Working World

Careers in International Education, Exchange, and Development, Second Edition

Sherry Lee Mueller, Mark Overmann

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781626160545
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Now available in a new second edition, Working World: Careers in International Education, Exchange, and Development offers an engaging guide for cause-oriented people dedicated to begin or enhance careers in the now burgeoning fields of international affairs. Mueller and Overmann expand their original dialogue between a career veteran and a young professional to address issues that recognize the meteoric rise of social media and dramatic geopolitical events. They explore how the idea of an international career has shifted: nearly every industry taking on more and more international dimensions, while international skills—linguistic ability, intercultural management, and sensitivity—become ever more highly prized by potential employers.

This second edition of Working World offers ten new and four significantly updated profiles as well as new and expanded concepts that include work-life balance, the importance of informational interviews, moving on, and key building blocks for international careers.Like the award-winning first edition, Working World is a rare and valuable resource to students and graduates interested in careers in international affairs, mid-career professionals who want to make a career change or shift, as well as guidance counselors and career center specialists at universities.

PART I
Shaping Your Career Philosophy

CHAPTER 1
Identifying Your Cause

Introduction

People often ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Children usually reply, “a fireman, a doctor, an actor, a musician, a princess, a basketball star …,” perhaps recalling the hero in a recently viewed movie or naming the profession of a relative they admire. They have yet to realize that they will be asked this question repeatedly as the years pass. Responding to the question as children was just our first experience with identifying our cause.

Your cause is a major force that guides your career decisions. Whether clearly defined and structured, or perhaps hazy and still in need of refinement, your cause is, as Howard Thurman phrases it in the quotation at the beginning of this book, “what makes you come alive.” In this first chapter we focus not on clearly delineating the steps up a structured career ladder but on helping you locate something much bigger—the force that will illuminate your career path.

Sherry approaches the quest to identify a cause from the perspective of “your place in history”: how your search for a cause is inevitably anchored in the trends and happenings of a particular period. How will you find your place in today’s historical context? What will historians say about your cause and career when looking back many years from now? Or more importantly, what would you want those historians to say? In Sherry’s view, how you approach these questions will help you define your cause and develop your career.

Mark, on the other hand, approaches the issue of finding a cause from the postcollege question of “What am I going to do with my life?” For him, there is less focus on the bigger picture of finding a place in history and more attention to microlevel decision making, namely, figuring out what is right for you at this point and proceeding from there. Even if you are unsure of your exact cause or how you want historians to view your choices, Mark urges you to go with what you do know. Pursue your interests, follow your feelings, and listen to your gut. If a certain path is attractive at this point in your life, it is probably a good direction to take, even if you’re not sure of your ideal destination.

Sherry: Your Place in History

There are certain forces at work—economic, political, military, and social factors—that make possible or restrict certain job options. Understanding these factors can help you approach your job search more realistically. Certainly the economic marketplace is vastly different for you than it was for your parents. I have often fielded the question, “How can I explain to my father why it is taking me so long to find full-time work when he found his first job right after graduation?” As economists debate whether unemployment is structural or cyclical, the reality for the job seeker is that it is (as some readers may be painfully aware) much more difficult to find a job—particularly that first job—at certain points in time than at others.

There are still many bureaucratic organizations with rigid hierarchies. Nonetheless, technological advances, current management practices, and economic strictures suggest that lean, downsized, and restructured organizations are the norm in both the for-profit and nonprofit worlds and in some government agencies. In some cases the result has been the reduction of jobs in traditional institutions or an increase in one part of the world with a corresponding reduction in other geographic areas.

Paradoxically, there are fewer jobs at the top of many organizations (upper management), as well as fewer at the bottom (receptionists, secretaries, clerks). A job that represents a rung on the career ladder in the traditional sense is increasingly scarce; this concept may eventually disappear.

We tend to think of history as those events that occurred before we were born. In our textbooks, history seems to be a series of dramatic events, such as revolutions, wars, and social movements, all far in the past. We should bear in mind that some decades hence our time also will be a historical period. Historians will assign labels and designations, analyze trends, and otherwise describe the context in which we now live. Your effort to find your place at this particular point in history may be more productive if you start by viewing your career in a more holistic way. Instead of focusing on finding a job with clearly defined next steps in the same organization, focus on identifying your cause.

As Mark and I were discussing this chapter, we reflected on the historic context in which I started my career compared with the backdrop that existed when he launched his. As a farm kid from northern Illinois, I chose to attend the School of International Service at American University (AU). I didn’t even know what the Foreign Service was, but what I did know was that serving internationally was appealing. A child of the Cold War, I graduated from college and attended graduate school in the late 1960s. Despite the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the stirring words of his inaugural address continued to motivate many of my generation as we began our career journeys: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” One of my favorite memories is handing out programs as an undergraduate at the AU commencement on June 10, 1963, when President Kennedy gave a seminal speech on foreign policy. He urged all to work together “to make the world safe for diversity.” That admonition describes one of the causes I’ve embraced ever since!

The Alliance for Progress with Latin America and the newly minted Peace Corps were just two sources of job opportunities that beckoned at that time. There was a call to public service. We had not yet become as disillusioned with our major institutions or those in authority as we are today. Despite the hovering nuclear threat, it was in certain ways an easier time.

In the Cold War era, the United States was the “good guy.” We were generally (in some cases grudgingly) admired. There was not a lot of ambiguity. In fact, the superpower prism was a somewhat comforting, if overly simplistic, way to view the world. The book The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer, published in 1958, was instructive and, in retrospect, one of the key factors that inspired my own career in international education and exchange. (I still require my students to read it.) Though a novel, The Ugly American nonetheless made trenchant observations about the need for cultural and political sensitivity, carefully tailored and appropriately scaled approaches to development, and behaviors that produce constructive international relations. These are still valid. The book helped me identify my cause. I wanted a career that would help project a positive image of the United States abroad and lead to new avenues of cooperation.

In the intervening years, the Vietnam War and other events produced disillusionment, distrust of authority, and a much more variegated and complex global scene. As I often jokingly reply to colleagues and friends when asked about my cause: “I am still idealistic; I still want to save the world. Only now, I realize just how reluctant the world is to be saved!”

Mark and his contemporaries faced this complexity and the crisis of credibility surrounding many institutions much earlier in their lives than I and many of my idealistic classmates did years ago. Ironically, given these conditions, the need for exceptionally able people in service-oriented fields, such as international education, exchange, and development, has never been greater.

What Do You Care about Passionately?: The “Magic Wand Test”

Ask yourself, “If I had a magic wand, what would I do to make a difference in the world?” Lead a Council for International Visitors; build schools in South Sudan; advise international students at a university; manage a development project to establish village health clinics; organize short-term exchange programs for parliamentarians, librarians, or farmers—these are all potential answers. There are many more. Part of the challenge is comprehending the array of options. Whatever cause you find compelling, chances are there are various organizations working to make a difference in that area. Your cause is their mission.

The impetus to get a job, or to find a new one, comes from various sources. Almost always, the urge to fashion a career with an international focus stems from a particularly positive international experience, such as living with a host family on an exchange program, hosting an exchange student in your own home, participating in a short-term development project overseas, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, or studying abroad. The intense learning generated by the face-to-face encounters, the riveting conversations, and the dawning awareness of intriguing cultural differences and common human aspirations trigger our ambition to replicate this wonder-filled experience for others as well as for ourselves. The desire to help solve some global problem observed during the overseas experience may also inspire the determination to chart a career in international education, exchange, or development.

My own experience is a good example. At the urging of an AU professor, Alexander Trowbridge, I participated in an Experiment in International Living (EIL) program in 1963. (EIL is now part of World Learning—see chapter 9 for more information.) That eye-opening summer experience included living with a German family and traveling in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with a group of German and American students. My host family exposed me to so many new and exciting experiences. It was a time of intense learning and adventure. My worldview grew and became more nuanced. I came home determined to be an EIL leader and take my own group of students abroad, which I did in 1969—a memorable trip to the Soviet Union. After visits back and forth over the years, my German “sister” remains a dear friend. That kind of deep connection across time and culture continues to be an immense source of learning and satisfaction. My passion became finding jobs that enabled me to give others opportunities for similar, enduring relationships that transcend nationality and other differences.

I literally do keep a “magic wand” on my desk. I use it to remind job seekers (and myself) that it is important to suspend limitations and reflect on what you would do if no obstacles existed. Your answer is an essential clue to identifying your cause. As you consider possible causes, note your natural preferences. What events and speakers attract you? What are your favorite courses? What topics are covered in the articles you read first—whether perusing an issue of the Economist or skimming a favorite online compendium of articles? Whom do you admire? What facet of their work prompts you to say, “I want to do that—that is worth my energy and effort”?

People thoroughly content with the cause they serve often avow, “This is my calling.” My favorite definition of a calling is that place where your greatest passion and the world’s greatest need intersect.

The rest of this book concerns the process of identifying those organizations whose mission you can embrace and learning how to present yourself to employers so they recognize that your cause—your calling—and their mission are congruent.

Get Specific

Once you have identified your cause, it is critical to answer three sets of questions:

1. Where (in what geographic location) do you want to work? The answer may indeed be “anywhere,” but be sure that is your considered answer. There are many international jobs that do not require a perpetually peripatetic existence. Of course, others require worldwide availability, or the willingness to relocate to a specific project site or other destination. Clearly, if you are working for the Red Cross as a specialist in humanitarian assistance, you are required to go wherever the latest crisis has struck. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and conflicts determine your worksites. Some job seekers know they want to be in a particular country; others must stay in a particular locale because of obligations to a family member or because they need to be rooted in a place for their own identity and effectiveness.

2. How do you want to spend your days? What kinds of tasks do you enjoy most? What sorts of skills and talents do you offer? As Adam Weinberg told us in his profile interview, it is important to play to your strengths. To what extent do you want to interact with international clients? There are international jobs where minimal contact with internationals is the norm. If you want to be a foreign student adviser, and enjoy daily face-to-face contact with international students, then you may want to avoid a job where your only contact with international colleagues is electronic or by telephone—unless, of course, you see it as useful preparation for an aspiring foreign student adviser.

3. What type of organizational culture do you prefer? Do you thrive in a large, structured environment or do you shine in an environment where being a self-starter and having initiative is highly valued? What type of supervisor motivates you to do your best? Many job seekers underestimate the role their bosses play until they are ensconced in their jobs. To the extent possible, you want to work for people who care about your professional growth and development, even if you sacrifice a bit on the salary side of the ledger. When you are interviewing for a job, you are actually interviewing with someone who reflects and shapes the culture of a particular organization. This is the person who will give you assignments. And this is probably the person who will provide a key reference at some point. The value of having a supervisor you respect, admire, and learn from is tremendous. In fact, it supersedes many other considerations, such as job title and pay.

Mark: What Am I Going to Do with My Life?

I taught English in the northeastern part of China after college. I found myself feeling pessimistic at that time, as evidenced by journal entries like this:

I don’t know what the hell to do about grad school—or my life for that matter. People tell me I shouldn’t worry so much about the future because “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” That’s all well and good for John Lennon—but apparently he never had his dad hounding him day after day about getting a job. I’d really like someone to come along and just tell me where I need to be.

If you’ve ever, at least for a moment, wondered what you should do with your life, you aren’t alone. At some point, everyone has had that feeling—that perplexing, sinking feeling. You know you need to move forward, but you have no idea which direction to go, or even where to take that first step. You’re wondering, to paraphrase myself, “What the hell should I do with my life?”

I’m not always so negative. When I was studying in France during my junior year of college, I was more optimistic about my search for a life and career course:

You never know where the wiry arms of the world are going to push you. … Many people saw my coming to France to study for a year as misguided and perhaps fundamentally against the purpose of my major, English. From time to time, I still doubt my choices both to come to France and to pursue English as a major. But, in general, I believe they were both wise choices because they challenge me and, quite simply, because they feel right.

Looking back, I’m sometimes surprised to see that I was so comfortable with “going with what feels right,” especially at a time when I was feeling the growing pressure of making postgraduation plans. This sense of going with my gut stayed with me when I decided to go to China, or as my dad characterized it, “to put off the inevitable.” Later, once I got back to the United States, I reflected in my journal:

What do I want to do? Where do I need to be? … In the movie Forrest Gump, Jenny asks Forrest, “Who do you want to be?” Forrest responds, “Aren’t I going to be me?” And that hints at the key to it all. As I am going through all of this examination and self-discovery, making decisions about grad school and trying to answer those questions, I must remember to be true to myself. Shakespeare said it in Hamlet (“This above all: To thine own self be true!”). John Wooden said it (“You must have the courage to be true to yourself!”). Even Tom Hanks said it. Be true to yourself and you can’t go wrong.

My career has not been strategically planned. Back in college, and immediately postcollege, I saw myself as a person of many interests but with few ideas about how to channel those interests into a coherent career. Even so, I always tried to go with what felt right. Often this mentality led to choices that seemed random to others, or not in line with the path I had seemingly taken. Somehow though, those choices felt right to me. I went with them. Studying abroad in France, even though I was an English major; spending a year in China, even though I had no experience with Asia or the Chinese language; interning at a regional newspaper, then a nonprofit organization, then the Embassy of France … I have no regrets about these choices. They not only gave me an array of diverse learning experiences that have shaped me in positive ways, but they also led to where I am now. Never doubt the inherent worth of variety in your experiences.

There is a certain element of optimism and whimsy that exists in the search for a cause and a career. That element shouldn’t be ignored. Ralph Waldo Emerson de...