Job Hunt: Career Panel Edition

Earlier this week, I attended a career panel featuring professionals in the field of Development Practice. Each panelist spoke about his/her own experience as SIPA graduates working in development (in very different ways). The panelists were: Annie Feighery, Co-Founder and CEO of mWater; Judith Kallick Russell, M&E Consultant; and Manav Sachdeva, Civil Affairs Officer with the UN in Afghanistan. So as I mentioned, quite different career paths there. Manav started out by telling everyone to: "Wake Up! Wake up wake up wake up."


He meant, "wake up" to the fact that we need to get jobs at the end of the year. He implored us all to think of May 17th as a hard deadline, and to work 3-4 hours a day towards securing a job before then. Be honest with yourself about your needs, and go get a job.

Now, most of the students in attendance were already quite anxious about that deadline, and are searching for jobs quite frantically. The other panelists also chimed in with helpful advice, such as Annie's advice to acquire the skills that will get you hired in your field. In her eyes, these included language skills and coding skills (as she put it, if you know HTML5, she would hire you right now; it is nearly impossible to find someone who knows HTML5 who is not already hired).

Quick aside: I made an effort to start learning to code last year via the site Codeacademy. It is an excellent site, and I played around with some javascript. I also used some coding in a class last semester, and wrote about creating customizable Google maps on your own website elsewhere. But my learning was very, um, indiscriminate, and I need to recommit myself this year. So I am taking another shot at learning HTML so people like Annie will want to hire me! Once again, I recommend the site (some screenshot examples are below). And as another aside, I am working on my French skills a bit more, and have found some useful internet resources, like memrise and trying to understand Engrenages.

Codeacademy's lessons

and the results

There were other useful tidbits, like the difference between networking in person and via social media (Annie suggested I try the hashtag #HireChrisToday to take my job search "viral"), as well as the usefulness of moving to a location before getting a job (recommended if you know what you want, but only if you have at least one person there who can open a door for you or provide a couch on which to crash). While I did not leave with new concrete job leads, the session provided some useful food-for-thought. Now that I am "awake," it is back to the world of networking / informational interviews / job listings / etc.