, but anyway.

The Foreign Service faces something of a crisis as baby boomers go into retirement: in the next decade, 60 percent of federal workers will reach retirement age, said this Washington Post article in 2006.  An even bigger problem, the Post article goes on to point out, could be this: that young people don’t necessarily want a career in traditional diplomacy.  It points to a Gallup survey that concluded internationally-minded folks of the ages of 18 and 29 think “the private sector offers more creativity and attracts the best minds.”*

In order to make itself more competitive and attractive amongst the array of specialized international NGOs, as well as to get the best candidates, the Foreign Service thought it might shake things up a bit:

In a proposed overhaul of its hiring process slated for next year [2007] and to be announced to employees in coming days, the State Department would weigh resumes, references and intangibles such as “team-building skills” in choosing who represents the United States abroad, according to three people involved in the process. The written test would survive, but in a shortened form that would not be treated as the key first hurdle it has been for more than 70 years.**

So how is the new test faring about a year in?  Andrew Curry thinks not so well. In his article in the October 2008 Foreign Affairs, he finds, after sitting for the new exam himself, that it is a far better judge of a candidate’s knowledge of management jargon than international affairs:

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The New York Times reports that an ever-increasing number of lawyers are headed to places like Doha, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Hong Kong, and Dubai:

As applications pour into places like Dubai, American firms are stoking the attraction of overseas work by downsizing at home….

Mr. Ahluwalia, 30, grew up in Dubai, went to law school in Michigan and began his career in New York. Now, he says, he sees a big push from young lawyers hoping to find work in the Middle East. “Even kids currently in law school are coming by Dubai for jobs,” he says. “I met a very enthusiastic candidate from a Chicago law school in his second year who basically flew to Dubai for four days and actually cold-called and made visits to a bunch of firms.”

While many are headed abroad because work has dried up in the U.S., it seems that many others also see the value of experience abroad for their careers:

For some lawyers, looking abroad for work is also a chance to evolve personally as well as professionally — as long as they have the requisite skills to stand out in increasingly competitive markets.

I’ll continue to crush on The Atlantic.  Henry Blodget’s cover story in the latest issue made me pensive:

Bubbles and their aftermaths aren’t all bad: the tech and Internet bubble, for example, helped fund the development of a global medium that will eventually be as central to society as electricity. Likewise, the latest bust will almost certainly lead to a smaller, poorer financial industry, meaning that many talented workers will go instead into other careers—that’s probably a healthy rebalancing for the economy as a whole.

It seems we should hope that some (or many) of these now-jobless, talented people will redirect their careers into international affairs, thus providing a boost to our work and catalyzing growth in the fields—although it occurs to me that those currently searching for a job in the fields would not necessarily welcome a new influx of talented job seekers to compete with. But before you despair, consider this from an interview by James Fallows of Gao Xiqing, “the man who oversees $200 billion of China’s $2 trillion in dollar holdings.” Gao says, when talking about Wall Street jobs and the possible rebalancing of wealth as a result of so many lost jobs:

I have to say it: you have to do something about pay in the financial system. People in this field have way too much money. And this is not right….

Individually, everyone needs to be compensated. But collectively, this directs the resources of the country. It distorts the talents of the country. The best and brightest minds go to lawyering, go to M.B.A.s. And that affects our country, too! Many of the brightest youngsters come to me and say, “Okay, I want to go to the U.S. and get into business school, or law school.” I say, “Why? Why not science and engineering?” They say, “Look at some of my primary-school classmates. Their IQ is half of mine, but they’re in finance and now they’re making all this money.”

Perhaps what Gao’s suggesting is that the current economic crisis will help (I’ll say it at the risk of sounding socialist) “spread the wealth,” or, more specifically, shift some resources from those fields that have typically been lousy with them (banking, finance, law, etc.) to those that have always been thirsty for them, namely nonprofits and international affairs organizations.

So is it possible that the economic crisis will result in both an influx of new talent and new resources for international affairs (and other underfunded sectors)? You may disagree, and you would probably be right in doing so, as my thoughts on financial matters are about as credible and coherent as Nicolas Fehn’s political commentary.  But anyway.

Lindsey Pollak suggests Australia as a solid option for gaining work experience abroad:

College students have been studying abroad for decades, but in today’s increasingly global economy, international experience is becoming more and more valuable to employers. When you add the fact that job prospects in the U.S. are not exactly great right now, you may determine that it’s the right time to consider working or studying overseas. If so, I encourage you to add the Land Down Under to your list. New visa rules between the U.S. and Australia make it easier than ever.

I’m back from a few weeks traveling in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (for a friend’s wedding in Bali first, then just for some traveling, since once you’ve gone that far, you’ve got to make the most of it), and my body is in that strange and very rare place where it thinks that being up at 2:30 a.m. is a very good idea indeed. A few random thoughts on my travels before we get back to the business of the blog:

1) The election. Everywhere I went, everyone I met had an opinion on the election. And what I pointed out in a previous post certainly held true—the vast majority (in fact all people whom I met in the three countries I visited, whether they were cab drivers, hotel staff, food vendors, fellow travelers, or random folks on the street) supported Barack Obama. This did not surprise, but it was striking to experience the phenomenon in person and only further reinforced for me the direction our country needs to head.

I found out that Obama had probably officially won the election from a newspaper vendor on the streets of Penang, Malaysia.

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As you might imagine because I am the senior partner in this intergenerational dialogue with Mark, blogging is a new venture for me.  Writing in a more formal style comes more naturally.  Nonetheless, I suspect I will adapt to – and ultimately relish – this spontaneous style of communication (like I have a choice ). 

I am posting an engaging article that appeared last week in The Washington Post.  Entitled “For This Generation, Vocations of Service,” it speaks to the basic assumption of Working World – that our readers want to make a difference in this turbulent world of ours.  Mark and I wrote a book for idealists – people who want to change the world – make it better.  So much of the emphasis in our culture in recent decades has been on short term gratification and material success.  Yet those who are most happy are, as Albert Schweitzer phrased it, those “who have learned to serve.”   

His is one of the three quotations we highlight in the beginning of the book.  Enjoy reading about the social entrepreneurs highlighted in the Post article.

After my last post on the international character of the historic 2008 presidential election, I now leave the U.S. to observe things from afar (after having just cast my absentee ballot for Barack Obama).  No, I’m not going to observe in any official capacity—instead, I’m headed off to the beaches of Bali.  My good friends Derek and Karina are getting married on the Indonesian island this Saturday and my girlfriend and I will be there to celebrate.  Then, after going all that way, we figured we’d hang around a bit, so we’ll spend two weeks exploring Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.  Starting tomorrow, I’m off-line and off-blog for two solid weeks, returning on November 12.  Sherry will keep things under control in my absence.

I leave you with a thought-provoking article from Andrew Sullivan on why he blogs. The essay is Sullivan’s first attempt, after more than eight years as a blogger, to grapple with the meaning of blogging as a medium.  He tries to define the unique nature of blogging versus other writing forms:

No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

He makes a persuasive argument that blogging is not the death of traditional, long-form writing, but rather makes this kind of writing that much more necessary:

A blogger will air a variety of thoughts or facts on any subject in no particular order other than that dictated by the passing of time. A writer will instead use time, synthesizing these thoughts, ordering them, weighing which points count more than others, seeing how his views evolved in the writing process itself, and responding to an editor’s perusal of a draft or two. The result is almost always more measured, more satisfying, and more enduring than a blizzard of posts. The triumphalist notion that blogging should somehow replace traditional writing is as foolish as it is pernicious. In some ways, blogging’s gifts to our discourse make the skills of a good traditional writer much more valuable, not less. The torrent of blogospheric insights, ideas, and arguments places a greater premium on the person who can finally make sense of it all, turning it into something more solid, and lasting, and rewarding.

Read the essay.  It is infinitely worth your time.  See you in two weeks.

If you watched SNL this past Saturday (it’s okay to admit it—the show has suddenly become relevant again in this election season), you probably saw that during musical guest Coldplay’s performance, lead singer Chris Martin wore a white band around his right arm on which were the handwritten words “Barack Obama” (no video available yet, so until I can find it, above in its place is an inexplicably hilarious skit of Andy Samberg impersonating Mark Wahlberg—think of it as a mental health break). Seeing as Martin and his Coldplay bandmates are British and clearly not voting on November 4, his armband was a not so subtle reminder that American elections, and especially this year’s elections, are worldwide affairs.

For all of us working in international education, exchange, and development, one of the issues at the heart of the 2008 election is the United States’ image throughout the world. The work that we do, whether it be facilitating student and professional exchange programs, advising international students on a university campus, or working to improve education and communications infrastructure in a developing country, has at its core an interest in presenting the United States and its people at their best. And while most of would say that we are not in the business of convincing others around the world that the United States is great (or the best, or even good), we are in the business of helping to provide them with the firsthand experience of our country and its people so that they can make their own, informed decision, one that is not based on inaccurate stereotypes. Our next president will go a long way toward either continuing the downward spiral of anti-Americanism that has been persistent and ever-growing these past eight years, or toward restoring the U.S.’ image and standing as an admirable, moral leader worthy of being followed.

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A fitting follow-up to my last post on the evacuation of the Peace Corps from Bolivia.  A nonprofit group called More Peace Corps is leading a campaign to reinvigorate and expand the Peace Corps.  From a 2001 speech by Sargent Shriver, driving force behind the creation of the Peace Corps:

Our present world cries out for a new Peace Corps – a vastly improved, expanded, and profoundly deeper enterprise…I’m not defending the old Peace Corps – I’m attacking it!  We didn’t go far enough!  Our dreams were large, but our actions were small.  We never really gave the goal of ‘World Wide Peace’ an overwhelming commitment.  Nor did we establish a clear, inspiring vision for attaining it.

A troubling yet still hopeful article in today’s Washington Post detailing the Peace Corps’ recent evacuation of all volunteers from Bolivia. Troubling because the Peace Corps, the one engine of American government that has long been viewed as a representation of all that is best about the United States and its people, is increasingly seen as an intelligence gathering arm of the U.S. government:

“The less presence of the United States in Bolivia, the better,” Juan Ramón Quintana, Bolivia’s minister of the presidency, said in an interview. “We believe the security policies of the United States have damaged the constitutional rights of the students of the Peace Corps, by tasking some of them to do intelligence work.”

Yet still hopeful because more than 15 of the 113 evacuated volunteers decided to return to their posts in Bolivia of their own volition to finish the worked they’d started. And of those who were unable or decided not to return, it is clear that the majority of them do not agree with this worrying slide of the Peace Corps into government propaganda and intelligence gathering machine. From one of those volunteers forced to leave:

“Peace Corps, unfortunately, has become another weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal,” volunteer Sarah Nourse of Mechanicsville, Md., wrote in a widely circulated e-mail. The Peace Corps withdrawal “is one more chance for the US to maintain its tough image and hit back, harder.

“More than ever, Bolivia needs living examples of real Americans,” Nourse went on. “They need someone to help, not for financial gains but because the task exists and because it’s the right thing to do.”

I think it’s on all of us working in and supportive of the fields of international education, exchange, and development to ensure that the Peace Corps and all similar exchange and development programs remain the powerful forces for mutual understanding that they have always been.

This quote from Rick Steves, the globetrotting author of more than 30 bestselling guidebooks and the host of several public access TV and radio shows, who came to Georgetown yesterday to speak on the topic of “Travel as a Political Act.”

Rick began his talk with an endorsement of the importance of travel that I think strikes a particular chord in this historic election season:

There is so much fear today. The flip side of fear is understanding. I’m not afraid, not because I’m courageous but because I’ve been there.

For too many people, Steves believes, travel is all about “seeing if you can eat five meals a day and still snorkel when you get into port.” He sees, however, as the title of his lecture indicates, travel as having a much deeper purpose. It should allow us to get to know a people, a nation, and a culture, to broaden our historical, political, and social horizons.

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In the New York Times, Alina Tugend describes the trouble with networking:

Networking brings up many of the same emotions as dating—fear of rejection, fear of looking like an idiot, fear of overstepping boundaries, fear of failing. And even if you can overcome those anxieties, you have to know how to do it right. Networking is more than meeting and chatting with lots of people, more than swapping business cards.

I couldn’t agree more. As I describe in Working World, networking for me (at least in the traditional sense of attending events and pressing the flesh) has always been a panic-inducing endeavor. Tugend offers some useful and practical advice, especially when she admonishes job seekers to be realistic in their networking—”don’t set yourself up to fail” by saying you’re going to attend two networking events per day or meet 20 people at each event. Such expectations are unrealistic and will ultimately be counterproductive.

But I think Tugend misses a key point, especially when it comes to networking in the fields of international education, exchange, and development—it is beneficial to network at all times, not just when and because you need a job.

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The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the State Department just launched its International Education Week 2008 website. IEW is November 16-20 this year—get involved! I know I will…which is a nifty segue into letting you know that I will be speaking on the topic of careers in international education, exchange, and development at my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, on November 18. More details on that event to come…

I think it’s true that we often view networking as a bottom-up proposition and not the other way around. That is, us younger people often ask our older, more experienced colleagues for their advice, their help, and their contacts, but those older colleagues (at least in my mind) would never come to us kids for any kind of assistance. A week and a half ago, I discovered this to be most decidedly not the case.

I had coffee with a colleague who is twenty years my senior. I met this colleague a few years ago when I was working with the National Council for International Visitors. At that time, he had been working for a large and well-known international exchange and development organization in DC for nearly 15 years. Though our paths crossed several times—at NCIV conferences, at joint advocacy meetings on the Hill during we which we argued gamely, and unsuccessfully, for more funds to be devoted to international exchange—when I left NCIV for Georgetown a year and a half ago, we weren’t exactly close.

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