Last week, members from the SIANI team participated at the Ultuna Market Day hosted by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala. The Ultuna Market Day is a job market fair organized at the SLU campus annually. We were joined at the booth by the Swedish Development Forum (FUF) who shared information about the organization and future opportunities in their internship program. To spice things up, SIANI held an interactive quiz with questions linked to the job market and cross-disciplinary research and started a discussion relating to what might be relevant for an employer.
During the day, we got to meet both Swedish and international university students and informed them about SIANI. We were happy to discover that a lot of students already knew about SIANI and for those that didn’t, we a gave a short introduction of our goals and activities. We were also glad to see that so many young people were interested in the field of sustainable agriculture and food security. Nowadays, for many students, it can be hard to see the link between the university and the labour market. Therefore, days like this are important for students to find inspiration and build new contacts with the exhibitors. They are also a great opportunity for future companies and organizations to find new ambitious candidates for future employment.
Throughout the day there were several questions that came up several of times, worth mentioning here. First, yes! SIANI do take interns! If you are interested in an internship you have to apply through FUF´s internship program and we advise you to keep your eyes open for calls at their website. Second, a lot of students asked us about research topics for their bachelor and master theses, including if they can write it with support from us. The answer is both yes and no: while SIANI is a networks-based communications platform, we are not doing any research of our own. However, we do have several partnerships with research institutions we can connect you with, as well as the expert groups that often include researchers. Get in touch with a proposal!
Third, while many seemed aware of the Junior Professional Officer (JPO) program available through Sida, fewer people seemed to know about the “Bilateral Assistant Expert” or BBE. Both of these are great opportunities for those with some working experience to get experience working for UN organizations or embassies. And to those students who are looking for funding for their future fieldwork, Minor Field Studies (MFS) might be your answer to that.
To finish all of this up we would like to thank all of you that came and chatted with us and shared your thoughts and ideas. For those who didn’t make it this year, we hope to see you next year!