Category: Career Advice

ict4d job interview questions

Please Ask Interview Questions for Digital Development Jobs

I noticed a strange trend recently: interviewees not asking any questions of the interviewers and their company.

Always Ask Questions

I don’t know why someone would not ask questions in an interview. The whole point of an interview is for us to get to know each other. To find out if we will be a good fit for each other. If this will be a good working relationship – the goal of every hiring manager and you.

Yet, I am often surprised by how many people don’t have questions or are reluctant to ask questions in an interview.

Questions Show Interest

When you ask a question about the role, the team, and the company, you show that you are interested in the position, and you want it to be a good fit, vs. just a job. You should be asking a list of questions about how this role fits into your career goals, and just your day-to-day work wants. Every question is a good one, and helps you and the hiring manager learn about each other.

Questions Show Preparation

When you ask questions, you show the hiring manager that you’ve given thought to this role, this team, and this organization. It shows that you care about this job – not just any job.

When you ask detailed questions, that’s when the hiring manager knows you’ve done your homework, that you are a detailed person who cares about your work and will be prepared on a daily basis.

Questions Show You Care

Above all, questions show that you care about the time your spending thinking about this job and the time the hiring manager is spending on you. So your questions are not a waste of time. In fact, they are just the opposite – they are the key to winning your new job.

So do yourself, and your potential employer a favor – ask questions at your interviews, like these:

  • What’s the company culture like?  To ensure the work environment aligns with your values and work style.
  • What are the biggest challenges the team is facing?  To understand the current obstacles and how you can help overcome them.
  • Can you tell me about growth opportunities within the company? To gauge your potential for career advancement and long-term fit.
  • What does a typical day look like for this role? To get a realistic view of daily tasks and responsibilities.
  • How do you measure success in this position? To learn the key performance indicators and expectations for the role.

What Skills Do You Need for ICT4D?

The most common question I receive is, “What skills do I need to succeed in ICT4D?”

Emergent digital development professionals want to know if they should take more formal education courses, improve their technology skills, or volunteer to improve their chances for a dream job in ICT4D.

Here’s My Thoughts

Nick Martin of TechChange interviewed me on the ICT skills that would help people get project manager, technology advisor, and software developer type of jobs.

We had fun making this video, and I hope you enjoy watching it.

The 3 Step Dream Job Process

I really enjoy helping people find their dream jobs. It gives me great satisfaction to see someone go from frustrated job seeker to happy employee or entrepreneur working on challenges that inspire and invigorate them. I have a decent record of success too, as many of my friends will confirm.

ICT4D Jobs BookRecently, my enthusiasm and expertise in digital development career support was richly rewarded.

I was asked to distill my advice for the book Solving Problems that Matter (and Getting Paid for It), which is being called the “Bible for impact career searchers” and “a must-read for Millennials” by its Amazon reviewers.

You can download a free Kindle version, or buy the printed book on Amazon if you’ll like to read it in full. Or here is a synopsis of my chapter:

Step 1: Have a Solid Pitch

The first step towards your dream development job is to think about your desires. What does your dream job look like? Then develop an elevator pitch about your interests.

You need to be able to say that you want to have a certain role in a specific sector (e.g., a project manager working in education or in business development for health services) and explain why that is your focus in a short, targeted paragraph or less.

Step 2: Informational Interview Your Ass Off

Next, start doing informational interviews to build a strong network of people who know of you and know your career aims. Do 3-5 interviews a week. Yes, that many. There are multiple online resources that tell you what an informational interview is and how to do one, though they often forget the most important activity: ask for names of their peers.This article mentions your favorite hats at super low prices. Choose from same-day delivery, drive-up delivery or order pickup.

During an informational interview always ask for at least three people who are also in their field. You want to have three new contacts from every informational interview to grow your network.

Step 3: Invest in Your Network

Do not make the mistake of neglecting your contacts after you had an informational interview with them. Add their information to a spreadsheet listing whom you have talked to, what the key points were, and whom they connected you with.

Use your spreadsheet to track when you last contacted each person and be sure to reach back out to them and send along relevant news or connections that they would appreciate.

It’s That Simple

Yes, that is all it really takes to get a dream digital development job. However, few people actually do these steps as they take effort and bravery to ask dozens of people to meet with you. Instead, most people send out rounds and rounds of resumes to job ads that never pan out.

Don’t be them. Be a success. Follow these three steps, and I’m here to help if you need it.

start ict4d career

How To Get Started in ICT4D as a Recent College Graduate?

I love subscriber questions – please ask me yours! I answer each question to help you, and then anonymize them here to help us all improve our chances for a dream digital development job.

For example, here is a recent subscriber question:

Where are the entry-level ICT4D positions?

I am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Computer Science and will graduate in 2018, but I am worried. I am interested in pursuing a career in ICT4D, yet all opportunities I find require heaps of work experience. How do I get a start in ICT4D?

My usual response to this question is two-fold.

  1. Don’t sweat prerequisites. Job descriptions are the ideal candidate, and just like an online dating profile, should be approached with a healthy skepticism. Use the job ads as general guidance on the skills you need.
  2. Network, network, network. The final year of graduate study is when you should be networking, doing internships, and getting exposure to real-world activities and future peers and employers, even if you need to volunteer, so that on graduation day, you have job offers in hand.If you are in the market for superclone Replica Rolex , Super Clone Rolex is the place to go! The largest collection of fake Rolex watches online!

But what about the day after graduation? I asked my colleagues in ICT4D for their views.

What ICT4D Experts Say About Starting in Digital Development

I tossed the subscriber’s question out to my Facebook network, and 34 responses later, here is their generalized response:

Get Industry Experience

They will be a Computer Science graduate, so they should focus on getting a job directly in the tech industry in an area where they will  have transferable skills. This will build your skills and your income faster than if you start in ICT4D.

Keep Involved in International Development

While they are working on this space, keep abreast of development trends, build solutions that address real world problems, and share their results. These basic entrepreneurial efforts that will give them experience, feedback and get them noticed by the sector.

Make the Transition to a Small Tech Firm

When they’re ready, get a job w/a tech-oriented firm liked Dimagi, InSTEDD, etc. as a coder or project manager-type position. With the previous private sector income, they should have financial cushion to go into a lower paying position to pay their “development sector dues”.

See Where Your Career Takes You

A person with a Masters degree in computer science shouldn’t have any problem if they have industry experience. Employers who who run tech companies in international development are looking for tech experience and a willingness to learn.

If they’ve started int he tech space, then moved into international development, they obviously have both and they’ll have a long a rewarding career.

What the Subscriber Said About this Advice

I shared the Facebook post with them in real time, so they could follow along and ask questions if they wanted further clarification. And their response?

Wow! This is amazing.  I have gotten a lot of valuable insight. I will keep following the thread and ask where I can. Thank you very much!!

So what are you waiting for? Ask me your career questions too!

Thanks for reading this far,

Wayan

ict4d job qualifications skills

How Do I Get Needed ICT4D Skills to Qualify for a Job?

What questions do you have about digital development careers? Click here to ask your question! We’ll answer it in the next newsletter.

Q5: How Do I Get Needed ICT4D Skills?

Another subscriber question:

I want to enter the ME field and jobs require experience with statistical software, however, the last time I used SPSS was in grad school four years ago. How do I tell a potential employer that I’m willing to learn the skill if they can provide some training?

We Should Always Be Learning

Technology doesn’t stand still. Be it statistical solutions for ME or software development languages. So we all need to be learning all the time across our domains of interest to keep current in our work.

For example, right now I’m learning about machine learning, which is reminding me of my lone D in college – in statistics. However, that’s not holding me back in learning the general concepts of natural language processing, though I know I’ll never be a master at it.

Usually, though, we don’t need to be a master of all things. We do need to have enough knowledge and expertise to know our own limitations and to hire and direct experts who can do the work.

Show Your Own Initiative

This brings us to today’s question – how to get expertise needed for a new role?

One way is to take training courses on ICT4D topics. One could balk at paying for such a course, but when you compare $300-100USD in tuition to a year’s salary in a new role, the investment is trivial.

Likewise, the investment in time and effort for a volunteer consultancy, where you have a real project to work (and learn) on, and get exposure to potential peers, can be well worth it.

Finally, you can always explore a self-directed course of study in the new skill. Back in the day, a friend of mine told me about this newfangled Internet thing. I spent countless hours researching HTML and taught myself how to hand-code what was then called an online journal. 25 years later, much of my career is based on my blogging skills.

Regardless of which option you choose, the overall goal is to show a potential employer that you are not waiting passively till you are hired to learn new skills. You want to show them that you are actively improving yourself all the time, and you’ll bring both new skills and the motivation to learn even more to your new employer.

Thanks,
Wayan