04/14/2014
Dr. Carrie Antal responses to SIDES students questions about career and professional development in international development field.
About Dr. Antal
Dr. Carrie Antal is a SIDES alumni currently working as the USAID's Education Officer in Pakistan. Dr. Antal worked for the USAID Rwanda before moving to Pakistan, and is one of SIDES success stories. She has developed a successful career in international development, and is committed to providing quality educational services to the marginalized communities living in different parts of the world.
She has generously offered to help SIDES students with their academic and professional development as well as with planning their careers. She has also offered to have SIDES people interested in working in Pakistan stay at her place (a spacious 4-bedroom house in a beautiful neighborhood in Islamabad). This is a wonderful opportunity for you to learn from her professional and academic experiences. Her continued commitment to SIDES and FSU is greatly appreciated. Please email her at [email protected] ,and do not forget to thank her for her support. Please find below Dr. Antal responses to some of the students who contacted her.
Note: Some inquires were summarized and presented in question format.
1)What made you stay in the SIDES program after your MS? Do you think it was worth it?
Staying for me was mainly because I thought a PhD could only be helpful, and because I also didn't think I had strong enough qualifications for the job hunt. But I didn't ever actually test the latter assumption, and there are drawbacks to the doctoral, since having it without enough work experience makes you overqualified for many entry level jobs but under-qualified for mid level ones. I think I would have benefited from at least giving myself 6 months to job hunt, most likely by moving to Washington DC and networking intensively there, and then giving myself at least three years of work experience before revisiting the doctoral idea.
2) Is a Ph.D necessary for the education officer position that you are currently doing? If you don't mind could you explain what an Education Officer does in a few words?
A PhD is not necessary and doesn't figure in salary determination - only previous salary is considered, so in my case working before the PhD would have definitely been beneficial. It's hard to describe what an Education officer does. We are diplomats and engage in policy dialogue with the host country government ministry of education officials to improve education policy and systems. We also work with them to agree on mutual priorities that we then design into projects we fund and manage but that are implemented by a competitive process. Unfortunately, USAID is no longer hiring ed officers, but if you are willing to work cross sectoral, we are still hiring for program officer positions. You can look for the periodic job announcements on jobs.gov
3) Did you participate in any internships or other experiences that you feel gave you a 'leg up' when you began your career?If so, where?
As a student I conducted and published research, worked as a teacher, worked with a professor as a consultant on several program evaluation projects, volunteered as a fundraiser at United Way, and worked as a grant writing assistant as LSI. All of that helped me get this job. More classes will not help you get started in your career as a practitioner - practical experience will get you farther. If you can get a job with the Department of Education or LSI before you graduate, that will provide helpful experience. The key is to look at job descriptions on sites like idealist.org or irex, see what sounds appealing, see what skills and education those jobs require, and then see if there is anything you can do (paid or unpaid) that will allow you to gain those skills and set you apart from your peers, who you will be competing against in the job market.
4)In comparison to other more developed and/or better ran international development focused programs, do you believe your educational experience is at par with your colleagues?
I think your education experience is what you make it. Unless a student is planning to become an academic, classes are only a small portion of the learning opportunities to pursue in grad school. Those opportunities need to be sought out, and sometimes it's simply a matter of letting everyone know what you're interested in, and what kind of opportunities you're looking for, in order for those opportunities to be presented to you. Being proactive and exercising leadership are key to grad school, the job hunt and a successful career.
5). Which career opportunities are available in the field of international development, and what is the best approach to it?
My views are just one perspective and I encourage you to continue to reach out, whether to other alums, peers or professionals in the organizations that interest you. Attending CIES every year (even if you don't present) is a critical piece of this since it will give you the best opportunity all year to learn about all the major organizations working in development and provide you with unparalleled chances to build relationships and professional friendships (the dreaded "networking") that will eventually improve your chances to break into this field.
A few key points to consider early on:
The majority of jobs are and will continue to be on projects focusing on populations in Africa. That means having French under your belt is helpful; Arabic is a good alternative if you're interested in working on projects based in the Middle East.
There are a couple of general skills that are very helpful in opening up job opportunities. The main one is program evaluation. If you can take the courses and get involved in at least one (most likely as an assistant to a professor's consultancy - ask around at the college of Education and make your interest known and you will find an opportunity eventually) before you graduate, it will truly help. Statistics is another - to be able to understand and perform different types of basic statistical analyses will be invaluable. You should be able to build skills in is with FCRR. Finally, grant writing is absolutely critical. Even if you are not drawn to it, every NGO lives off grants and proposals, and the skills in both cases are the same. LSI is a good place to gain experience in this.
You would also want to identify the major employers, through conferences, word of mouth and research on development job websites. Big names to research include INternational Rescue Committee, Catholic Relief Services, Chemonics, Creative Associates, Education Development Center, Save the Children, FHI360 etc. Then you would want to start investigating what jobs are out there. Go to the websites of specific companies and the larger job sites and read the job descriptions and the qualifications, especially including the specific skills, then compare your own qualifications with those and see what you need to build. Meet people at conferences and ask your friends to introduce you to others working in these places. Cultivate professional relationships with them on Linked In. Take opportunities, even if you aren't sure how they will pan out or what direction they might take your career one day.
Another suggestion is to find out which contractors do the kind of work you're interested in, and then contact people there to find out about internships. Take a quarter off and go work there for free. Having this practical experience on your CV is what will get you to the interviews later. It's good to apply rough the official channels for internships, but this should be coupled with direct contact to people in the organization, and don't be afraid to use your friends' contacts! Linked In is popular with good reason. You can join certain groups on there and draw attention to yourself by actively contributing to discussions and engaging group members one on one. It really can be a helpful tool for networking. Even better is when you meet key people at conferences, then continue to engage them on linked in afterward.
6). Is it so challenging to get into the development education field?
I feel breaking into development work can be tough, but once you're in, it's easy to stay in. It's like a close knit family spread out across the world. You need to invest lots of time in building these skills and relationships while you're in school - don't wait till you're about to graduate - as this will greatly ease the transition. From student to professional.
7). From your experience, aside from reading, analyzing, and writing extensively in the first stages of doctoral program, how else can I gain appropriate experience?
Throughout my MS and Doctoral studies at FSU (2004-2010), we as students were interested in developing opportunities to build job skills and knowledge that went beyond the traditional academic path. We knew not all of us were 100% certain which direction we would want to take our careers over the course of our lives, and recognized (but maybe not fully) that our field is a complex, cross-sectoral and unique one where it isn't unusual for career paths to weave back and forth between the academic and the practitioner spheres. Professors write grants to do development work and consult; practitioners conduct research, hire professors as consultants and continue to present and publish. That means the skills we wanted to develop before hitting the job market were diverse and went beyond what we could develop in the classroom.
One of the steps we took toward this during my student years was to establish the TREC student group, which at the time was envisioned as a means to bring together students and professors interested in cross-sectoral international development/education research. TREC is still going strong and that many of these "extracurricular" aspects of the program continue to develop, and it's exciting to learn what a strong lead you all have taken in ensuring your graduate experience includes these learning opportunities outside the classroom. To that end, we recruited members from across campus and tried to pair up the more senior doctoral students with incoming doc and MS students to provide mentoring in areas like conference presentation and publication. A sub-group of us also got together and wrote and submitted a grant proposal to a solicitation posted on www.grants.gov by the Department of State, and many of us worked on grant writing and research at LSI in opportunities our network would unearth from semester to semester.
8). How should I prepare myself professionally and academically to be a practitioner in the field of health education?
In my experience, most projects that involve health education have staff that are specialists in health first and foremost, which some skills in education and community mobilization - not the other way around. That means if you want to strengthen your skills, you might want to consider second masters or at least an official minor in public health.
9). How can I find a proper position in NGOs. I am in my last semester in the SIDES Master's program and I am so much interested to work for NGOs such as USAID? What steps should I take to prepare for positions in NGO's? Which opportunities are available particularly in Asia and for the U.S. based NGOs?
While you're at FSU, there are good opportunities to build those skills. I know you are planning to graduate soon, so maybe you would consider extending your time and working on campus with LSI, FCRR, the Florida Department of Education or elsewhere to gain more practical skills. Also consider volunteering - you can offer your services for free as an intern at any of the NGOs based in Tallahassee, like United Way or Habitat for Humanity (or something more closely linked to your interest area) to build skills in fundraising and grant writing, the latter of which is very close to project design.
If you are specifically interested in Asian countries, research to find out what the major trends are in each country. In Pakistan and Afghanistan it's basic education quality and access, especially for girls, whereas in Vietnam it's improving the relevance and quality of university degree programs and technical colleges.
Asia is relatively developed with lots of middle income countries, so there is less donor aid coming into the region. Public-private partnerships are big, so research corporate social responsibility and look at the corporate foundations that work in that region. MasterCard, Coca Cola and Intel are good places to start. Having experience in that area would be very helpful, and there may be opportunities to get some exposure as a volunteer there in Tallahassee. It doesn't matter if this experience is not directly linked to Asian development, since the skills are the same regardless of the region. Volunteer work with the Florida Congress would also be valuable because NGOs are often engaged in policy dialogue with host country governments. Learn to work with large budgets and submit a proposal to a RFP on grants.gov to gain more direct program design experience.
I have also connected you with a fellow SIDES doctoral alumni in the program the same time as me and also from China. She launch a successful career in academia, and she may be able to provide you a more China-specific perspective on employment opportunities in our field.
10). What are your suggestions with regard to where to start an entry-level NGO job hunting. I am looking for positions that emphasize the design and implementation of international development or multicultural programs or projects in Asian countries. I have a graduate certificate in program evaluation from our College of Education. How can I make use of what I've learned to make a difference to related field.
It's a pleasure to connect with you as well! I'm excited to have the opportunity to learn more about you and the work that students like yourself are undertaking in SIDES in preparation for your entry into the development education field. You've expressed interest in the practitioner side of our work and NGOs in particular, and I've found it to be a wonderfully rewarding, interesting and motivating career path. It requires diverse kinds of skills to both enter into that sphere and to succeed professionally, and these can vary depending on the type of work within NGOs that might interest you. I'd recommend that you send me your CV and describe the kinds of positions within NGOs that interest you. That way I can provide you suggestions on the kinds of skills and knowledge it could be helpful to develop before and during the job hunt.
If your questions is not answered through the information given here, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Antal at [email protected], with subject line Career in International Education. Be sure to introduce yourself as a SIDES student. You can also contact me at [email protected] and I will do the best to help you. Good luck in your career aspirations!
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