Today marks my 14th year in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). When I look back, I see a myriad of events and circumstances that influenced my career trajectory. Many of these informed the decisions I took, choices made, and paths taken as I performed and progressed through M&E roles.
Below, I highlight seven factors that affected my M&E career. These factors could impact you too, especially if working in the international development space.
1. The first M&E job: The first cut is the deepest, so goes the 1967 song written by Cat Stevens. And so are careers of many M&E professionals. My first job was in an International Development and Relief Non-Profit Organization (INGO) as a M&E Specialist for Grants.
I provided technical and managerial M&E oversight over short- and long-term grants across several development sectors and donors. I have often preferred M&E jobs that offer similar challenges or context. After fourteen years, three quarters of my M&E career is with INGOs.
If your first M&E job is skewed toward project performance monitoring, with a concentration on data collection and analysis skills. It is possible you can’t imagine a M&E world without these skills. Yet you can succeed in another M&E job with little to no direct use of data management capabilities.
2. Project life cycle: At what project life cycle stage did you find the project for your current M&E job? Are there M&E skills you are using more than others? A typical project goes through four to five phases: assessment, planning and design, implementation and monitoring, evaluation, and closure.
For example, if you are supporting projects to develop a new design, most of your M&E roles will be aligned with this phase. Your key roles will be to: mobilize communities to take part in the design process; develop project logical models; and develop M&E Plans. The M&E Officer will need to use a different set of skills if the project were at the implementation phase.
3. Donor M&E guidelines: In an earlier blog, “10 Common Donor Monitoring and Evaluation Requirements You Should Know”, I highlighted the different donor M&E requirements across the project management cycle.
Noteworthy, donor M&E requirements define our perspective on M&E and often how you must do the job. It is great if you are familiar with M&E requirements of a single donor. But you will have several career opportunities and choices if you are familiar with M&E requirements of multiple donors.
4. Organization structure: The organizations we work for influence our M&E careers two major ways:
One, organizational M&E approach. Are there methods, principles, systems and processes that your organizations expect you to use in performing M&E? Whereas you are expected to master these, it is important for you to tease out the practices aligned to the M&E industry. In most cases, you stand a good chance to transfer these skills to another organization should you transition.
Two, M&E structure. Some organizations’ M&E structures offer career progression to job holders. For instance, you can grow from the M&E Assistant through Officer, Specialist and Manager positions.
Others provide M&E staff opportunities to take on senior program positions where possession of M&E is among desired skills. This is important as growth in an M&E career does not mean moving to a senior role with an M&E in the job title.
Please note that some people experience growth in their M&E careers even when the jobs change from a “senior” to a “junior” role. For instance, you could be in an M&E position in one organization but switch to an M&E Officer position in another organization. The latter might offer a broader scope in terms of the project, roles and related opportunities than the former.
5. Project implementation level: We can carry out development projects at different levels including the design, funding, target group, and results expected. This defines the nature of M&E roles we will hire you to perform.
For example, a typical food security project implemented by an INGO will have a project implementation team based in the target project location. This team may have an M&E staff who leads implementation of the project M&E System. If implemented as part of a portfolio, the organization may have a support management team at the zone/national level.
The national office team may have a M&E staff who oversees the M&E requirements of the portfolio, including offering technical support to the project implementation teams. The funding office (usually from North America or Western Europe) may also have an M&E Staff for technical backstopping, capacity building and oversight over donor M&E requirements.
The three M&E staff focus on a functional M&E system for the food security project, but each plays a different role. Each of these requires specific M&E skills set and offers different M&E career trajectories. If you are a M&E Staff based at the INGO headquarters, you are likely spending most of your time advising field project implementation teams to strengthen their M&E system. If you switched to a field level M&E position that is directly responsible for the development and implementation of M&E systems, you will need more skills to perform the new role effectively.
6. Programming Context/Sector: Although the M&E profession is new, many of the basic principles and methods are old, albeit borrowed from other disciplines. Many of the M&E methods come from social science research. This is a strong factor as much as is a challenge when you apply M&E within sectors such as health, livelihood, and education.
A project implemented in the health sector will differ from another in the education sector in terms of desired outcomes. There are specific terminologies, tools, methods and approaches that you must learn or apply to be effective in M&E. If you move from our sector to another, there are methods and approaches unique to your new sector that you will need to learn.
7. Personal Attributes: The constant in all the factors described above is you. In another blog, How to Prepare for a “Monitoring and Evaluation Job Interview: 12 Top Tips”, I assert the need to balance technical and soft skills in successfully performing the M&E role. The technical skills define what (to do) such as data analysis, capacity building, and writing reports. If you are comfortable with the use Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Tools, you are likely to prefer jobs or projects that will invest in their use in M&E data collection.
On the other hand, soft skills define how (to do it) such as communication, creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving. I have worked with M&E staff who prefer to do M&E assignments to bring out the best of their soft skills. One staff member, for example, who had good creativity, problem-solving and facilitation skills, often preferred M&E jobs heavy on project design (logical models). This accounts for all her M&E experience for the last five years.
These are the major factors that impact the M&E job and probably your career trajectory. Career growth is your primary responsibility. Decide early what kind of M&E professional you want to become. Take every decision and opportunity to help you achieve this cherished goal. What is your experience so far? Share your comment in the box below or send me an email at info@mandeboost.com.