What actually screens a UN application
Most advice about applying to the United Nations is written as though the application were a document you send to a person. For a large part of the system it is not. It is a structured profile read by a screening process with fixed rules, and the most expensive mistake you can make is preparing the wrong artefact well.
I have written this page to show you what is actually read, and how to tell which competency framework a given vacancy is testing. It is reference material rather than a sales page, and every claim on it is either sourced to a named United Nations instrument or stated as the mechanism it is.
The profile is the application, not the attachment
For Secretariat posts advertised through Inspira, the Personal History Profile is the application. The screening process reads the profile. A CV uploaded where the system permits one is supplementary: it never substitutes for a complete profile, and no CV rescues an incomplete one.
That has a practical consequence I see people get backwards more often than any other. Time you spend perfecting the typography of a two-page CV is time you are not spending on the work-experience fields that are actually read, where the character limits are tight and every claim has to be legible to someone screening against the vacancy’s own criteria.
Where a CV does decide the outcome
The opposite error is to conclude that CVs do not matter in the UN. They do, on specific routes. Consultancy and individual-contractor applications are often made against a terms of reference by email or through a lightweight portal, and there the CV and a short letter are the application. Several agencies outside the Secretariat also ask for a CV alongside their own profile.
The rule I would give you holds across all of it: the portal profile is authoritative wherever one exists, and the CV is decisive where it is the thing being asked for.
The screening questions, and the threshold
Inspira applications are screened for eligibility on education, experience and language, and separately against screening questions carrying an 80 per cent threshold. Failing either ends the application before a human reviewer sees it.
Two cautions I would put above the number itself. First, this is a Secretariat mechanism: agencies running their own systems screen differently, and you should not assume the threshold applies to them. Second, you answer the screening questions yourself and they are read against your profile, so an answer your profile does not evidence is a way to fail the screen while being entirely qualified for the post.
Which competency framework applies to you
Two frameworks currently coexist, and you can lose marks by assuming the newer one has replaced the older.
The 1999 set, whose bulletin is titled “Organizational competencies for the future”, still appears in most agency job openings and many Secretariat ones. The UN Values and Behaviours Framework was launched in 2021 and given effect by ST/SGB/2024/4 on 1 October 2024.
The bulletin is precise about its own scope. It provides that the Values and Behaviours Framework will progressively replace the 1999 bulletin, and that it is applicable to the Performance Management and Development System, with further application where an administrative issuance expressly stipulates it. Recruitment is governed by a separate instrument, the staff selection system. What follows from that is a matter of record rather than inference: both frameworks are in circulation in vacancies at the same time, the 1999 competencies still being printed in job openings while the newer framework also appears in live ones.
So the rule I would give you is simple: prepare against whatever the job opening lists. The vacancy is the contract. Mirror its framework and its vocabulary, not the most recent instrument you have read about. The interview format is competency-based under both, so prepared evidence transfers; it is the labels and emphases that move.
Sources
You do not have to take any of this on trust, and I would rather you did not. Everything above can be checked against the instruments themselves:
- ST/SGB/2024/4, “United Nations Values and Behaviours Framework”, in force 1 October 2024. Retrievable by symbol from the UN Official Document System.
- ST/SGB/1999/15, “Organizational competencies for the future”, the 1999 instrument the framework is progressively replacing.
- ST/AI/2010/3 as amended, the staff selection system, which governs recruitment.
- The framework’s own page at hr.un.org.
- The Applicant’s Manual and the inspira applicant guidance, published by the Organization at careers.un.org. They are named rather than deep-linked because that site serves its content through an application whose individual paths are not stable enough to cite.
Common questions
Does a CV replace the Inspira profile?
No. For Secretariat posts advertised on Inspira, the Personal History Profile is the application. The screening system reads the profile, not an attachment, so a CV uploaded where the system allows one is supplementary. It never substitutes for a complete profile, and no CV rescues an incomplete one.
So the CV never matters in the UN?
It matters, and for some routes it decides the outcome. Consultancy and individual-contractor applications are frequently made against terms of reference by email or through a lightweight portal, and there the CV plus a short letter is the application. Several agencies outside the Secretariat also ask for a CV alongside their own profile. The rule is not 'CVs do not matter'; it is that the portal profile is authoritative wherever one exists.
What are the screening questions in Inspira?
Alongside the eligibility screen on education, experience and language, Inspira applications carry screening questions with an 80 per cent threshold. Failing either the eligibility screen or that threshold ends the application before a human reviewer sees it. This is a Secretariat mechanism and should not be assumed to apply to agencies that run their own systems, which screen differently.
Which UN competency framework should I prepare against?
The one the job opening prints. Two frameworks currently coexist: the 1999 set, formally titled 'Organizational competencies for the future', which still appears in most agency job openings and many Secretariat ones, and the UN Values and Behaviours Framework, launched in 2021 and given effect by ST/SGB/2024/4 on 1 October 2024. The job opening is the contract, so I would have you mirror its framework and its vocabulary rather than the newest instrument you have read about.
Has the UN replaced the old competency framework?
Not yet in full. ST/SGB/2024/4 states that the Values and Behaviours Framework will progressively replace the 1999 bulletin, and that it applies to the Performance Management and Development System, with wider application where an administrative issuance expressly says so. Recruitment is governed by a separate instrument, the staff selection system. In practice both are in circulation: job openings still print the older competencies, and the newer framework also appears in live vacancies.
Is the interview different under the two frameworks?
The format is not. Both are assessed through competency-based interviews that expect evidence-led answers in situation, task, action, result form, so prepared examples transfer between them. What changes is the labels and the emphases, which is why preparing against the wrong framework's vocabulary costs marks even when the underlying examples are strong.
Where this comes from
This page is reference material drawn from the UN Career Academy, a sixty-lesson course on applying to the United Nations system. Four of those lessons are free to watch in full, including the lesson on applying outside Inspira and three others. The agency directory covers the application route for 47 organisations individually.