5 things I learnt during my internship with the World Bank

1. It is easy to work at an institution like the World Bank that holds a lot of power, credibility, and capital and recommend technical solutions to developing countries, but the real work lies with the government officials at a country level, who must overcome many big-small barriers to implement the recommendations. During my internship period, I met with many young government officials in countries who faced political, fiscal, and administrative challenges in implementing the technical solution our team had recommended. The real work of implementation (which is of course supported by the World Bank employees) lies with these government officials, and that's where the real impact lies as well.

2. The work at the World Bank involves a great deal of traveling and meeting stakeholders in-person in developing countries. The employees go on ‘missions’ once every few months to country locations. The World Bank is also aware of the irony of centralizing decisions about the developing world in Washington DC. Therefore, there are many conversations within the Bank’s leadership to shift the focus back to country offices and making them the real lever for change. The future of the World Bank could thus be a decentralized country office structure, where the staff works closely with country governments.

3. One of the most exciting things I discovered during my time here was that the World Bank offers opportunities to interact with people at all levels during your missions—you meet all the stakeholders from finance ministers to direct beneficiaries of the World Bank programs on the field. This was an important factor for me as I was strongly against working at a place that was disconnected from the grassroots.

4. Research is an important component of the work at the World Bank. Qualitative and quantitative research are both valued and widely used in work across all programs. High-quality research informs all of the advisory work that the Bank does. Similarly, data analysis is widely used in the work at the Bank. Software such as Excel and Tableau and languages like R and Stata come handy in the work. If you want to work at the World Bank, you cannot escape data analysis.

5. Networking is a key component to finding opportunities and growing at the World Bank. As the institution receives high number of applications, it is only through reaching out to people through connections or cold emails that one can secure an internship or a full-time position at the World Bank. Once you are in the system as well, continuing to meet with the senior leadership is the way to grow in the organization.