Joining Médecins Sans Frontières: Roles, Experiences, and Recruitment Insights

all right good evening everybody good evening Oslo how's it going good we're happy to be here it's 25

degrees outside and it's been so long this summer oh no I'm really glad to see so many of

you it's uh very very nice we're doing this a few times a year uh but uh definitely fantastic audience to see

here uh now um so my name is Emily uh I'm in charge of the recruitment of our Norwegian uh

based uh candidates and Icelandic based candidates and um I'm gonna tell you a bit more about

me afterwards but I'm not alone here to ignite this shutter who's together with me in recruitment we work together and

then we have little Trina uh there um one of our gynecologist obstetrician International staff who's gonna share

her experience with you tonight and then we have Malena um who is Morgan HR Finance uh Thai

profile and has also done uh benchmarking which we call remuneration analysis they started both more or less

at the same time early training applied in 2018 and Malena about the same time um and they will share with you their

path in the organization over the last years we also have everlyn over there who's helping because the gods of I.T

liked your challenges every time we do an information and laughs as well they're working at msf with us and then

we have a great volunteer downstairs that has helped us to organize it all so I know there's people online tonight uh

I'm not good at remembering if they hear me or not so I count on my colleagues to tell me if the mic is on or not for all

the people online uh welcome and um for everybody uh we're taking all questions at the end of the evening so

after our presentations we're spending uh really a big chunk of the evening to actually answer your questions because

there's Flyers there's websites but there's nothing like real people with real experience so uh we want to hear

from you so please take down take notes of on what you hear so that afterwards you can address it and I'm really good

at not letting the crowd go until I have many questions so just help me and Shoot Many afterwards and we'll we'll answer

them together for the people online Shadow will be gathering your questions and and reading them out to me selecting

them so that we have a good variety of topics here tonight um so for my part uh uh msf started 13

years ago uh in 2010 I joined uh back in Belgium in Brussels we have an operational Center there

um and I'm actually myself Belgian um I speak French and Dutch I come from Brussels and I joined the organization

there and worked there for five years um combining uh working uh assisting the general direction there first and then

afterwards I went into the fundraising Department because I had noticed that msf invested

a lot in Human Resources so after a few years of msf I took an HR management uh diploma degree and was in that way

moving over to fundraising where I was actually managing very large team teams of fundraisers that you meet here also

in no way please come over the people that just arrived and just take a seat here everybody

um so that was a kind of the start of it and then I landed in Norway

um in the fundraising Department here as well um and later on I moved properly to uh

the human resource department here as a recruitment responsible I'm just saying that because you see how

people can basically involve in the organization originally uh I am a master in Translation that's what I've studied

then I studied human resources and then I've also studied coaching I've been trained as a as a coach an accredited

coach for msf so I'm coaching people here in the organization and also a bit outside and this is a tool we use in

developing our leaders there is a tool used that we call mentoring and coaching and we have a whole team actually to

support our staff in the projects but also in the offices with the tool of mentoring and coaching so many thing

happened um and then myself I went on assignments as well my first one was in 2011. in

Libya in Tripoli at the start the very start of the Arab Spring um I was working there as human resource

and finance manager um I was the first HR Finance it was an emergency we had to enter uh Libya

in a not too official way because we were not allowed to go there to support the population so it was the very

beginning it was a hell of a of an assignment but it's what we call the Steep learning curve there will always

be one like that for all of us this was definitely mine and then in the year after in 212 I got to go on assignment

to South Sudan in a small place in the north called um dolo where I did something we call

um Team life it's basically making sure sure that when we have very large groups of staff that we deploy in an emergency

so very high Pace uh basic living conditions someone can come there to make sure that our own staff is actually

taking good care of in Terms of daily living conditions so I was there to make everybody's life better and I

loved it a lot and then afterwards it was a 2015

uh very beginning September October November in lesbos Greece when it all started with the influx in migration as

human resource and finance manager um and that was a very um

learning Rich assignment and very tough uh tough because of the the situation tough because it was within Europe and I

was facing um something that you can't understand and I still can't understand in 2023 eight years later the situation

is still a lot better uh the way that uh migrants are received is still uh not a human way of receiving people and

treating people so in that way humanly it was probably one of my top toughest assignments

um and then I got also to do benchmarking which Molina maybe will touch upon later in Liberia where we go

and check basically that our staff that we employ we want to make sure that overall uh everything that is part of

their remuneration is fair to the local market as well so we go we interview we do research We compare with local actors

uh big other ngos Etc to basically see are we giving a Fair uh salary remuneration package to our staff and we

update this every three years um and then um a last assignment I got to do was in

Haiti where I got to go and take all our Haitian stuff through the same recruitment process that you would be

going uh through so that you could go on International assignments so we do that in many of our projects uh it might

happen when we have to close a project we want to make sure that all uh staff have the possibility if they wish to

apply for international assignments because they have a lot of knowledge they have a lot of capacity so that's

what we what we do there and that was my last assignment uh now I'm gonna pass on a form here

where you can pop down uh your details so we can keep you informed about who we need at times

um and other operational news so make sure it goes around everybody and please send it back to to Chicago at uh the end

um oh yeah and one important thing uh here is my stewardess speech uh fire emergencies green light is over there uh

and there's another way that way you follow the green light I had to say it I managed to remember it you

um so so I'm gonna give you a moment to read our character if I managed to change

slides because there is nothing as complicated it's changing

thank you um so just take a moment to read this book

foreign so as you can see it is twofold first of all the fact that we give emergency aid

based on needs regardless of race religion political affiliation gender so myself is a needs-based organization in

that sense and secondly there is the part of Timon the bearing witness so our teams and our colleagues here tonight

when we work in the projects we see life stories we see human stories we see stories that don't make it to the

international media that don't get reported about it's not interesting you know it's not covering

um the financial needs of the big corporate and many other reasons and so msf what we do is to speak about it to

get the attention to also maybe challenge the way that financial means are being spread out around on the

humanitarian needs and the medical needs and basically all of this speaking out is really to try and um have a positive

impact for the populations that don't get any attention otherwise and this is a very important part because originally

msf is in a way born uh but in in a way a marriage of doctors and journalists that together wanted to set up the

project of msf and that's how it all started and that's why you have this very specific

identity to msf these two same part and now I'm gonna show you a little movie

and there goes my first I.T challenge okay I don't have some but you can see how he

earns money what phone he has [Music] foreign

[Music] [Music] how he earns money what phone he has

I don't see who she prays to that she's a threat which border the cross

I don't see if he's a soldier if he's a refugee which side they're on this

I just see a child a human being a patient

[Music] Doctors Without Borders independent neutral impartial

[Music] okay cool

[Music] um all right

thank you all right cool and actually we have here uh tonight and she's hiding in the kitchen but we have our general

director uh Lindy's Rubin who's uh yes heard me saying her name you can just come and say

just say hi you probably heard about her or seen her face before and she's written a pamphlet uh recently and

there's a very interesting stories in there so now you see her in person in case you've never met her

that was I don't know been 15 years 15 years before that so I've got to see

so many wanting to join us yeah and she started like Molina and I actually nature as a chair manager so you see

where it can take you um you can have big Ambitions uh so impartiality you didn't hear it in the

little movie but basically msf worked by three principles uh the fact that we do not uh make a difference on the patients

we treat so regardless of their backgrounds we will treat them there's the neutrality part in the sense that we

operate in very difficult contexts also armed conflicts uh areas where there are different

um um importance at stake whether politically whether uh ethnically there

can be many reasons uh why we might um have difficulty uh to access our patients but the fact that msf is

neutral and impartial and doesn't take sides lets us access patients even in very complicated tricky areas where

we're going to have to go and negotiate with um conflict leaders access to the

population and the third element is the independency the fact that we do not let economic religious political influences

uh choose who we will give Medical Aid to or not one of these important elements we rely on is our financial

independency msf is over 90 percent privately funded that means that when we go somewhere there is not like in other

situations unwanted funds in our pot because it comes from the public it comes from the

individual you might be one of our donors maybe your parent is maybe your neighbor is to its people wanting to

help this medical course and that gives us a huge power of negotiation by being financially independent

um now overall what does the movement look like today well um it started in 71 in Paris and that's

why we're called mixels and that's what you hear me referring to all the time with the acronym msf

um so it's a while ago it's more than 50 years ago um Lots has been done and a lot of

knowledge has been gathered and we are now six operational centers so what's an operational Center

um and there is one in Amsterdam Paris Geneva Barcelona uh Brussels and uh waka western African

um operational Center and they decide basically on the content of what we do in a project they decide which disease

we will treat they decide whether we should extend reduce stop start Etc they really decide on the content this is not

us hearing animals have no way deciding that a cinema Norway for instance we're called an office and there's about 41

around the world and what we do is support the operational center with communication to the public the national

public with raising funds that's when you meet our teams and also with providing Staffing that's why we need to

recruit people so all of this is a supportive role that we have um we're over 48 000 staff at all times

working in the organization so you get a bit of a of an idea of how big the whole system is and the important part about

us is also that we are an emergency organization so what we wish to reach is when something happens around the world

like a big catastrophe a natural disaster we want to be on the ground within 48 hours but not just be

underground taking pictures we want to already be starting to treat the patients and if you think 48 hours

to actually already start treating patients is very limited time and msf has been able over the over

those 50 plus years to be so reactive with our big Supply Centers we have a huge supply chain that

allows us when something happens to have for instance emergency kits ready uh kids ready for for instance if there's a

need for surgery for our surgeons to pick it up Take It on the first next plane be able to arrive there be able to

take all the small transport that is needed because when you have a natural catastrophe often populations become

unreachable so it's quite a headache but lsf has put everything in place so that um medicines already in the cold chain

Customs are cleared to be able to ship things cargos are ready to be packed there are people ready on arrival Etc

this is a huge change and that's why one of the profiles we uh really always need is in the family of supply chain because

you have the procurement you have the actual supply chain you have the warehousing to store things so that

things are not running out of date etc etc so um the reactivity we have is thanks to

the whole uh big supply chain msf has built and like I said privately funded the best way to support us is to be a

regular monthly donor because then we can focus better how much money we have we can plan in advance and we can also

react in case of emergency because imagine if we had to start sending our teams out first to raise money we'd be

not very effective so that's the best way Financial audit is done every year and

it's on our website and then another important component of msf is that we're an association of members all of us here

msf are members and what does that mean is that we get to go to board meetings and then we have our general assembly

where we can vote and elect our board uh that will be the balancing power with the executive the general director her

boss is actually the president Norway and there are presidents in different layers of hierarchy of

structure of the whole organization so we get to vote we have a voice in our organization we get to uh agree or not

on msf starting to treat certain diseases go in some directions so all of us are very engaged because we all even

have a voice in the organization and that is also all our International staff that bring back directly their knowledge

from working on the ground with the populations and then

um in case you didn't know we received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and we're very proud of that

um so I will have little Tina who will come and join now uh for her part of the presentation uh I know it's actually

Molina sorry yeah yeah and um and well uh I'm fighting with the gods of ID she will start presenting

hello everyone my name is Malena and as mentioned before uh I came very freshly out of University in 2014

International Studies not related to what I ended up doing uh I got a summer job with msf as a

fundraiser so I was traveling with a team knocking on doors throughout the country asking people to support msf

maybe I've been looking on one of your doors as well and I feel completely in love with the

msf and I wanted to continue so I got different opportunities here in msf Norway in the fundraising Department

coordinating fundraising project managing fundraising teams and after some years in 2018 I had enough work

experience in finance HR management to go on a salary Benchmark assignment this is what

Emily mentioned earlier as a remuneration analyst to Greece to analyze the market see where our msf

positioned in terms of salary working conditions Etc to make sure that we are a fair employer increase I did also the

same in South Africa and in 2020 I had enough experience to apply as an international mobile staff meaning that

I could go out as HR and finance manager fantastic yeah yeah

very good here that's it yeah okay

so yeah so being a project HR finance manager HR human resource uh it basically means

that you're supporting the HR administrational Financial activities in a project

so everything from recruitment training development of locally hired hired staff is it okay

or locally hard stuff I'm not intervening in the international mobile team for example and I think it's

basically the same that any HR finance manager would do in any Hospital set of companies that that you already have

outside I was working as an HR finance manager in Sierra Leone for six months and then

I went to Yemen for six months and I also worked in Afghanistan for nine months in Afghanistan I was more of a

flying Asia managed to supporting all the nine projects that we have and

the countries as you can see also geographically a very different context-wise extremely different

um and even though many of the job tasks are the same because msf have their own protocols many of the systems that we're

working are exactly the same but really the my experience both professionally and social was were completely different

and that's why I really recommend everyone to go on more than just one assignment as well because going on one

assignment will not really be representative to the job you do how confident you feel and what you can also

bring to the organization um a bit about the msf projects and the and the context so uh we are working can

I get my notes just for me to remember so I don't forget everything at least the projects were really

different in size like for example in Sierra Leone the project had the 80 locally hired stuff in some of the

projects in Afghanistan we had more than a thousand staff and it really

uh like we we will be hiring everything from of course Hospital cleaners we have nurses medical doctors surgeons Etc a

fantastic let me see but when it comes to International

mobile stuff we are usually around five to uh 15. so it's not as much as all uh I really come in as a neutral person as

HR finance manager often in a very pressed uh or difficult job market for example when we are doing recruitment we

will not put that pressure on our local colleagues so I will be the main responsible for that

uh my team message our finance manager is usually very small compared to the Medical Teams it's usually me and HR

assistant the finance assistant uh and and then as I mentioned with the all the

Medical Teams you will have everything from nurses medical doctors Etc you see on the picture on the left is our nurse

Safi working in an Outreach clinic in Sierra Leone and among the International Teams

we would usually find more like Medical Specialists gynecologists surgeons and physiologists Etc

logistic managers supply chain manager and the project coordinator and myself uh in the in the picture on the right is

the picture of one of the Malaysian surgeons I worked with in Yemen and he's working there together with the yemeni

surgical team I will highlight one of my experiences uh in Yemen I was working in a msf for

any surgical field Hospital very close to the front line and during the time I was there our Medical Teams were

extremely busy in two weeks time we received two or we had two so-called mass casualty events that means that you

have a really large influx of patients more than 30 in a short time frame and

uh we had to really quickly expand all the activities uh so that's where really where the for me as HR and finance team

we had to recruit more yemeni staff uh we also had to allocate the budget correctly and make sure that all our

staff were paid extra for the overtime hours that we're working and also me coming from a fundraising background

it was really cool to see also that msf having private funding and it really meant that we can turn around on the

spot and start to really if the need is changing we're also changing basically it's not like our

money was earmarked and we couldn't turn around and treat the extra patients that we were getting because it was not in

the budget that's usually what I like to emphasize also to people when I was worship

fundraiser but now really seeing it in person in person as well and it was really a fantastic Machinery as you can

see here our field hospital was built of 10 sheets and I was seeing our project teams working day and night to provide

medical care in in really stressed like difficult environment like for you guys who are medical as well

you've probably seen in operational theater you have like a list of patients that you're going to treat and I

remember the team was writing the name of the patients on under the white board on the plastic sheet because there were

too many patients basically for my AJ team as well uh it was really meaningful because they we know that

even though we're not directly treating the patients uh we can be responsible for ensuring that the hospital has the

right people on the job so from the cleaner to x-ray technician to the medical doctor and this is a picture of

my two HR assistant adua and Osama in it involves the daily routine [Music]

um very good thanks for telling me um so daily routine is mostly linked to

management of locally hard stuff uh hiring onboarding development evaluation and all the issues that arise with the

with stuff I guess everyone working in HR know that you have to handle that uh Finance wise you have to make sure

that the bills are paid that we're allocating correctly all the costs according to the budget

uh still quite old-fashioned in many of the projects we're still signing and stamping a lot of documents from working

contracts to different bills so the picture is from Sierra Leone when I was get filling for the finance assistant

and project coordinator at the same time and I was keeping all of their stamps for signatory that's also why we as you

can see in the back we were calling the age of Mr Powerhouse because we were the power of the signatories

I worked on in quite established projects in Sierra Leone Yemen and Afghanistan there were no emergency

projects even though of course for the emergencies can arise but usually then the working hours are from eight to five

approximately but when you are out on assignments you can expect that sometimes you will be working a little

bit more as well uh the international team is as the name implies very International and these are

the guys that you are living with sharing toilet with and also working with of course

um in Yemen in Afghanistan uh we didn't have as much Freedom as in Sierra Leone for example where we could actually go

out on the weekends spend time with with our colleagues and in this kind sort of high insecurity

compound assignments uh you need to be prepared to spend more time inside try to find the activities that are

meaningful like cooking it can be learning a language French or Arabic would be very useful uh also just

work out to keep saying like in host in Afghanistan we were making these obstacle courses cooking gingerbread

Etc trying to have fun and so

uh I would of course mainly be working with my International colleagues when it comes to recruitment more strategic on

the project level but I really am completely completely dependent on the local

team of my national colleagues because they are first of all the project memory uh usually International stuff we come

and go stay six months nine months maximum while these guys are really often been there for years uh this is my

team in Sierra Leone on my last working day uh this is also some of my colleagues

teammates in Yemen also actually Jalal on the left he used to be the head nurse in this project but

he's now also an international mobile stuff from Yemen uh one of the most challenging

experiences I had was recently in Afghanistan uh I guess all of you have heard that

December last year also Taliban put a ban on women from uh working from studying

luckily the health sector is still accepted and I saw my female colleague sitting on the hospital for Crime

because they were studying to become medical doctors try the colleges midwives they had a few months left and

now they were thrown out of university for the mere fact of being female and this was this picture is from host

it's a maternity hospital in Afghanistan where 70 percent of our staff are female and we have more than 3 000 staff in

Afghanistan 50 of them in total are female stuff um

as responsible for the human resources of course I focus more on the well-being of our staff rather than the patients

and so the Asia resistant and I actually on women's day we organized the discussion group only

for our female staff where we uh where we ask how msf as an employer can allow our female staff to

just breathe a little bit while they are at work because usually it was not so easy to do that elsewhere and they came

with Amazing Ideas everything from having like a staff room only for female where they can have

discussions where they can maybe study a bit maybe have a gym Etc and it was really nice to see that even though we

cannot change the situation in the country at least we can try to uh make a little difference for our

staff by being a responsible employer I will go quickly through the last slides as well

um me from being a project HR manager in Sierra Leone and in Yemen I went to Afghanistan as a mission HR manager

meaning that I was supporting all the nine projects giving support to the HR managers

and I while I've Been On Assignment I also done some additional trainings like people Management training uh case

management and abusive and appropriate behavior different trainings organized by msf I'm also learning French

and that's actually something msf is supporting me to do uh more than or apparently 70 percent of all our uh all

our project countries are in French or arabic speaking countries so really think about that if that if you want to

go out on the field assignment as well uh NYX for me I'm actually going back to

Afghanistan in four weeks now as a HR special or HR implementation specialist a little bit different for

what I've been doing before and not really representative a picture of Afghanistan but it's from Kabul

uh I might be able to or be ready to go in a French speaking assignment next year but I will probably have to go back

as an HR project HR manager so that the tasks are a little bit easier for me because the language will be more

difficult uh I think that's it I know we're a bit

present time also so I will say thank you very much for listening and I really hope to see you as one of my

colleagues in the near future [Applause] hello sorry

I'm coldly I have a completely different profile from Malena as I'm a gynecologist

and you can also see I'm a bit older than whatever and I've started also I I am working in drama hospital as a

gynecologist I've been working as a gynecologist for many many years and I have three children so I decided

to uh wait to join msf until my children were so old that I felt it was okay to leave them back home

um so I was recruited my I I still remember very well my information meeting in 2000 around 19 I think it was

uh I had just moved back from Sri Lanka where I had lived for three years with my family and I was really really ready

to join msf I felt that the recruitment process was very easy they welcomed me and also I have a profile of course that

I really want so then it's easier but I think it's not that has it's not a hassle it's a nice nice recruitment

period and you hear quite quickly a part of a family yeah in the postal office so uh yeah

I have done two assignments with the msf I worked in host just the same as Molina and I also worked in Sierra Leone

full-time as of course as an obstetrician um

yeah this is me in one of the operating theaters in uh in one of my assignments

so I I worked in Sierra Leone as you see down there in Africa and also in Afghanistan so you get a lot of like um

go get to visit many different countries if you go out with msf but the medical activities in all the

projects are mainly the same for a gynecologist do what is called obstetric care where

you help with deliveries you do in-hospital observational high-risk pregnancies it's a lot of course

delivery care but also outpatient clinics very help out if with spontaneous abortions post-delivery

Family Planning and prenatal checkups and there's also in this Hospital which is mostly modern and child hospitals

also neonatal care and pandemic care up to in Canada it was five years in host it was

just the neonatals uh there's also a lot of health promotion going on and you're also supporting local Health Centers and

also provincial local hospitals uh quickly about Afghanistan Afghanistan has a lot of different

ethnic groups they have two main languages it's a Islamic tradition almost all of Afghans are Muslims and

they have food from Persia Asian India very nice food

and there's an it's a climate if you go in the winter you'll get snow in the summer you can have like 40 degrees and

very dry it's a beautiful country and it's a country we don't you don't get to visit

as a tourist and it's quite exciting and you can see yeah before I went to Afghanistan I very much felt it was

country a great country or a blue country or like all women in burkas blueberries it was like no not something

maybe you want to go on the somewhere you want to go as a tourist but as you see from the pictures and this is me

sitting in one of the shops where one of the local um ethnic groups were selling their

beadwork it's full of colors really uh and the modern child health in

Afghanistan Afghanistan has the highest birth rates of any non-african country but it also has the highest maternal

mortality rate of in the world of the highest in the world and also a really high new Naval mortality rate so you can

really make a difference when you go out with msf to help people um

uh host maternity hospital has also Mariana mentioned opened by msf in 2012 and it has meant a drastic reduction in

both material and and prenatal mortality in the province and it's also called the baby Factory and that's because in in

the hospital I work in in Drummond we have about 2 000 deliveries a year in host I have two thousand deliveries a

month so it was really a baby Factory uh very long is also a country with a

lot of poverty and a lot of difficulties for both mothers and children it had it's

completely different than Afghanistan it has a tropical climate it has beautiful beaches it's rain forests

and but Muslims also make the most of most of their population here uh it's a previous colony and it's had

its troubles Through The Years with Civil War and Ebola outbreak uh

also Sierra Leone has a very high material mortality rate and it's even worse than in Afghanistan

and it has also a very high mortality rate among children and they as Africa in Afghanistan also

has a very limited access and utilization of healthcare that's why you are so very needed when

you go out in Canada the hospital was opened in 2021 so it's quite new it was a

Maternity Ward opened uh in 2022 so when I was there we had we celebrated one year of the hospital being opened it's

also teaching hospital and the um the picture in the left lower corner is from the msf academy where you train

the local staff in and supervised the local staff because that's one of the most important

thing when you go out it's not like always the Hands-On work you do yourself with the patient with this supporting

the local staff and supervise the local stuff so when you leave again they're able to do

to work with the patient in the in the best way possible so that's like maybe the main thing you go out to do is to

help the local staff getting better [Music] educated and better in helping people

so uh even though a lot of the daily routine is supervising there's also plenty of

Hands-On practice so if you really love the work you're doing I don't know if anyone say a

midwife or a gynecologist but you get to do plenty work with patients in well as well as the supervising you have the

same kind of daily routine as you have in a hospital back home you do your morning rounds you do your

emergency work and you have a roster and that's depending for a gynecologist on how many local gynecologists there are

in the hospital and also how many International gynecologists in the hospital so when I was in host we

were three international gynecologists and four local gynecologists and but in Canada we were only two International

and far and we didn't have any local gynecologists at all because there's hardly any doctors in Sierra Leone I

think they educate around 10 doctors a year and the population is about 7 million people

and very few of them become gynecologists and very very few of them go to the remote areas and Sierra Leone

so I think in the part of Sierra Leone I was I don't think I had a single gynecologist

except for me and my Japanese colleague that was there and the colleagues are extremely

extremely important the local colleagues that you get they're the ones doing the work even though you think you come from

Norway you're able to do anything or and you you have a lot of experience like I have when you come to these places

you're not able to do anything if you don't get the support of the local stuff they know the culture they know the

context they know the language often like when I come to Afghanistan I'm not able to speak Pashto I'm 100 dependent

on me device or local gynecologists that can help me speak to the patients to understand what the problem is

and you have very close cooperation and collaboration with a lot of different staff both the medical

staff but also all the support staff that you need you're not able to give medicine if not the pharmacologists give

you them you're not able to work or the local staff need to get have someone that pays them their salary

and and you need Logistics to make sure you have the medical equipment needed and so you won't as I said 100

dependent on them to do your work as a for me to do my work as a gynecologist [Music]

so I just want to show you some pictures here so you see when these are pictures of me and local stuff and international

stuff in host so you see we wear the head scarves because of the cultural setting in Afghanistan

uh and in Canada it's a bit different where we don't need headscarf but

uh yeah if you see the team and teamwork it's very dependent on what setting you're in

like also Molly and I showed earlier that the team live in host is very and it's like you have this more compound

that you stay in all the time when you're there you're not able to go outside because of security reasons but

it's very it's a cozy little compound and you stay there with around 40 14 15 International stuff and you live with

them you eat with them you chat with them and you quarrel with them every day and you also get your hair done there by

their local stuff and you can also like in Afghanistan you can you the carpet sellers come into the hospital so I

actually bought this carpet you see here no this one this one it's in my

in one of my rooms back home uh and your team life is very different if you go to a place like Sierra Leone

where you can go wherever you want except you need to be in at 2AM in the morning which is not for home

um but as you can see it's green where we're going on Hikes and we could also go on weekends weekend trips and yeah

life was completely different and also I was walking to the hospital every day when I was in Canada it was about a 50

minute walk and every day I passed through the a village called Norway that was quite nice

so a couple of words on the challenges as I said we when you go to a place like Afghanistan I was there for three months

I couldn't go outside of the compounds for security reasons for three months which which is a difficult

I think but we had like a a little exercise room uh with the treadmill where we so I walked or I'm on the

treadmill every day we had a basketball no um volleyball field and we have this

ping pong table and you you just use a real life opportunity to have to try and relax and if you are there longer I was

there for three months but if you have an assignment that's longer you're allowed to go out for weekends and then

you also get holidays so then you can relax outside of the compound but that's what I found most difficult

uh security issues is also something to think about but I was much more scared of how I would feel before I went to

Afghanistan being there in this compound it felt absolutely Totally Secure I didn't have any life thoughts of

insecurity actually while I was there and then another challenge is that you you meet a lot of people you get a lot

of stories you see quite much and you have a lot of personal meetings and it can sometimes be difficult

but also when you get home here you'll have talks to a psychologist and you will talk to your colleagues that's been

out before and if you need you can continue these talks for two two years afterwards so it's it's a life system

when you get home and but it's a part of this is that you experience difficult things

and also for me being away from my husband and three children it's also a challenge but there's also always a

Wi-Fi and in Afghanistan it was very very good so I talked to my children I think every day on FaceTime actually so

and yeah and to relax is what I said the physical activity that's my way of relaxing is going on

Hikes which was very difficult in Afghanistan that's why I walked on the treadmill I think almost every day

but yeah and then listening to music reading books we were also in the compound we we watched films

when we needed to relax together in the living room uh I'm good on time or almost two

minutes okay I'll just go through this one so why and what next I went for me this gives me a lot of

personal growth I think it's it's like I had a huge multi I'm born in

Norway my education as a doctor has been free I've been giving everything from my birth until now with very few challenges

compared to the rest of the world and in a way for me and myself is really giving something back I can go to to the very

less fortunate than myself and I can share with them some of the expertise and the things I've learned here I can

use for the better in the part of the world where they're very much less fortunate as I said

but it's also a professional growth I really increase my obstetrical skills when I've been out because you know

everything is so technical you don't always get to need use your clinical right

but anyway in when you get to these settings you're I feel like I'm an obstetrician in 1920s sometimes and it's

fun it's actually very fun and not having to depend on all the technical equipment and really just

be an old-fashioned doctor I like that uh yeah and then it's also a personal challenge you get out of your

comfort zone I can assure you of that you'll get after your cough itself and for me I'll do a new assignment when

I when my work back home allows and my family life allows and just now I don't have a specific plan but I'll do one

soon and I'd love to go back to Afghanistan [Applause]

write down your questions that is a lot of interesting things so I'm sure you will want to know more about what they

said but uh well I'm still dealing with the it um

I invite each of you to turn to your neighbor and don't leave anybody out just turn to your neighbor and in one

minute find out why you're here tonight from each other go ahead [Music]

[Applause] [Music] foreign

[Music] [Music] our staff

um as you've understood from my colleagues and they are a good representation is that we need both

medical and non-medical to make it all work and basically the repartition is about half half

um but you're wondering probably like okay uh here I am I have my background uh does msf need me and that's a very

important question so um we are going to talk about it now but all information all details are on our

website in each of the profiles you will see it and you find many details there but I'm a bit curious quickly to see

who's here uh tonight in the audience so um any doctors here tonight put your hand up high then I can really

see easily very high high high yes a few okay cool because our doctors they work with intensive care with uh emergency

they can be working with infection prevention control uh we might be needing uh doctors with pediatric skills

doctors that have a background in public health or infectious diseases Etc the question to ask yourself is what is msf

doing abroad in a project what is msf working with and in that sense you will understand which type of

specializations or experiences we need so this is overall a handful of different aspects that our doctors work

with but we also need uh very strongly pediatricians any pediatricians here tonight

or wishing to specialize no so if you don't know what to specialize in yet or if you know about a pediatrician please

tell them about Arnie because we have many projects where we take care of our children

um and then we come to um the most uh difficult hard to find Specialists and that's uh part one of

them is the surgeons so a background in orthopedic in plastic surgery we also do trauma surgery because that's the kind

of patience we treat any surgeons tonight no so if you meet one hopefully in a

good situation a happy situation not when you're lying down tell them that msf needs them

anesthesiologists need to work with the surgeons any anesthesiologists yes one you very good come and talk to

us afterwards and then as you've understood uh someone as a beautiful with a warm heart a big smile and a very

big heart and that had a happy recruitment process which is not usually it's always the feedback I I received

that it was smooth and easy so that was cool anyone like Lil a gynecologist obstetrician

someone thinking of specializing so you see how hard it is and we've done a lot to try and get these Specialists

we have to work all the time they are called the gas poor very difficult to get but we don't give up so please share

information to them when you meet them tell them msf needs them any psychiatrists because we do a lot of

mental health projects no well they are hard to find as well especially in Norway so now you know

what we spend a lot of our time on uh and then on the paramedical side uh so along with our guy names works also Our

Midwives Our Midwives are big responsibilities where they go abroad because there are often local midwives

they're also birth attendants some midwives need to work with patients for instance that have dealt with sexual

violence or uh need to work with termination of pregnancy in the countries where uh termination of

pregnancy is illegal any midwives tonight yay cool one

um don't hesitate to pick this lady uh tonight talk about the great projects where you

would meet and then the nurses along with you know our doctors kind of background but also nurses with

um pediatric skills neonatal we need a lot we work a lot with uh malnourished children there's big needs there but

also Public Health Etc any nurses tonight hi hi

cool many great wow fantastic um and then uh clinical psychologists uh they are the the big backbone of our

mental health projects which is a very big component of every medical project has now mental health components

clinical psychologists so one here anymore no um and then uh we're on the clinical

pharmacists pharmacies yes and yes and maybe we've talked via

email yes yes it's great that you're here tonight um and someone over here is what I

missed oh yeah over there fantastic because we need pharmacists uh we obviously along in the medical projects

a lot of work to do and the background is uh in terms more of Hospital Pharmacy uh Etc

um big stock management big budgeting Etc um

so great to have you here tonight and then the health promoter so that's more people that have studied anthropology or

sociology or public health they are basically um the bridge between the communities

and msf's project because you would think that anytime we open a project we're present patients are just like

running into our door to come and seek medical care but that's not the reality because there is such a knowledge bridge

that needs to be built uh that is respectful of local customs of local beliefs of local needs Etc so a lot of

information work is done by our health promoters any background like that yep cool great

um and then epidemiologists because as you know we work with epidemics any epidemiologists no I

know wow fantastic cool come and talk to us because you are rare as

so it's really cool that you're there any lab Specialists obviously work ah very good yeah we work a lot with the

laboratory analysis microbiology virology Etc this type of background that can

come in uh in relevant um and then uh we need non-medicals as well so

um and there's a few of us here tonight and I haven't told you but I have another colleague Cecil over there that

has joined a bit later she has a lot of experience from abroad as well in Human Resources finance manager

um and uh yes any background in Supply I told you about msf supply chain ah yes

some people are waving hello okay cool very good and then water and sanitation so you know to do Waste Management to

make sure that we have clean water to make sure that we have latrines everywhere all this work that goes along

in the medical projects any water and sanitation Engineers any plumbers no

no um we do a lot of construction we have big structures uh they take many

different type of traits so it can go from Constructors and Architects anyone and then it's also the whole

um electricians mechanics and um more overall also biomedical

engineers no okay so we must have a very medical crowd uh tonight I think because then we

come to a more General profile that's nothing you can really study for but it's like what experience and exposure

you are going to have had in your life so um I know that many of you have in the

family or whatever have for instance some Hooter and this Hooter you had to put some planks together and then you

wanted electricity so you've put actually an electricity system and then you've also done maybe some sewage and

you've done all this maybe not like with all the accreditations but you've become a very handy woman or man and this is

what we need from our general logisticians is basically that is very handiness about it any handy people here

tonight how many shy ones come on Norway I'm sure there's a few more great very good

um and then more on um from our family in finance Human Resources so having worked with accountancy budgeting

because when you go out you're in charge of the big budgets the big forecasting the big financial planning you're not

like registering uh all uh the claims and and the bills Etc that's all our local colleagues team that would be

working on that but really like the higher financial management and then in terms of Human Resources uh everything

that Molina has explained before uh really having HR professionals that can do the whole HR line and be the guarant

of that in the project Any Human Resources Finance people here tonight the hands yeah cool

um and then yes for the last two uh profiles journalists humanitarian

advocacy that's I will be honest it's a rare profile in the sense that we don't need so many of them but when we need

them they need to have very different language knowledge skills a lot of experience from having already reported

the type of work we do having done humanitarian and advocacy in the same type of work environment as msf is

operational in that's kind of the background plus uh being bilingual at least with French or maybe Arabic plus

another language because you are really writing and Reporting Etc anyone with the background like that tonight

oh fantastic oh wow three very good news looking forward to hear from you guys afterwards

um so that's overall a bit here 75 countries red area is where msf is operational in 2022.

um so which um which language would be a lot spoken over here which one over not making a mistake over

here yeah so the reason why we say that we need languages is because that's where

we are operational um most of you have had French at school

you can't hide it I already know it um and it gets Rusty yes but there's ways to update it there's ways to be

interactive when I recruited Malena she did not speak French yet and now today when she sits in front of me I'm

speaking French all day to her like that's what she did she's amazing and so many of our stuff they just come out of

themselves whether using an app for instance Duolingo or whether doing Roofing in France go and speak French to

the goats or whether you may be fine to speak the love language um and you it takes you along very many

exchanges there's many ways to update uh or reach these language skills so what we're really saying is like try to make

that effort for msf because you will come in as much more needed as much more also uh diverse in the project we can

send you to um and you're waiting time might be much shorter to go on an assignment just

because we never have enough people speaking French that I can assure you um and Arabic is a great great asset but

also Spanish comes in also Portuguese can be relevant sometimes Russian is as well or even some other languages

um but overall the biggest needs for our International staff uh are more like French Arabic Spanish Etc

um if you only speak Norwegian and English um we can still need you and we will

then be really looking at your experience so the buy the bar might be higher because you do not speak one of

the most needed languages that's simply based on the operational needs but it is not as such that we don't recruit uh

people with only English and Norwegian so please do still apply if you have those two languages

and then I'm gonna do a quick test to still try and get the sound because maybe it's the microphone that blocked

our sound so people online sorry you'll be back with Samsung foreign

yeah yeah it didn't work but I will still uh show you uh the video at least we will have tried

um [Music] okay

[Music] [Music] foreign

[Music] Center in Brussels [Music]

thank you thank you all right

so that's how they used to make movies in the past as well

um so overall these are the four uh main responses that msf is giving in its

medical action and these are the operations or medical and non-medical side and I'll just let you read this for

a minute okay silver roll

our stuff um is represented by uh about a balance of uh 10 of international staff versus

about 83 percent of our national colleagues and like my colleagues have explained you we cannot function as an

organization without a local colleagues because they are ambassadors in their communities they are the justification

of why msf can be present there and accepted they the local knowledge they're also part of our security uh

that they contribute to and they are really overall the biggest Workforce of msf so when we say that each profile

will need experience in people management it is because by default in any profession you will go out to you

will by default be a man manager you will have a team to take care of and what we want is people to have had that

experience because you're coming in and you're only there for a short amount of time

so we want you to have done supervision we want you to know how it is to give feedback regularly to stuff to follow up

to develop them find out if they need training to be able to have hard conversations also sometimes to know

really about how it is to give feedback to do evaluation all these things that are part of being a manager we want you

to have had that experience here because there's a lot of turnover for our teams you are only there maybe six months

maybe even 12 but imagine yourself having a new manager every six months yes you want to have a good manager for

this amount of turnover so that's why we suggest people to really try and take their time if you don't have that

experience yet try to ask your boss try to find ways also as a volunteer maybe to be in charge of teams to gain that

maybe you already have it in your role nowadays currently or maybe you need to build towards that but it is something

that we require we know our Medicals have a limited scope of how you can really fully be a

full manager because of the way hospitals are set up but we still want you to really try and get this position

somewhere in a different project down the line where you're going to be able to build some of those very important

skills now overall the general criteria for recruitment so if you haven't done so yet uh go and read our Charter on our

website and then for all profiles we ask a minimum of two years work experience now really this is just a minimum what

it means is that we want you to feel confident in your shoes as a professional because you have learned a

lot here but you need to imagine that when you arrive land on your first assignment it's gonna take you so much

time to First learn how the organization functions what does my role actually look like within the whole setup of msf

you're going to have the cultural aspect you're gonna have so many different elements to deal with that you're not

gonna be at your professional best in your first assignment when you land it's gonna take you time to get there

so what we want is you to be able to be confident to land like that so that you know how to find Solutions

around you that you're used to learn new processes Etc and this minimum of two years is more like having enough

experience in your job in your role so that you can meet a new environment with many unplanned challenges as well

because that is the nature of what we work with that is the nature of the environments we're in

for the first assignment it is an availability from nine up to 12 months it might be that you go out for a bit

less but we need to be able to have this flexibility of working with you up to 12 months for first assignment except for

the gynecologist anesthesiologists and surgeons they go out for less Long they go out for three months for their first

assignment because otherwise we simply would have zero around the world they are not freed up in that way in any

other way did I say something about languages uh people management have also covered

and yes to have gone out with your backpack or not uh but have gone out in the world realize a bit how the

situation is in low-income low-income countries uh so that it's not when you land on your first assignment that you

realize what the work really looks like so get out there do your experiences because it will really help you further

down in your career with NSF previous experience in mentoring coaching can be great previous non-government

organization experience can be great and then for the medicals it is a great asset if you have the tropical medicine

course from the list of accredited courses that is on our website um except for the Guyanese

anesthesiologists and surgeons and emergency doctors um overall

what we're looking for is um flexible people uh adaptable people um there will be no two days the same

on your assignment that is something we can really sign up on today we don't know so many things we can say for sure

but that's one that there will always be changes is really something for sure and you need to assess with yourself if that

is something that you like is it something that you're actually looking for is it something that when heads

the fan and you've worked for hours days weeks months maybe with your whole team maybe on something

but then the environment is going to change and from one day to another things will change and it will no longer