Sustainable Procurement Intern (with focus on Communications)

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

Within UNOPS, Implementation Practices and Standards (IPS) is responsible for the UNOPS delivery practices. IPS provides thought leadership, standards and oversight as support to the successful delivery of programmes and projects within UNOPS service lines (infrastructure, procurement, project management, human resources and financial management services). 

IPS comprises the Infrastructure and Project Management Group and the Procurement Group which aims to reduce organizational risks, improve project performance, and promote excellence across UNOPS projects 

through the Standards Management Framework; and provides organisational oversight on the application of standards. These Groups also support the positioning of UNOPS in the UN system and development sector in Infrastructure, Project Management and Procurement. 

In addition, the Portfolio Support unit aims at supporting the building up and management of the organisational readiness of UNOPS and therefore supports the implementation of the UNOPS global portfolio. Last, the IPS is hosting the corporate Knowledge Management initiative.

Background Information - PG 

The Procurement Group (PG) is part of Implementation Practices and Standards (IPS) and is based at UNOPS HQ in Copenhagen. It leads the organization’s procurement practice and is responsible for: articulating strategy, policy positions and innovative solutions for procurement at UNOPS; enabling the operationalization and managerial oversight of UNOPS procurement activities through appropriate systems and reports; strengthening the knowledge, skills and career development of procurement practitioners; and leading the implementation of Sustainable Procurement across the organization.

As a central procurement resource for the United Nations system and its partners, UNOPS emphasizes efficient, transparent, cost-effective and sustainable delivery of goods, services and works, in line with public procurement best practices. On a yearly basis, UNOPS procures over USD 1 Bn worth of goods, services and works on behalf of our partners. These include a broad base of categories, including life-saving pharmaceuticals, mine action equipment, vehicles or road construction services. 

Since 2015, UNOPS has been a leader in sustainable procurement, receiving awards such as the Gold Certificate in Sustainable Procurement from CIPS and has implemented best practices in procurement including on procurement policy, ethics and fraud prevention, e-Procurement, and business intelligence and procurement advisory services.

We are seeking a motivated and passionate individual who may have a background in communications or a related function, with some working knowledge of sustainability or sustainable procurement desirable. 

However, as internships are designed to be valuable learning experiences, previous work experience is not a requirement.

Some of the specific tasks may include, but are not limited to:

Support the sustainable procurement team with the internal and external communication of how sustainable 

procurement is being successfully implemented in the projects and operations, this may include:

• Publishing of Sustainable Procurement content on relevant platforms, including blog posts and quarterly digests, factsheets and other materials;

• Support the drafting of sustainable procurement capacity building materials

• Writing up of case studies and best practises

• Writing storyline to develop into animated videos.

•  Support with outreach activities (event planning) and awareness campaigns at targeted country offices.

Support with the development of reports, and key conclusions from the analysis of the sustainable procurement data:

• Support in  data collection and market research on existing, new and innovative trends on sustainability

• Conduct literature and desktop reviewing of different sustainability themes

• Support the development of regular communications for internal and external audiences

Provide support to the various efforts that the sustainable procurement team are working on and with incoming demands, this may include:

• Support event planning efforts through webinars, workshops, intranet updates, translation of training materials, as well as the monitoring of different team email inboxes.

• Support intranet content updates

• Support in building communication templates for supplier engagements

• Support the management of different team email inboxes

• Support in the harmonization of all Sustainable Procurement team presentations 

• Support the coordination of the document management system 

• Support in the continued review and improvement of the sustainable procurement criteria list

At the end of this internship, the successful candidate will have gained in: 

• Exposure to and experience in procurement at the corporate level, core function within UNOPS;

• Exposure to sustainable procurement in the context of development and public procurement;

• Exposure to an international multicultural work environment and team;

• Exposure to headquarters and country offices.

Education      

• Completion of secondary school or equivalent is required.

• To be eligible for this particular internship with UNOPS, the candidate must be studying towards a university degree or have graduated in the past three years in the following areas: Communication, Journalism, Social Science, or other relevant discipline

Work Experience 

• Strong computer literacy is required and may include skills such as: Advanced Excel / Google Sheet skills, advanced Powerpoint / Google Slides skills, advanced Word / Google Docs skills and video editing using relevant software.

• While no prior work experience is required, some experience in communication, journalism,  sustainability or corporate social responsibility, is highly desirable.

• Competency in content development/storytelling/drafting is highly desirable

• Knowledge of supplier / vendor management, Sustainable Procurement Principles, diversity and inclusion and  public procurement is desirable

• Working knowledge of procurement or supply chain and data analytics is desirable

• Experience in using and creating dashboards in visualization tools such as Google Sheets / Google Data Studio, PowerBI or Tableau is an asset.

Language skills

• Fluency in English is a requirement.

• Fluency in French is highly desirable. 

• Knowledge of another UN language such as Spanish, Russian, Chinese or Arabic will be considered an asset.    

IMPORTANT: It is highly encouraged that applicants submit a Cover Letter with their CV that outlines their motivation for participating in this internship. 

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates and candidates from the Global South are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• For retainer contracts, you must complete a few Mandatory Courses (around 4 hours) in your own time, before providing services to UNOPS.
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns.
Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.

Work environment