Model UN Staffing Applications

This week, we have a guest post! Sarah Lambino works for the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA). Through the Global Classrooms program, Sarah introduces Model United Nations to public high schools and middle schools in major cities around the United States. She helps teachers use Model UN to teach their students about international issues by providing educational materials and organizing MUN conferences.

Her post is about applying for conference staff. Many schools use an application; some schools don't; but most national-level conferences such as UNA-USA MUN have an especially competitive application process. If you've never staffed a conference before, I'd encourage you to think about it; you can learn a lot by seeing MUN from the other side of the committee room. Sarah's post will give you plenty of insight into gaining that perspective.

Sarah speaking at the United Nations

Some people win "Best Delegate." Me? I hire them.

As a conference organizer at UNA-USA, it's my job to hire 200+ college and high school students for the 13 conferences we hold around the country. In this post, I'd like to share some of the things I've learned about what separates a good conference from a bad conference: the people who run them.

Think for a moment about some of the conferences you've attended and what made them memorable. More often than not, it had something to do with someone on the conference staff. It might just be a really cool Chair who was laidback but knew how to keep decorum. Perhaps it was the Secretary-General who handled a problem you had with a committee room. Or maybe it was that Rapporteur who misspelled Thailand as "Tieland."

A conference succeeds or fails on the quality of its staff. So how do you select the best staff? Many conferences use an application.

Model UN applications contain similar questions. Below are the three main areas conference organizers are looking at in an applicant.

Model UN Experience – Conferences attended and staffed, committees you've participated in, awards won. If you're starting out, definitely keep track of the different committees you've participated in as a delegate. It will save you a good 15 minutes when you're trying to remember what committee you were on when you got the best position paper award in your junior--no, wait, senior--year of high school. I think it was Berkeley Model UN 2003, ECOFIN, Syrian Arab Republic...

Communication Skills – Basic writing and public speaking skills. As a Model UNer--and BestDelegate.com reader--you should know that strong communication is key to being successful in committee as a delegate. But as a potential staffer, your focus changes from "How do I win over X delegate?" to "How do I manage all the delegates?" Some conferences also require you to write background guides if you are selected to be on staff. And if you're looking to be a chair, speaking skills will be a major factor.

Interest in Model UN and the Conference – What do you know about the conference and why do you want to be a part of it? Use your niche conference research skills and show off how you intend to contribute. These questions usually come in many forms. "What did you like about this conference and what would you change?" also means "Do you know what we're about?" Another similar question: "We know what are strengths and weaknesses are. What do you think they are?" Questions that ask you to describe a particular situation are tests to see if you can follow procedure and have the common sense to handle difficult circumstances.

The information I just described is pretty standard for any hiring process, but don't forget that this hiring process is also a way for you to get to know the conference, too. Does the hiring process seem too lengthy? Are there too many redundancies in the forms and questions? Or perhaps the event organizers are not answering your questions? You can begin to manage your expectations of conference staffing through the application process.

Remember: like being a best delegate, there is no definitive guide for being the best conference staffing applicant. Every conference, every conference organizer, every organization differs in their goals and values for what makes a successful Model UN staffer.

"Competing" in Model UN

In the spirit of Kevin's post on the return of the MUN season, I'd like to share excerpts from an e-mail exchange between me and someone wanting to become more "competitive" at Model UN.

My Response

I believe that becoming "competitive" at Model UN means developing proficiency in various skills that enable you to demonstrate leadership throughout an MUN conference. By skills, I mean broad skills, such as research and public speaking, but also strategic skills, such as deciding what country you want to represent at a conference and what ideas you should present to the committee, as well as tactical skills, such as choosing with which delegates to form an alliance. And by leadership, I mean a trait that other delegates and the chair apply to you because you are able to lead the committee to find some sort of solution to the problem it faces; this is a trait that must be earned. This focus on skills and leadership is the bedrock of the BestDelegate.com philosophy.

So if skill proficiency leads to leadership, which leads to success, then how do you develop such skills? The only real way, of course, is experience: going to as many MUN conferences as possible, practicing with your club, etc. You can also deliberately practice individual skills, i.e. researching papers transfers to researching for a conference, being an active participant in a small seminar is much like speaking in a small committee, etc. Having someone coach you is important, too; solicit feedback on how you are doing from older MUNers in your club whom you trust. And it helps to have some theory, i.e. BestDelegate.com =P

From the sound of your e-mail, I hope you don't feel intimidated by the "competitive" aspect of MUN. By this, I mean awards, and how aggressive other people might be in trying to win them; such things are meant to be incentives to take this seriously, but they are not to be the point of doing MUN. This activity is one huge "head fake" (see Randy Pausch, "The Last Lecture") to develop the skills mentioned above, which are transferable to other endeavors in life, to meet intelligent and interesting people, which sounds like you have, and to learn something about international relations and, maybe, human behavior and social interaction. It sounds like you already have a good approach to MUN; I would just encourage you to jump in, and do as much of this stuff as you can, and don't worry so much about being "competitive." Learn from others; be an active and thoughtful participant; and most importantly, have fun!

The Counter-Argument

I do agree that the most important aspect of participating in a MUN conference is the personal growth that comes from doing so; however, the awards seem to allow greater involvement in the college circuit - those who do well are frequently asked to return. For this reason, it seems harder to "try my hand" at Model UN that at other college activities, because reputation is important and I understand that the club seeks those who can uphold its reputation.

Developing Leadership vs. Winning Awards: An Actual Dilemma?

I think that my response captures part of our "MUN philosophy" here at BestDelegate.com: focus less on awards and approach MUN as a way to develop your leadership skills. But the counter-argument illustrates a central dilemma within the Model UN community: awards may not be the point of doing MUN, but winning them enables greater participation, which hopefully leads to the development of leadership skills.

This may be a short e-mail exchange, but it is an interesting snapshot of how different people view MUN. I'd love to know what other people think.

Conference results: Berkeley wins Best Delegation at UCLA College Conference

The UC Berkeley team took Best Delegation at the Los Angeles Model United Nations Conference hosted by Model United Nations at UCLA this past weekend. Stanford took Outstanding Delegation. Seems like a nice college rivalry is carrying over to Model UN. We'll get recaps and insights from UCLA staff and from delegates who attended this conference.

Several other high school and college conferences took place this weekend. There also some major conferences being held later this month, including the Yale Model UN Conference at the high school level and McMUN hosted by McGill at the college level. We hope to hear from staffers and participants at the upcoming conferences as well.

If you'd like to write a recap, conference review, or a particularly insightful experience, send us an email!


For examples, see:
> Delegate review/experience of AIMUN
> Delegate review of Harvard National (part 1)
> Delegate review of Harvard National (part 2)
> Staff experience at Yale MUN

Conference Season is Back!

Conference season is back!! I'm really excited about that because the Los Angeles Model United Nations Conference (LAMUNC) hosted by Model United Nations at UCLA kicks it off this weekend. The conference is already expected to be bigger than last year's, and knowing the crisis team and technology that they have this year, I'm sure it'll be better than ever.

The great thing about this conference is that I took part in building it up from scratch, and over the past few years, I've also seen participating travel teams grow and market themselves effectively. We've already been emailed some questions on conference development as club officers start planning for the spring, and there are plenty of conferences ahead in the next few months to strengthen and market your travel team, so look forward to us sharing some excellent tips in the near future on how to grow your conference and travel team.

Good luck to all the delegates participating at the conference!

Sales Strategies for Model UN: Stripping Line Technique

When you are presenting a draft resolution during formal caucus, you need to have the mindset of a salesperson. Your product is your draft resolution, and your potential customers are all the other delegates who have yet to be convinced to vote for your resolution. Therefore, it may be valuable to learn the strategies that salespeople use in order to successfully pitch their product.

I will share several sales techniques with you on this blog that you can apply to Model UN, starting off with the "stripping line." In the sales profession, a salesperson uses the stripping line technique when he allows an angry repeat customer to vent while pausing from his sales pitch, and then re-directs the conversation when the customer has ran out of steam. This prevents the salesperson from having to be on the defensive at the customer's will or from aggravating the customer to be even more negative.

In Model UN, you may ocassionally come across an aggressive delegate from a rival bloc who is passionately opposed to your draft resolution. When you yield to questions during formal caucus, this delegate will often ask an animated, negatively rhetorical, and extremely long-winded question in order to point out flaws in your draft resolution rather than provide you with a clear, answerable question. The question is meant to put you on the defensive if not stump you and make you look bad. This is where you can use the stripping line technique.

It's very simple: don't try to answer the delegate's question... at least not yet. The animated and long-winded question is just the delegate venting out negativity, just like how the angry customer vented some steam to the salesperson. Instead, ask the delegate to please repeat (or clarify) the question.

Oftentimes, the delegate will be caught in surprise that he didn't stump you with his supposedly rhetorical question. The delegate probably won't be able to ask the question in the same passionate and long-winded fashion the second time around, and any delegate who tries will probably look like he's trying too hard. Furthermore, the question will probably be more concise the second time around since the delegate thinks he wasn't able to get his rhetoric across the first time. To complete the sales analogy, this is when you have re-directed the delegate from negative rhetoric to asking a clearer question that you can provide an answer to.

Granted, such animated, negatively rhetorical, and long-winded questions do not come up at most formal caucuses. Most longer questions are due to delegates not having mastered being concise, so you don't need to apply this technique and can just answer the question then. But in case you do come across a passionately negative delegate whose intent is clearly to challenge you, you now know that all it takes to diffuse some negativity and force the questioner to be more concise is to simply ask the delegate to "please repeat the question."

Niche Conferences and Their Benefits to Conference Organizers

In a previous post, we explored why niche conferences, particularly those at the college level such as SCSY, NCSC, ChoMUN, LAMUNC, VICS, PICSim, and CMMUNY, are great for delegates. Niche conferences are also popular at the college level from the perspective of the conference organizer for three reasons: the creativity of its members, the crisis experience of its members, and the recognition of attendance difficulties.

Conference organizers at the college level may have established specialty interests and combined with creativity are able to produce many original committees and/or crisis scenarios. Specialty interests, whether they are personal or career-related, drive chairs to create committees that match those interests. For example, I was very interested in the influence multinational corporations have on international relations, so I created the World Economic Forum committee where delegates could represent corporations’ views on world issues. I have a friend who decided to apply her internship experience with UN Peacekeeping and created a crisis committee that simulated the 1994 Rwanda conflict from the UN Peacekeepers’ perspective. Another friend is a huge soccer fan, so he created and chaired a FIFA committee. These committees tend to be fun and refreshing, and perhaps better run than a traditional committee, because the chair is often devoted to turning their creativity into a reality.

In-depth experience with crisis committees is the other driver of college-level chairs to create crisis committees. These chairs have experienced as delegates not just the basic news update or guest speaker, but the assassination attempts, committee raids, spying, backstabbing, terrorist ultimatum videos and so forth that sparks their own ideas and interests to create a crisis map. At a large university, there may also be broader access to props (think about all the different countries that the collective club membership has traveled to), military equipment if your campus has ROTC, as well as a good video production guy. Combined, these people will be very excited at the opportunity to get their creative juices flowing and will have a lot of fun creating and professionally executing stunningly debate-provoking crisis scenarios.

A more sobering reason why niche conferences are beneficial to conference organizers at the college level is the recognition of attendance difficulties. This reason can apply for some high school organizers or potential organizers as well. If it is financially difficult for teams to attend your conference, or if you face a saturated market, it may be smart to offer a smaller niche conference to match a realistic market share that your conference can capture.

Unlike at the high school level where a conference may be an hour bus ride away, significant travel expenses are required to attend most college conferences. Teams only have a certain budget and cannot afford to attend too many conferences. Therefore, not every conference will attract enough delegates to host full-sized General Assembly and ECOSOC committees that are a cornerstone of the traditional Model UN conference. By employing smaller niche committees, conference organizers with say, 25 delegates to work with can fill them up in a Future Security Council committee rather than put those 25 delegates into a half-full ECOSOC committee. I think any conference that recognizes the need to treat delegates with good customer service would prefer lively debate and a good delegate experience over futile attempts at filling up larger “cash cow” committees.

For leaders of Model UN conference organizers (or potential conference organizers) who are reading this post, the takeaway could be that if your club wants to a host a conference but for a variety of reasons cannot immediately attract large numbers of delegates, or if your club has members that enjoy crisis and creativity, hosting a niche conference may be your solution. I will note that it is not easy to generate thoughtfully-created original committees or crisis scenarios and doing so does require a degree of Model UN experience. So if your program is considering entering the niche market but does not have the crisis experience, perhaps pursuing an all-Security Council conference, a novice-only or training conference, or a conference with smaller specialized committees that don’t deviate too far from traditional committees (think regional committees like EU, OAS, etc.) may be more feasible.