NO PRESSURE
Job Interviews for UN Secretary-General Are Just a Little Intense
Want to be secretary-general of the United Nations? The interview is a tad intimidating.
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This week the United Nations is holding interviews to those looking to become its top leader, the secretary-general. But they won’t be in an office with a manager or two. The interviews are being held in front of the entire UN General Assembly—and are being live-streamed all over the world.
It’s a little intense.
And yet eight candidates are going through with it this week. Each applicant starts by giving a 10-minute vision speech and then answers questions for two hours—first from member states, then from the president of the General Assembly, and finally from the global public through social media.
It’s a new approach for the UN, which until now let its 15-member Security Council choose the secretary-general.
“We are sailing into uncharted waters here,” said Mogens Lykketoft, president of the General Assembly. “Much of what we are embarking on today is without precedent at the UN.”
The interviews will finish, mercifully, on Thursday.