National Staff Step 2: Get Approval

Principle:

Before you spend a lot of time and energy looking for a person to hire, you should make sure the person who has authority over the budget and the CR agree that we should hire someone. And their approval should be written (on paper or in an email) so there is no confusion later.

In practice this means that any position (both new positions and existing positions that have become vacant) must be approved by the appropriate budget manager and Country Representative before they can be posted.

How to Do This:

    1. Follow the established CP procedure and forms to obtain this approval. You may have received this information in the HR documentation you requested before you arrived.
    2. If there is no established country procedure, contact the region’s DRD MQ for the procedure and forms you should use.
    3. If neither the country program nor the region have a procedure and form they want you to use, you can use the form we’ve linked here:

National Staff Personnel Requisition Form

When the position requisition is approved, the HR staff or the administration staff providing HR functions should give the vacancy a reference number (a “Vacancy Number”) and create a file for the Job Description, Approved Personnel Requisition, and future documents.

Short Cut:

If you are hiring many staff at the same time, you can get approval for a detailed organization chart rather than individual personnel requisitions.  This way you will not have to seek separate approvals for each position listed on the chart.

If you decide to use this method, make sure:

    1. It is very clear in the document which positions are being approved (and which are not).
    2. On the document, include individual salary and benfit cost estimates for each position being approved, along with a total for the whole group.   Any approval of a position requisition is the pre-approval of an expense.  Thus the amount the official is being asked to approve should be clear on the document.

Next Step:

Step 3:  Start a file for all these documents.