For me, reaching the top of the UN is not the most admirable goal, instead, intelligent strategies and knowledge to navigate the UN bureaucracy to make a global impact and create positive changes, are much more admirable achievements in my world.

But in this article, I make an exception and share my extensive UN experience to give you some promotion acceleration strategies.

How to climb the UN career ladder faster and higher?

From an internal UN career cultural perspective, the staff should stay in their role for a few years and only move the UN career ladder one step at a time. Allthough, new rules are implemented to "ease" a faster career progression, the praxis among staff not to allow a faster career track holds back any attemps to change.

Hence, it is unusual that someone climbs quicker or climbs more than one step at a time. There are even staff rules that oppose quicker promotion journeys. One of these rules is the so-called Time-in-Post, a UN staff rule that was implemented as several UN staff members moved intensively around just to benefit from the lucrative relocation grants. 

The Time-in-Post rule sets a date on how long you must serve in your role and when you are allowed to start applying for a new job. If you are serving in a challenging environment (Conflict/crisis zone) the required serving time is shorter (normally 2 years), if you are based in a Headquarters location, the time in post is longer (normally 4 years).

Not to forget, quotas are also an ingredient that comes to play when striving to climb the promotion ladder.  If you belong to an over-represented member state, your professional background or on-CV skills may not matter.

But shouldn't there be a way to disrupt the UN's rigid career journey?

In this article, I share how I moved the UN staff ladder from a junior (P2) to a mid/senior (P4) in less than 18 months. I will also share what other successful leaders have done to accelerate their careers to reach top positions.

From a UN promotion theoretical standpoint, a quicker promotion pace should not be possible, but there are some hidden promotion hacks that you could try.

I believe that the best way to find shortcuts and reach career goals is to be curious about how others have done things in the past and learn from others that succeeded. Be inspired and Imitate their career progression journey; What university education did they complete? In what junior capacity did they start and how did they proceed? What are some common denominators that you can see among these successful UN professionals, such as languages, field experience, etc? 

As a fact UN organizations barely offer career coaching, you must be your researcher and coach or you can reach out to one of Impactpool's career coaches, every coach on Impactpool have extensive sector experience and will be the professional sounding board you need.

In this article, I will write about the characteristics of three successful personalities that I have seen climbing the ladder fast, the Navigator and the Risk-taker. The third persona that I will write about is my favorite of the quick-climbers, a much rarer personality though.