Yearbook of International Organisations

The LSE Library has over 95 online and terminal based subscriptions, many of which can be useful for your careers research. Our series of blogs outlines some of these subscriptions and how you can make use of them to enhance your applications and interview answers. This third post focuses on using the Yearbook of International Organisations for your careers research.

The Yearbook is published annually by the Union of International Organisations and contains basic reference information about international bodies, organisations and agencies worldwide. It covers international organisations, NGOs, and intergovernmental organisations and so is a good source of information for students interested in working in these fields.

The top ways the Yearbook of International Organisations can help with your careers research

1. Information on over 68,000 organisations worldwide

Each organisation has a profile which includes its aims, relations with other organisations, and location of their headquarters to name but a few. Each profile will help you understand more about the employer (useful for applications and interviews, to link to your motivations to work for a specific company), but will also be useful in generating lists of related employers you might not have heard of before but that could be of interest for you to apply to.

2. Searching by subject of activity

Students who would like to work in this field often aim to work for organisations with causes/themes that resonate with them. Using the search function you can search by keywords related to specific themes, such as ‘humanitarian’, ‘peace keeping’, ‘security’ etc. and organisations involved in this type of work will be listed. Again, this is great to generate lists of employers you might like to work for, by a certain theme. Use this list to check their vacancies or to send speculative applications to.

3. Searching by location (or ‘geography’)

If you would like to move to a certain country or continent to gain work experience but have little knowledge of the area, the Yearbook gives can narrow the results down by country of interest. When combined with searching by subject of activity (migration, climate change, gender, etc.), the results give a list of organisations specific to your chosen country and theme.

For advice on how to effectively and professionally discuss your careers research on your applications or at interview, book a careers appointment via CareerHub.

You can access the Yearbook of International Organizations via the Library’s search function. If you use this subscription for your careers research, please email us at careers@lse.ac.uk with any feedback you have.