Headquarters, Field office? What is the best strategy to be retained at the UN after your Junior Professional Officer (JPO) assignment?

Are you a current Junior Professional Officer (JPO) aiming to remain at the UN after your JPO-ship? In this article, we look into the retention statistics about moving offices during the JPO-ship. Find out what is providing you with the best chances to stay, a JPO assignment at a Headquarters, a Field office or in Both?

Impactpool is the world’s fastest-growing Impact career platform. In a series of articles, Henrik Ryden, a former JPO, senior staff at UNDP and co-founder of Impactpool look into Impactpool’s retention data (data related to the ones that succeeded to stay at the UN) and help you to strategically position yourself to also remain after completing your JPO assignment. 

Henrik will identify the expertise areas that offer you the best chances to stay, he will teach you what policy change you should push for together with your donor government, look into whether one's family situation is a common reason for leaving and much more.

In this first article, he will focus on whether you should stay in one duty station your whole assignment or if you should move during the assignment. Several donors offer their JPO’s the ability to relocate during the JPO-ship. From a sustainability and environmental perspective, this could be hard to justify. From the perspective of the JPO’s own wallet, to relocate is a gold mine, as the JPO can cash in a second relocation grant at a value of between $ 20’000-40’000.

Get the ultimate JPO Policy HACK that increases your chances to remain in the United Nations

This article is written for JPOs’ and young talent targeting a JPO assignment. If you want to learn more about the JPO programme we recommend reading our article The JPO programme is the best UN career entry point.