In this article, we’re going to talk about understanding where it is that you might be able to add value, what is your role in the public health space, how it is that you’re going to fit into the global health space. Let’s talk about the roles that you might want to play and how it is that you’re going to add value to global health. The reason that this is important is that there’s so many possible opportunities that you could get when you’re looking at job adverts, you could just randomly apply for anything that you see that you’d be better off refining your search and narrowing your search and applying for jobs where you really feel that the position is suited for you and its important to understand what the options are. This is really about thinking through where it is that you’re going to fit in and the trick here is to ask the right questions. Firstly; where do you want to work, Secondly; what are your strengths, what are your interests and finally; what do you want to be doing on a day to day basis. Let’s imagine a hypothetical Global Health Organization, now this organization will have certain generic traits and it’ll employ people to fill specific roles. So, for example, this organization might have its headquarters in London or Detroit, and it may have country offices in Africa and you need to decide where it is that you want to work, etc. The organization structure might include senior management and leadership, an Operations team that includes finance, admin, Human Resources, project managers that get things done, monitoring and evaluation staff, communications officer, a resource mobilization team or fundraisers and frontline implementers that are getting things done.

So firstly just to help you think through the question of where it is that you want to work decide if you want to work in a developing or developed country. Now you might want to work and get experience in the frontline in healthcare in a rural area of a developing country and that’ll be a great way to get experience if you’re young or you might want to work in a developing country with the Department of Health and get involved with policy and planning. You might be from a developing country and you might want to impact global health issues at the headquarters of an organization like the WHO, UNICEF, with World Bank and so you might want to live in one of those cities in Geneva or New York or you might be from a rich country and you might want to stay close to home for personal reasons. The next question is what are your interests, what are your strengths, where’s your experience. The final question and this is important you need to think through what it is that you want to do on a day-to-day basis, working for a funding organization and be evaluating applications from implementing partners and monitoring the progress of projects that you funded or would you like to be on the other side of that and working with the team that plans interventions or you want to be on the frontline implementing and doing the project management of these interventions. You might want to work across an organization and help with the communication of that organization’s messages to stakeholders or you might be interested in collecting and making sense of data do you want to advocate for change in an area that you feel is important, do you want to work alone or do you want to work on a team or do you want to manage a team and focus on a process or you might want to be involved with the smooth running of the organization in general or you might want to be involved with fundraising and resource mobilization in any event.

One needs to think through what it is that they want to do on a day to day basis. Once you’ve thought about these questions you’ll be able to narrow down your search and you’ll be able to say, for example, I’d like to work in a developing country, I’d like to work on project management and specifically, I’d like to work with the team that’s doing implementation of public health programs or I’d like to work in Geneva, I’d like to work as a communications officer and I’d like to work in the area of advocacy. The more you can narrow down how and where and what it is you want to do to add value the more you’re going to be able to identify the right career opportunities for yourself.