Career Options
Staff categories
The United Nations workforce is made up of different categories of staff. Within each category there are different levels, which reflect increasing levels of responsibilities and requirements. The information in this section will help you decide for which staff category you see a good fit. This will be useful when you start searching and applying for jobs.
These are the different categories of staff at the United Nations:
- Professional and higher categories (P and D)
- General Service and related categories (G, TC, S, PIA, LT)
- National Professional Officers (NO)
- Field Service (FS)
- Senior Appointments (SG, DSG, USG and ASG)
At the United Nations you progress in your career through merit and qualifications. There are, however, restrictions on movement between the different categories. For each category of job there is an assessment process. Moving from one category to another is tied to specific requirements.
Within the professional and higher category, some jobs are filled through global competitive examination processes, including the Young Professionals Programme Examination and the Competitive Examination for Language Professionals.
More information about these examinations and other tests and assessments
Information about Pay and Benefits
Please keep reading for more information about each category.
Language Professionals
Are you a language professional seeking to join the UN language services? The United Nations is one of the world’s largest employers of language professionals and welcomes applications from across the globe. There are career opportunities in translation, interpreting, editing, verbatim reporting and other fields.
The first step is to apply to take one of our competitive examinations for language positions or CELPs.
These examinations are used to fill positions at United Nations Headquarters in New York, at the United Nations Offices at Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna, and at the Regional Commissions located in Santiago, Bangkok, Beirut and Addis Ababa.
Language staff work mostly with the six official languages of the United Nations. These are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Applicants for language positions must have a perfect command of one official language and excellent knowledge of at least one other. The one exception is the small German Translation Section at UN Headquarters in New York, which requires a perfect command of German.
In addition to Competitive Examinations for Language Positions (CELPs), examinations for placement on the Secretariat’s Global Language Register (GLR) of language professionals eligible for contractual work or temporary appointments are organized on an as-needed basis.
