10 Years of Internships at the United Nations
Celebrating the long-standing partnership between the Oxford University Internship Office and the United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an international organisation that tackles global challenges and deliver results for those most in need. Over the past 10 years, the UN has been partnering with the Careers Service's Internship Office to offer valuable hands-on work experience opportunities for University of Oxford students through our internship programmes. Dr Fiona Whitehouse, Head of the Internship Office, highlights the importance of the partnership:
"With mounting global challenges to address, our partnership with the UN is more important than ever. The UN provides our students with invaluable opportunities to learn about global strategic considerations. The Oxford students, in turn, share their energy and focus and help the UN shape policies and actions.
The Internship Office at the University of Oxford has been deeply impressed with the outcomes of this partnership and recognises its particular importance in these unsteady times."
UN representative
A representative from the UN shares his view on the partnership and how Oxford University students supported the United Nations Development Programme throughout the years.
Jason Pronyk, UNDP staff on assignment with Division of Resilience and Solutions, UNHCR
"The benefits of having collaborated with the University of Oxford’s Career Services by hosting young graduates in different capacities across continents remain reciprocal. The host entity provides demanding tasks, with high expectations and reasonable mentoring. In a quest for new experiences, training, job and life skills, the interns are often put in front of complex portfolios expected demonstrate initiative, leadership and bring new insights.
This collaboration, one among many partnerships between the academy and the workplace has been sustained for over a decade, beginning in 2011 when two 2 interns were deployed to UNDP headquarters. In response to Executive Board evaluation recommendations, Alan’s (Physics DPhil, 2012) curiosity for multilateralism made him an ideal candidate to design indicators to assess the impact of policy advisory services.
Further afield and in the wake of the Arab Spring, Wladimir (2014) a PPE graduate and Moritz (2017), helped shape a resilience response to the Syria Crisis, by modelling heat maps overlaying refugee concentration and municipal poverty rates. Interning at a UNDP Resilience Facility in Jordan, the interns generated evidence to better understand the impact of protracted crisis on host countries, Jordan and Lebanon in this case. Examples of the benefits of this collaboration on the individual and the institution are multiple. The internships enabled young graduates with an interest in multilateralism and different aspects of global cooperation, to take a step forward in making the world a better place. In this period, we also witnessed large UN organizations conclude landmark and long overdue policy measures to compensate interns for this work.
It is a moment to take stock. The global pandemic overturned how we source, identify and acquire new skills and opportunities. An estimated 15 million people died during the first 2 years of the global pandemic, millions lost jobs, including essential workers who carried on through the pandemic, think of nurses in New York, Rio or Calcutta. It also widened pre-existing gaps, hitting the historically disadvantaged more. Arguably, it permanently disrupted the workplace, leaving some to reimagine their relationship with work. According to UNICEF, the transition to digital learning is not a choice for those without access to internet, personal computers, mobile phones, or electricity. Evidence indicates the pandemic prompted career shifts and a renewed interest in gaining skills to be ahead future zoonotic diseases.
As we prepare for another summer and the deployment of interns, Oxford’s Careers Service among others, provide an opportunity for the curious, with enthusiasm and no tolerance for apathy to make the world a better place."
Former interns
Former interns also share their experience on their internships with the UN, and the influence that these had on their career paths.
Owen Brooks, Customer Success Manager at Depict
"My time in Jordan was incredible. I worked for United Nations Volunteers within the UNDP Regional Office, which manages a broad portfolio of countries from Somalia to Kazakhstan. I was pleasantly surprised at the extent of responsibility I was given. My biggest work highlight was definitely working on improving vocational training in the West Bank and Gaza through leveraging big data - in collaboration with Palestine's largest private sector firm, the World Bank, and the German government.
The country was unbelievably welcoming, with an amazing amount of natural and historic beauty. My favourite spot was definitely Wadi Mujib, a hidden oasis off the Dead Sea, but I also managed to tick off a bunch more items on my bucket list - Petra, Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea, diving in the Red Sea, Jerash, and Jerusalem!
I think the internship opened up a whole series of doors for which I’m forever grateful. It encouraged me to dive further into the world of government. I worked part-time for the UK Cabinet Office during my final year at Oxford, briefing civil servants on the latest social media trends. After university, I joined McKinsey, a management consulting firm, where I focussed a lot on public institutions - from public health supply chains during COVID-19 to the future of public transport.
It was ultimately another idea from my time in Jordan that captured my imagination: the power of AI. I’m now based in Stockholm with an exciting machine learning start-up called Depict.
Oxford is awesome for the wealth and breadth of opportunities on offer - I don’t think you can go far wrong if you have a strong bias to just saying 'yes' more. I dove into a pretty eclectic mix: everything from think tanks in London, to micro-finance in Indonesia, to the National Trust HQ in Swindon, to sneaker retailing in Japan. All turned out to be incredible adventures that have shaped who I am today.
I’m also extremely appreciative for the Crankstart Scholarship (formerly Moritz-Heyman) programme that let me do this!"
Anastasia Gorbatova, Coordination Officer at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
"The initial internship with the UN has provided me with a great opportunity to learn the job in a crisis setting (I did mine with UNDP in Palestine). I was exposed to different portfolios, worked with all sections and had an opportunity to contribute to the agency’s work. Besides, it equipped me with transferrable and necessary vocational skills, my internship also allowed me to meet new people and to demonstrate my professional expertise, which in the future served a good foundation for the recommendation letters I received for my future work assignments. My initial internship has become a founding stone in my career, as it exposed me to the country context and provided with new expertise. When later, I applied for my UNV post with OCHA in Palestine, this internship added many 'plusses' to my CV, as I have already been in the country, knew the context and specificity of work. I have already worked with UNV programme (which is operated by UNDP), and I was already known for the results I demonstrated. I believe, I would not be able to build my career as successful as it is now, without that experience of being an intern.
My advice to future interns is to first and foremost be open to opportunities and not to give up when facing the 20th in a row rejection. Joining the UN is a long and frustrating process, but it is definitely worth it. When you got your internship, do not focus on work only: speak to the team, to the cross-functional teams, meet new people and learn as much as you can about the job. Internship is a great opportunity to understand if the UN work is for you. It is also a great opportunity to learn new skills. Therefore, do not hesitate to take on more tasks, which will significantly strengthen your CV for future applications.
Second, have a clear plan of what do you want and why. This will help you to navigate your internship and make it as stable foundation for your future career. And third, talk to Career Service experts while you are in Oxford.
Careers Service at the University of Oxford have played possibly the key role in my current career. I took all the opportunities provided: advice sessions, career fairs, workshops, and attended the talks with invited speakers. Although I benefitted from all of them, I believe the most effective for me have become advice sessions.
I approached the Career Service, when felt completely hopeless and desperate as my Oxford year was coming to an end and I all I had was 247 rejections from the UN. I took about 3 or 4 advice sessions, where the Career Service experts assisted in reviewing my CV, advised on Cover Letter, provided guidance to the interviews and supported with overall mentoring. These sessions helped me to stop chaotically running through Inspira (UN job application web-site), plan my career strategy, map the available opportunities and choose the best options for me, which in the end worked even better than planned."
Chris Zabilowicz, Judicial Assistant to The Hon. Mr. Justice Hogan at the Supreme Court of Ireland
"While studying for my BA degree in Jurisprudence at Worcester College (2015-2019) I had the privilege of undertaking a four-month internship at the UNDP in Amman, Jordan, which was generously funded by the Crankstart Scholarship (formerly Moritz-Heyman). I am delighted to have been asked to share my experience on the internship with you – it is a professional and personal highlight that I still absolutely cherish even several years after graduating.
The internship itself involved working for the United Nations Volunteers Programme, a branch of the UNDP which is responsible for mobilising volunteers to tackle development challenges. The Amman office where I worked is the hub for the UNV’s operations in the Middle East and Europe CIS. During the internship, I was responsible for organising the Arab States’ launch of the State of the World’s Volunteerism Report – the UN’s flagship publication on volunteerism. My responsibilities included drafting concept notes for panels, inviting VIP speakers, putting together a work-plan, and authoring the ‘Call to Action’ which the regional directors from the 28 UN Agencies who were in attendance – as well as foreign dignitaries from Member States – were asked to commit to. The work was at times very enjoyable, at times very tedious, but I think how I found the work overall is reflected in the fact that I agreed to continue to work on the launch remotely after returning to Oxford. This led to me being invited to attend the launch itself in Cairo, Egypt, a few months later, and to be contracted by the UNV to work as a speechwriter and rapporteur at the UN Forum on Sustainable Development in Geneva the following year.
Importantly, however, the internship was so much more than the soundbites I can use for my CV and in interviews: it facilitated a huge amount of personal growth too. I learned a lot about Jordanian culture, for example, through a weekend 'job' I got attending Jordanian weddings with a taxi driver/musician who used me, in exchange for free travel and food, as part of his band’s ploy to encourage people to dance. I also made friends with incredible local Jordanians and international work colleagues who I remain in touch with today (I recently travelled back to Jordan and stayed with my old landlord and his family!). And here lies my advice to current students and future interns: you should consider internships as being as much about personal growth as it is about adding something to your CV.
Today I work as a Judicial Assistant at the Supreme Court of Ireland and intend on practicing as a barrister, a far cry from the work that I did in Jordan. But strangely my internship in Jordan is something I have brought up more than anything else in interviews – it taught me about working with people from different cultures, having independence over a project/workload, and taking the initiative to create your own interesting work when you feel like you have hit a 'work lull'. I am certain you will learn similar lessons on any internship you undertake, and I cannot recommend doing one enough."