The JPO programme is the best UN career entry points

What is a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) and could that be the right start for your UN Career?

The JPO program, as it is more often referred to, is a program offering young professionals an opportunity to obtain professional experience and skills in the different sectors of the United Nations – including Specialized agencies and Funds and Programmes (remark: in the UN secretariat the JPO program is called the Associate Experts program).

In the podcast interview with Julia Watt - former Chief of Human Resources at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), she let us learn that her career with the UN started as a Junior Professional Officer (JPO). In this article, we describe the JPO program as of today and also make a few references to the JPO program at ITU.

Starting a UN career as a Junior Professional Officer (JPO) is a quite common career path. As we could learn from the podcast, both Julia Watt and Magnus Bucht (Impactpool's CEO and Co-founder) started their careers with the UN as JPOs.

Find out more and see which countries participate in the JPO Programme. If you are a national of any of these countries, you have a good chance to get your junior UN Career started!