Resumes are important in many industries and international affairs is no different. There is a certain way your resume should look if you want to be taken seriously.
I know this from being an international development consultant. I’ve witten numerous resumes and selected other consultants based on their resumes.
Resumes for international affairs jobs typically list multiple degrees and certificates—an associate or bachelor’s degree for sure, but also coursework, seminars, and anything else that supports a person’s specialization and academic credentials in their field.
People with international careers tend to have master’s degrees, which they often obtained after working for a few years and figuring out their key interests. Many internationalists get their degrees overseas—the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong—because it‘s cheaper and faster than in the United States.
IR resumes typically list all internships, which I talk about at length in this post , especially if they were conducted at well-known organizations, companies, and research institutes. However, internships are often disguised as research projects or consulting gigs because it sounds better.
One of the best examples I saw of a “disguised internship” was on the resume of a student I met at the United Nations. This person's LinkedIn profile mentioned two years of working for the UN in New York plus a consultancy in Nigeria for “less than a year.” In reality it was an unpaid internship in Nigeria for six weeks as a full-time student—not a UN employee. Maybe this person did some work for the UN in NY as well, but I doubt it was ever on a paid basis. I'll talk more about how you should (over)present yourself below.
