Requirements and recruitment

Interested in becoming a UN staff? To be eligible, you need a relevant educational background, work experience, language skills, and a range of ‘soft skills’. You can apply for a specific position or join a talent group or roster.

Professional or so-called ‘P-level’ staff positions generally require highly qualified academic and professional backgrounds with several years of international experience.

Minimum requirements

For 'P-level' positions, a Master’s degree and excellent command of English, and/or French, Spanish, Russian or Arabic, are generally required. Depending on the duty station, proficiency in other languages may be required.

Professional experience is only considered if relevant for the specific position.

Staff positions in the 'General Service or related categories' require at least a high school diploma and several years of work experience relevant to the job and its level, as specified in the job opening.

Besides technical skills, applicants should demonstrate a range of ‘soft skills’ that are based on UN core values as shown below.

Application and recruitment

It is important to know that each organisation has its own recruitment procedure and career webpage.

All staff vacancies are advertised on the organisations’ career webpages, where candidates are asked to apply through the respective online recruitment system.

Candidates can either be assessed for a specific position or for a talent group or roster.

Specific position

Once you apply for a specific position, it may take up to six months until a first selection (longlist) of candidates is made. Here are the main recruitment steps and an estimated duration of each:

Talent group or roster

A talent group is an exclusive roster of pre-assessed experts from which potential candidates can be appointed when a position becomes available.

To be placed in a talent group within your area of expertise, you should keep an eye out for generic (non-specific) vacancy announcements even if you are not actively looking for a job. Generic vacancies are only advertised once in a while so it is important to apply when they become available, even if you are only interested at a later stage.

After submitting your application, you will undergo an assessment and selection process similar to that for a specific position. If successful, you will join the talent group roster. Whenever a relevant position becomes available, the hiring office will review the applications and, if suitable, directly offer an assignment to a candidate.

Here's how it works at UNICEFUnited Nations Children's Fund :