VACANCY - Intern, Insight on Conflict FILLED

We need a new intern with bags of enthusiasm and common sense to help us out with the Insight on Conflict project 3 days a week.

Insight on Conflict is our web showcase of local peacebuilding projects around the world. Its aim is to tell the world about local peacebuilding, facilitate partnerships between peacebuilding organisations, make small organisations more visible to donors, and, eventually, inform global policy on conflict resolution.

The content on the site is researched in-country by ‘local correspondents’, who send their work back to us for commenting, editing, and uploading onto the IoC site.

The bulk of the intern’s work, after training and hand-holding, will be:

• Providing appropriate feedback to local correspondents. To do this well, you’ll need tact, understanding, and a good sense of why locally-led peacebuilding is important.
• Editing local correspondents’ work – sometimes the English is great and you’ll just be checking for misplaced apostrophes, typos, and the like; other times it may take you an hour just to decipher what a correspondent is trying to say. And you may need to alter some of the text slightly so it reads well and is appropriate to a web audience. To be good at this, you need an excellent eye for detail, excellent spelling and grammar and a flair for writing. We’re not looking for JK Rowling, but you do need to be able to construct a well-formed, easy to read, and snappy sentence. You’ll also need heaps of patience and the ability to empathise with the local correspondent.
• Uploading content to the website using a very simple Content Management System. This is not the most exciting part of the job, but there’s lots of it so if the thought of learning some extremely basic HTML and spending a fair chunk of your time updating a website makes you want to weep, this is not the internship for you.
• There may be opportunities to get involved in marketing the site to our audience, mainly through newsletters. You’d be helping to research people to send newsletters too, then assisting with designing the newsletter and writing the copy.
• You won’t be on tea-making, photocopying, or filing duties, and we’re a very non-hierarchical organisation where your opinion will be sought and will count.

Essential skills for this role:

• Excellent eye for detail
• Excellent English language skills
• Cultural sensitivity
• Great IT skills and the ability and desire to learn new ones
• Able to work without (much) supervision

How to apply:
Send a CV and Cover Letter to Lucy@peacedirect.org
DEADLINE: Midnight, October 1st 2008
Interviews: 7th October 2008
To start the following week

PLEASE READ THIS BIT, IT WILL HELP YOU WITH THIS AND FUTURE APPLICATIONS.
We will be selecting for interview on the basis of the evidence you provide to tell us how you fulfil the essential and relevant skills for the job; and your enthusiasm for working with us. The key word here is evidence. You know you’re fabulous and perfect for the job, but we only have your word to go on. The more evidence of your fabulousness you can provide, the greater your chances of landing the role.

Cover Letter

• Is the first thing that gets read – bad cover letter / no cover letter and your CV is going in the bin!
• No more than 1 side of A4! You need to be able to write concisely.
• Should say why you’re the perfect candidate for the role – why do you want the job, what excites you about it? How do your particular experiences relate to the essential and relevant skills?
• Should backup what’s on your CV by providing evidence that demonstrates you have the skills we’re interested in. Simply saying ‘I have an excellent eye for detail’ is not enough. How have you got that skill? Where have you used it effectively? To what end?
• Check, check and check again for spelling and grammar errors and typos.

CV

• No more than 2 sides of A4 – don’t have loads of white space to make it up to 2 sides if you can present it all nicely on one side of A4. There is nothing wrong with one side of A4 and a really good cover letter.
• Should not be just a list of exam results and job titles. We want to know what you’ve done, and most importantly what it’s taught you. For example, 2003 – 2006: MacDonalds cashier’ doesn’t really tell us much. 2003 – 2006: MacDonalds cashier: In this high pressured role I was required to work effectively in a team and had to learn how to cook a beefburger. My excellent skills in beefburger making helped me gain the award for best beefburger maker’ is more helpful.
• This applies equally to anything you’ve done outside studying / normal working hours – your passion for bee-keeping – what have you learnt about yourself that’s applicable to the workplace in general and this role in particular?
• What modules you have studied are not really interesting unless they are strictly and directly relevant, and even then we’d want to know how that’s going to help you in this particular role.
• Check, check and check again for spelling and grammar errors and typos.

GOOD LUCK!