The UN Job List helps people finding a UN job by listing known UN vacancies in an easy to search database with powerful alert tool. The following summarizes frequently asked questions about the UN Job List.
Why did you create the UN Job List?
I believe that outstanding people contribute to an effective UN System. If you are committed to the UN the UN Job List is a great tool to help you find your spot in the UN system.
What does UN Job List do?
The page automatically collects vacancies from UN organisations, stores information about them in a database and lists these job opportunities for you. You can search the list for duty station, organisation and / or any keyword in the title of the post.
How does the UN Job List work?
Just browse the page or do a dedicated search. The page is set up to support RSS feeds so you can easily include the page results in your favourite RSS reader or your Google homepage. Even better, you can define your own custom search and bookmark the results page and thus easily do your search again later. The page stores your search query in the URL, so every time you visit the page the search will be performed again – this is a great way to stay on top of the vacancies in your most desired duty station, your favourite organisation, your area of expertise or any combination of them. Of course there is an RSS feed for the search results pages, too.
Is the UN Job List an official UN service?
There is no official UN site which lists all UN jobs. Be skeptic of any website claiming to be the official portal having all vacancies of the UN system and/or promising easy applications and worry free ways into the UN system.
The way it works is that pretty much every organisation in the UN System has their own official job website but there is no official way to see all UN vacancies in one place. There is an ICSC website listing all kinds of job sites in the UN but it is rather cumbersome to go through all of them individually. So in a nutshell the UN Job List is not an official UN service. However, HR professionals in the UN system see the need for having a comprehensive view over different vacancies and thus have worked with me directly to get their vacancies onto the UN Job List.
Which organisations are covered by the UN Job List?
The UN Job List covers UN organisations as per the UN organisational chart. All major organisations from this chart are listed on the UN Job List. For a complete list of organisations and the amount of their vacancies have a look at the Organisation overview page.
Does the UN Job List cover internal vacancies?
No, the UN Job List covers externally accessible vacancies only. So the jobs should be relevant for everyone. However, depending on the organisation there may be restrictions (such as vacancies being open only to certain nationals etc.).
Future development
I’m continuously expanding the UN Job List. But if you have any suggestion on what to improve, which organisations to add or any other general comment, just drop me a line via the comment box below.
51 Responses to “UN Job List: About the UN Job List”
net schlecht Gruß Max
Super praktisch, vielen Dank!
Fantastic tool! Great job!
Congratulations for the very useful and handy web page.
What about adding IOM (International Organization for Migration)?
It would be nice to link also IOM London office: http://www.iomlondon.org should be the web site, if I remember well.
Thanks,
Cris.
Hi Cris,
thanks for your suggestion. The IOM is (partly) on the page already: Check it out at: http://unjoblist.org/lists/Organisation/IOM
You can see all organisations on my page at:
http://unjoblist.org/lists/Organisation/
But the page you pointed me to is not on my list yet and also I just saw that I dont get the National / General Service posts yet. So I will add the IOM London and the other pages once I get some time (I’m quite busy at work these days).
Thanks again… Also, if there are more organisations out there – keep those suggestions coming
Hi Sebastien,
Very good initiative.
But I think that you can it by making the website more attractrative.You can also ,put a countrer to have an idea about how many times people are coming to visite your website.
Take care and all the best in this initiative
Thanks for this very useful website. Working as an independent consultant, it’s good to be informed about advertised consulting opportunities with the UN. Information about consulting opportunities with bilateral donors would, of course, also be very interesting.
Great job, Sebastian!!
Really great and practical, congratulations !
Hi there,
Congratulations on your website. My work involves assisting expatriate spouses/partners of UN staff find vacancies in the UN system and elsewhere.
The issue is that the vacancy must be one that is open to external applicants (or in other words not only open to applicants already in the UN system). Is it possible to filter your results with this criteria?
Many thanks
Filip
Dear Sirs/Madam,
I am very interested to join the UN Agencies/Special Agencencies to develop my career starting in my home town, Unfortunately, there is no any vacancy annoucement here in your vacancy list on Ethiopian Development Projects. Let me know please, if you have any.
Best regards,
Hi Aregay,
just to make sure we are on the same page: I (and that is me personally) will never put up any UN vacancy. It is only the UN organisations that put them up. All I (or my page) does is to display the UN jobs in a nice format – that’s all
In other words: I’m NOT affiliated with / speaking on behalf of / doing anything in the name of any UN organisation here.
Ok, having said that – sure, if there is a VA in your town, my page should feature that, too. If I miss out on any VAs, please let me know.
Cheers, Sebastian
Dear Sebastian,
Your site is really great. I hope you will not give up this work in future.
You can use the following links to do extend beyond the UN-
http://missions.itu.int/~italy/vacancies/vaclinks.htm
Russell
Hi Russell,
thanks a lot for your kind words – and – I have no intention giving up working on the UN Job List.
The link you provided is indeed very useful. I took it to program the UN Job List robots when I programmed the site a while back.
Cheers, Sebastian
You currently have a feature which will show “The 50 Newest Jobs”, which is great. I think it would be useful if within the advanced search options there is a way to perform similar queries with however many jobs the person is interested in. For example, show the most recent 100 jobs, or 150 jobs. Keep up the good work!
Hi Cameron,
thanks for the feedback – very good point. Will think about that and try to implement in the days to come…
Sebastian
Dear Sebastian,
Great site and very practical. Congrats!
Kindly note that if the closing date of a vacancy is e.g. 18 July 2007, you can often still apply on 18 July. However, the vacancy is already removed from your side on the 18th… Could you please check this out? (Example: ILO Vacancy notice JAKARTA/2007/10)
Cheers,
Micha
Hi Micha,
Good point, will work on that…
UPDATE: It is done – let me know if you experience issues…
Cheers,
Sebastian
Hi Sebastian,
The job opportunities from the World Bank International Finance Cooperation (IFC) are not included in your website. Could you add them?
Regards,
Micha
Hi Micha,
Thanks a lot! Just added the IFC to the page.
Cheers, Sebastian
Thanks for a superb website. I’ve just sent in a few suggestions for additions (UN HABITAT, UNCCD and WMO).
It would be good to have more flexibility with the mailing list, to change criteria (but I guess it gets very complex, with log-ins and all that)- or you could just tell people to unsubscribe and try again if they wish to change their search criteria.
Thanks again,
Nick
Hi Nick,
thanks for your kind words. Yes, you are right, I should give some more options to change preferences in the e-mails. Also, I should add a line telling you what you are searching for (that will be especially helpful if you sign-up for several alerts). At this point I’m just a bit short on time. I will get to that but right now I’m pretty busy – so bear with me – thanks.
Dear Sebastian,
First and above all many thanks for this website initiative; absolutely great.
Please allow me two questions. (i)Do we still have to surf to the individual websites, or are you capturing everything from each website? (ii) Where to find the full forms of the many abbreviations used in the adds?
Best regards, and keep up the good work.
Ludo Scheerlinck
Dear Sebastian:
Your UN site is clean and well thought out.
I do have a suggestion. People should be able to sort by field simply by clicking the red headers, e.g. Level/Grade, Duty Station, Post Title, etc. Also, most recent positions should always be displayed at the top of the page.
In any event, very nice work.
Yours,
Henri
Hi Sebastian,
You have done a splendid job. It shows how organised a mind can be.
I am the president of a Mumbai,India based NGO,NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR NATURAL CALAMITIES(NCNC).
I am interested in taking up any job with UNO, related to relief, rehabilitation and disaster assistance. Could you please guide me for safe landing.
Thanking you,
Anand.
This is fantastic! and you might be able to live from the UN without working for it, the best of all worlds!!
On the cosmetic or the absence of it: contrarily to other comments I believe this is the main strength of your site; clean, quick (think of bad connections in many countries or people accessing only simple Internet Kiosk in Africa or other) and clear.
One suggestion: sort by column (e.g. by locations in a table).
Hope you can keep up, this will replace for me, from today, the UN Galaxy System and others
Luc
Hi Luc,
thanks for your comment. I agree with you in the design question (the lesser the better, I also try to have this page accessible from the less fortune countries in this world who don’t have high-speed internet).
)
I will look into the sorting by column. One thing though: Let me stress that I do not intent to live of this page (you will notice that there is not even advertisement or a donate button here). I do this purely for fun (and I intent to keep it that way
on July 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm #
[...] In the past days and weeks I was getting some comments via my comment page and e-mail that triggered me to reiterate what I have said before: The UN Job List is an independent privately owned internet page that is not affiliated with the UN. [...]
Bro,
Work like yours makes difference, this site is benefiting hundreds or perhaps millions who are seeking career in UN and its umbrella organization, keep it up bro.
My advice to you is not to expand or incorporate other organizations other than UN and its umbrella organizations; this is the uniqueness of your site.
Cheers, Manu
Hallo Sebastian,
Du scheinst ja auch deutsch zu sein, und ich kann Dir auch auf deutsch schreiben?!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu der Internetseite – echt gut!!
Bro,
Thanks for this website.
Thanking you
minmin
Sebastian,
I agree with the other comments that your site is absolutely great and makes searching UN jobs much easier.
After dabbling occasionally in this for a year, the thing that sticks out to me is how discriminatory the UN is in its hiring practice. It’s obvious that they interested primarily in people already employed within the system. Easier for them no doubt, but simply recycling the same people without adding the dynamics from outside people is a huge mistake and shows a certain level of incompetance typical in government-run organizations. Private organizations would never do this.
Best regards,
Doug
Hi Doug,
well, I’m not sure if this is entirely correct.
Firstly, like anywhere (private sector or public sector) when you are an expert in something and you know a job then chances that you will get the job are higher. That has nothing to do with discrimination but is a simple matter of experience and expertise.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of the posts in the UN are rotational. This means that people have to move after 3 or 4 years. Of course this generates a lot of vacancies and often times someone who did an outstanding job, let’s say in Liberia is then moving on to a job in DRC. The stress to find a job is there for the people in the system, too and it is one of the less attractive features of being a UN staff member.
Lastly, there are many more people who want to work for the UN than there are posts. It is not uncommon to have several hundred applicants to one vacancy.
However, I agree with you in the sense that most organisations could improve their communications, clarify expectations and provide a more realistic picture of what is possible in their hiring process. It is frustrating if you submit applications and never hear back.
Cheers, Sebastian
Hello
This is a great service. Keep up the good work@!
hi this is jimmy, you are great at making websites.
cheers, jimmy
This is a great website. Thanks
I love what UN is about and they endless effort to making
the world a better place.Thank for this Sebastian.
Thanks for the website, it is extremely useful!
I also have a suggestion: could you enable search for consultancy jobs only? It would be of great help for me, and I am sure other people would appreciate it as well!
Cheers!
Hi, I want to echo the comment of Ivan, above. I’m a
long-time development consultant (ICT4D and Edu), working with UN
agencies and others. My business requires new work all the time. It
would be _super_ (super! [SUPER!]) to be able to search for
consultancies only. You are running a lovely site. The addition of
“interest” levels is nice, and it’s well executed. The Little
Peacekeeper is terrif! Thank you.
Thanks a lot Setabstian. Very useful information!
Sebastien, I find this very wonderful for it will help many job seekers, especially those who are really interested in working with the UN. More grease to your elbows, and keep up this wonderful work dear brother.
Thanks a lot. If you want to help you tell your friends about the LIST
Hi Sebastian,
Again thank you so much for your contribution. I have three quick questions that you might be able to answer:
1) Do you know how frequently P2/P3 positions are given to people who have not taken the NCRE exam?
2) In your experience, when positions are listed that require let’s say 5 years of specific experience within a certain field, can the person who wins the position have experience that deviates from that?
3) If I take the YPP exam and am successful in that category (for example humanitarian) can I cross over later into political positions?
Thanks so much again!
1) It’s hard to get a P2 if you’re not a YPP. P3 is theoretically easier but more competition from withing the house…
2) Experience relates to “relevant” experience. That is everything that helps you doing that job. It does not mean that you have to have done that job for 5 years already.
3) I’m not an YPP insider so honestly, I don’t know. I know that in general there is ample flexibility in the UN system and often amazingly many ways to change your career at a later point in time. However, I would still encourage you to pursue what you like best and not bank on the option to change at a later point in time…
Good luck! Sebastian
Dear Sebastian,
I would like to know if EU citizens (EEA nationals) are eligible to apply for UN vacancies overseas, particularly at the UN headquarters in New York?
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards,
Sarah
Yes, they are – any international job is for everyone in the entire world (provided the other requirements such as a Master’s etc. are met). National jobs are typically only for people who have a local work permit but it depends a bit on the country.
Congrats for the great service! I am not sure of which resources you have to manage the massive work load of this site, however vacancies seem posted sometime very close to the deadline. What can be done to prevent this killer factor?
Hi Joe,
actually that’s not me – that’s the advertising organisation. My robots are out there every day and within 24 hours any job is on the LIST. So the best tip I can give you is to check the new jobs (http://unjoblist.org/lists/NewJobs) every day.
Wonderful Job Sebastian !
Hi Sebastian.
A lot of thanks first of all to make it easy for everyone and facilitate a single window of opportunities from the UN Common System. Just curious to know if it is possible to perform a search by the Job areas e.g. Finance/ Accounting, Administration, Human resources, IT etc. (something similar to an advanced search)
I know there’s a facility to do a keyword search but this would be more useful. Wonder if your robots can identify some keywords in the job descriptions and apply TAGs to the vacancies
Thanks for your response in advance.
Very good idea. The challenge is that my site is fully automated. Any idea on how to make this tagging possible anyways?