this is the monitoring and evaluation boost. With God freezing kaaba. Every week we share tips and practical stories to help you master the monitoring and evaluation job and perform it to your best. If you haven't yet, please take a moment to hit that subscribe button so you're automatically updated about new episodes. And that way you can continue to grow your money career every day. It also helps to show your support to this podcast and improve its ranking on the platform. We really appreciate that effort. Now let's get started. Hi everyone I am good for saying cover your host monitoring and evaluation boast podcast. This is episode 25 things to know about the minimum qualifications and experience required for monitoring and evaluation jobs, Reading the roles and responsibilities listed in a monitoring and evaluation. Job description is good but not adequate to inform you the full extent of the role, you should understand the minimum qualifications and experience required for the job holder. If you are applying for a monitoring and evaluation job, knowing the minimum qualifications will help you to prepare for the interview and once hired Understand the job performance expectations.

In episode one, we talked about why having no former experience in monitoring and evaluation should never limit you from pursuing your dream monitoring and evaluation career. In fact we discuss a range of skills that can be transferred from your everyday life activities to a formal monitoring and evaluation job. It is true that monitoring and evaluation jobs prefer formal qualifications and experience. However, knowing that monitoring and evaluation is integrated in your daily life activities and that you often practice the needed skills will improve your own self belief and strengthen your interest in the role for status. The common minimum qualifications for most monitoring and evaluation jobs are academic qualifications or education experience in monitoring and evaluation, measured in years. Experience in a programming sectors such as health, education of food security, experience with the donor such as you said, defeat Bill and Melinda Gates and lastly soft skills.

Please know that for the same job like monitoring and evaluation officer, it's possible for two organizations to differ in both the depth of each minimum qualification and experience or bread if of the qualifications and experience required. Why do you think so? Well Here are the top five reasons to explain these differences. Yeah, number one setting in which monitoring and evaluation roles are performed there several settings in which monitoring and evaluation professionals work from education settings like schools to health like hospitals, international development. You find several non government organizations hiring monitoring and evaluation specialists. We also have corporate companies that hire monitoring and evaluation specialists but surely to work in their qualifications departments or in their evaluation teams. Such organizations will differ in terms of education, minimum experience and other qualifications that they would want monitoring and evaluation professionals they hire to possess moreover.

These settings also defined in terms of the sub context for example to monitoring and evaluation officers working in education settings are having different qualification requirements. For example, if a monitoring and evaluation officer is working in non government organization focusing on education will have different qualifications from that one. Working in a school setting Besides experience in monitoring and evaluation methodology. A community development organization in the field of health may require that the monitoring and evaluation staff have a degree in public health. While a social marketing agency may require all job holders for monitoring and evaluation to have training in either marketing or experience with marketing. Research number two, organizational policy structure and approaches. An organizational policy will state how they want monitoring and evaluation to be implemented and evaluate contribution to their strategy and programming.

This policy may inform specifications of the nature of roles to be performed training and skills needed in the job holder. In terms of administrative structure, one organization may have a flat monitoring and evaluation structure or a single level of monitoring evaluation jobs, hence one set of minimum qualifications and experience require the job holders. Another may have several levels such as monitoring and evaluation officers, monitoring and evaluation specialists or manager and director in such circumstances. A degree may be required for a monitoring and evaluation officer while a master's degree is required for a monitoring and evaluation specialist. If the organization has advanced to a specific approach to monitoring and evaluation. This further clarifies which skills and experience in the job holders will deliver the specified tasks. It is for this reason that you find jobs like the following advertised monitoring, evaluation and accountability officer. Design monitoring and evaluation officer, comprehensive monitoring and evaluation officer or monitoring.

Evaluation and research officers. Fundamentally all these jobs may require the same level of academic qualification but biased towards a specific methodology such as research evaluation program design or accountability for example a monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning officer might be skilled more towards accountability issues in a program than a design monitoring and evaluation officer. Where the organization will generally focus on their ability to design programs, monitor them and evaluate. Yeah. Number three donor of funder requirements. In such circumstances the organization will always comply with what the donor has specified in the request for application or request for proposals have seen proposals were for example you say it will specify that the job holder for the monitoring and evaluation function should be educated up to masters level. So in such situations the organization will definitely employ somebody who has a master's degree.

In fact the same request for proposal will also specify that monitoring and evaluation will be run as a separate function from the learning and research. So you find that the organization will employ two people, one focusing on monitoring and evaluation and another one focusing on learning and research. But you may find that another organization match those two roles into one to create a monitoring, evaluation and learning officer. Number four nature of work to be done. This specifically focuses on the specific roles and responsibilities that go alongside the minimum qualifications that we want in a job holder. Take, for example, the project management cycle. If a project has already begun and I'm recruiting a monitoring and evaluation officer depending on the stage. For example, if the program is due for evaluation when I'm recruiting for monitoring and evaluation officer, I'll be looking out for more skills on evaluation and in the job description I will skill the roles and responsibilities towards evaluation and in the minimum qualifications.

Yes, I will need a degree but at the same time I will be looking for experience in evaluation if the program is beginning most probably I will skill the qualification towards performance monitoring if we're in the middle of implementation and there are more challenges around learning and documentation that will still maintain the standard degree qualification or masters level, but I would still require that the job holder has experience in program communication or documentation or facilitating learning events and lastly programming context. This has to do with where we're implementing the program all before I talked about and more to do with the job and the organization and their funders. But this fifth one is more to do with where the rules are going to be performed. For example, a program implemented in a purely emergency setting of fragile context. The job will specify requirements for a job holders who have worked in a fragile context or implemented emergency and relief projects as opposed to another program that is being implemented in a purely development context of settled context.

Another way to look at programming context is the possibility of hiring monitoring and evaluation professionals with the qualifications that you need have worked in low education context whereby getting people educated up to a degree is a challenge. So even if we have the same job description, for example, consider country Air that has low literacy levels and country B that has relatively high literacy levels, you may find that we are the same organization. But in one context we will take anybody who has a diploma or high school diploma to perform the entry level of monitoring and evaluation, like monitoring and evaluation officer. We can recruit diploma level to do the job probably with one or two years experience. Yet in another context, because people are well educated, we might raise the qualification, even if you put it at the masters, you will still get people to apply for those jobs and they will perform these jobs to satisfaction.

So these are the five reasons that are very important for us to know and to understand when we're reading the job descriptions. Yes. In another podcast, Alejandro roles and responsibilities specified in the job description for now highlight why it is important to think about the minimum qualifications and the experience that is required. The five top reasons why organizations are often different in how they specify minimum requirements for similar monitoring and evaluation jobs are the setting in which monitoring and evaluation jobs are practiced to the organization policy structure and approaches three donor of funder requirements for nature of work to be done. Five programming context. Knowing these reasons will help you have a broad and rich context for the monitoring and evaluation job you are interested in. It will also help you interpret the monitoring and evaluation job roles and responsibilities and to know how the outcome of your efforts contribute to the rest of the organization project.

This is it for today. Thank you for listening to the monitoring and evaluation boost. With Godfrey sent Kaba, please let us know your comments or any topics you would like to hear and please check out our website www dot M and e boost dot com. If you have comments about this episode or experiences you would like to share regarding the ideas discussed in this podcast, please let us know again. Please visit our website to share. That's W W W dot M and E boost dot com. Thank you. Mm hmm.