Sample cover letter for Internship position at J-PAL

Dear Madam or Sir,

I am writing because of my strong interest in obtaining the position of Research Assistant or Research Fellow you posted on the Inter-American Development Bank website. I am confident my strong academic background, personal initiative and work experience will be an asset for your team and I hope you will consider me for an interview.

In my most recent position I worked as a research assistant for the J-PAL collaborating with the conception and writing of the forthcoming policy guidelines: “Education and Transition toAdulthood”. I also work for the J-PAL as a field coordinator on an Impact Evaluation  where I gained a rich knowledge of the evaluation and survey methodology used by the World Bank as we worked closely work with the Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME). My mission consisted in i- refining questionnaires and deliverables before starting the field work ii- participating in the enumerators’ training, iii- managing the programming of CSPro interface, Visual Basic and Access for data entry, iv- collaborating in the management of data quality control and notably computing the data inconsistency program on Stata, v- gathering and stocking primary data, vi- managing enumerator teams and vii- reporting fieldwork progress. The evaluation concerned 3000 households with general questionnaires for each household and individual questionnaire for each parent and children of the household. This experience further motivated me to contribute to the improvement of development programmes by supporting robust, well-informed and rigorous surveys and analysis, such as the one lead by international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank.

In 2009 I graduated from a Master Degree in Development Economics obtained at the Paris Dauphine University (Paris IX). My course work provided me with the necessary skills for a better understanding of development issues. My final academic research project on Migration leaded me to work for the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) on the AUGUR project of the European Union where I was in charge of the write-up of several technical documents and database management dealing with development matters. I also have relevant experience collaborating with several development actors, acquired when I was an intern at the DFID at the Southern Africa Regional Office based in Johannesburg, where I notably worked on a capacity building project with the South African Department of Trade and Industry. This experience provided me with substantial communication skills and the ability to generate synergies between actors; skills that I am sure, will contribute to develop good relationship with all projects’ partners. All those experiences allowed me to work effectively in fast-pace and multicultural teams that will permit me to be quickly integrated and efficient to fulfil the tasks of my mission.

Please find my resume enclosed to this message and do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Alexandre Naud