Inspira covers the Secretariat. Most UN roles are not on it.

If you are targeting UNDP, UNICEF, WFP or WHO, Inspira has nothing to do with your application. Each of these organisations uses a separate recruitment platform, with its own structure, its own profile requirements and its own quirks.

This lesson covers those four systems and the P-11 form that underpins many of them. The non-Inspira application process is almost entirely absent from public guidance.

Photograph: globalhealthcsis, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, modified

The lesson in outline

Applying to UN agencies outside Inspira: UNDP, UNICEF, WFP, WHO and the P-11

Each step’s heading and the paragraph that opens it. I built the lesson to be worked through step by step, so it is above: interactive, and it ends in something you write for your own application.

Inspira covers the Secretariat. Most UN roles are not on it.
If you are targeting UNDP, UNICEF, WFP or WHO, Inspira has nothing to do with your application. Each of these organisations uses a separate recruitment platform, with its own structure, its own profile requirements and its own quirks.
Pin the agencies you are targeting, then read across.
Have the profile complete before the vacancy appears. It is the single most important instruction in the lesson: for each of your two or three target agencies, create the portal profile and complete it, education, experience, languages and references, before a vacancy you want appears. The task when a vacancy opens is tailoring the application, not building a profile from scratch.
One form sits under many non-Inspira applications.
The United Nations Personal History Form, the P-11, is a standardised document used across the UN common system. Many agencies still request it as part of consultant and non-Inspira applications, either as a standalone upload or as the basis for an online profile.
Kept current, a master turns a vacancy into an edit.
One candidate’s master as it was sent in May 2025, to a job opening that asked for a P-11. It was built in March 2023 with nothing due, and four dated edits kept it current, each for a reason this lesson gives.
Start with the roles you would put in front of a panel, newest first.
Two or three is enough to begin. You are not writing a CV here; you are building the source every portal profile will be transcribed from.
Now say what each role produced.
UNDP’s experience descriptions are more generous in character count than Inspira’s: use the space to demonstrate functional relevance. WFP asks for detailed duty descriptions within its own character limits, so complete each one fully.
Four scores per language, not one.
The P-11 assesses reading, writing, speaking and understanding separately, and they can differ. UNDP’s profile asks for proficiency by skill too. WFP values a second UN working language, French and Arabic especially for field operations, so if you have one, this is where it shows.
Three people who supervised you.
UNDP asks for a minimum of three supervisors, not colleagues, and the P-11 for three professional references. The reporting line is what makes a referee weighable, so name it.

The rest of the course

This lesson is one of sixty. The full course covers the UN system and its contract grades, every route in, building the profile, the application process end to end, assessments, the competency interview, what happens after it, and the agencies themselves.

See what is included and what it costs, or take the other free lessons:

Inspira covers the Secretariat. Most UN roles are not on it.

This lesson covers those four systems and the P-11 form that underpins many of them. The non-Inspira application process is almost entirely absent from public guidance.

Applying to UN agencies outside Inspira: UNDP, UNICEF, WFP, WHO and the P-11

Each step’s heading and the paragraph that opens it. I built the lesson to be worked through step by step, so it is above: interactive, and it ends in something you write for your own application.

Inspira covers the Secretariat. Most UN roles are not on it.

Pin the agencies you are targeting, then read across.

Have the profile complete before the vacancy appears. It is the single most important instruction in the lesson: for each of your two or three target agencies, create the portal profile and complete it, education, experience, languages and references, before a vacancy you want appears. The task when a vacancy opens is tailoring the application, not building a profile from scratch.

One form sits under many non-Inspira applications.

The United Nations Personal History Form, the P-11, is a standardised document used across the UN common system. Many agencies still request it as part of consultant and non-Inspira applications, either as a standalone upload or as the basis for an online profile.

Kept current, a master turns a vacancy into an edit.

One candidate’s master as it was sent in May 2025, to a job opening that asked for a P-11. It was built in March 2023 with nothing due, and four dated edits kept it current, each for a reason this lesson gives.

Start with the roles you would put in front of a panel, newest first.

Two or three is enough to begin. You are not writing a CV here; you are building the source every portal profile will be transcribed from.

Now say what each role produced.

UNDP’s experience descriptions are more generous in character count than Inspira’s: use the space to demonstrate functional relevance. WFP asks for detailed duty descriptions within its own character limits, so complete each one fully.

Four scores per language, not one.

The P-11 assesses reading, writing, speaking and understanding separately, and they can differ. UNDP’s profile asks for proficiency by skill too. WFP values a second UN working language, French and Arabic especially for field operations, so if you have one, this is where it shows.

Three people who supervised you.

UNDP asks for a minimum of three supervisors, not colleagues, and the P-11 for three professional references. The reporting line is what makes a referee weighable, so name it.