Frequently Asked Questions

About

What is Josh’s Water Jobs?

Josh’s Water Jobs (JWJ) is the world’s largest job board serving the water and sanitation community and is also an active career development platform. Here you will find current, open career opportunities in water and sanitation from around the world, including jobs, consultancies, internships, scholarships, awards, volunteer opportunities, and more. We also publish weekly blogs and a bi-weekly podcast interview series (coming soon!) on topics related to careers in water and sanitation. Additionally, we offer professional services to organizations seeking new talent (click on the “Our Services” menu on the homepage. Join our mailing list here to receive weekly updates about new opportunities and new career development content, and you can learn more about us here.

Why does Josh’s Water Jobs exist?

Our mission is to connect the immense and diverse talent in the global water and WASH communities with the wealth of career opportunities available worldwide, and to foster a community of learning around career development in water and sanitation. The overarching purpose of our integrated services, and JWJ’s long-term goal, is to help contribute to closing both the gender and human resources gap in water and sanitation, helping to ensure a sustainable future with water, for all.

What does Josh’s Water Jobs offer?

We post all the open career opportunities in water and sanitation – jobs, scholarships, volunteer opportunities, and more. We also create career development resources for you (in collaboration with leading organizations in the sector) – blogs on specific themes, advice from prominent professionals in the field, interviews with early and senior career professionals, and topical webinars.

For organizations, we offer several services to help you find the outstanding talent you need. We offer recruitment services and the opportunity for your job to stand out from the rest through our Featured Jobs listing. You can also reach our 45,000+ monthly visitors by advertising on our platform.

Who is Josh?

Josh Newton is the founder of Josh’s Water Jobs. He’s an independent consultant who focuses on global political processes and governance related to water. He started the original jobs listserv and continues to discover and carefully curate the career opportunities you see on the platform every day. For Josh, this water and sanitation careers platform is another way to add value to the community and mentor others on career development. You can learn more about Josh on LinkedIn and Twitter.

How did Josh’s Water Jobs start?

Josh’s Water Jobs began in 2011 as an informal listserv with a few dozen of Josh’s friends and colleagues, through which recipients received a job posting about every month. As the list grew – both in the number of recipients and in the number of jobs – it became clear that it was filling a gap where a website focused on international water jobs should have been. As more people got jobs through the list, the more the initiative to create that website gained momentum, culminating in Josh’s Water Jobs being launched in June of 2016 (with Co-Founder Hank VanZile).

The first JWJ website focused on what has always been the core of what we do: connecting people with jobs. It did this very successfully – in April 2021, JWJ posted its 30,000th water job! In June 2021, a second, enhanced version of the JWJ platform (this site) was unveiled, specially designed to increase the usability of the ever-growing jobs database. This new platform design also allows JWJ to further enrich the exchange between job seekers and employers via our offering of professional services for employers and new career development resources for job seekers.

How does Josh’s Water Jobs work?

The career opportunities you see posted on the platform come from a variety of places. Primarily, Josh carries out a systematic search and curates and shares a new list of opportunities each week (new opportunities are posted on the platform daily). People and organizations also send us opportunities to post. In addition to Josh, Josh’s Water Jobs has a small but mighty team behind it facilitating the smooth running of the platform, posting opportunities, and developing career resources. In terms of the career development resources, we are grateful to collaborate with a variety of organizations involved in water and sanitation to bring you credible, useful insights from the source.

What is the business model?

Josh’s Water Jobs is proud to be supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Currently, this allows for some paid staff and others work on a volunteer basis. As the platform continues to grow, we are exploring new, sustainable business models. We also offer paid services, such as recruitment, advertising and featured jobs listings. We are always looking for additional sources of funding to continue to serve the water and sanitation community – if you have an opportunity to share with us, please feel free to let us know here! We also warmly welcome and appreciate donations. Thank you!

Is everything for free on the Josh’s Water Jobs platform?

Everything we offer to job-seekers is free! It is free to browse through the list of opportunities and to access all of our career development resources. It is also free to post jobs!

Is Josh’s Water Jobs also useful for organizations?

Absolutely! Josh’s Water Jobs is the world’s largest job boards for water- and sanitation-related career opportunities, so if you have an open position, posting it on our platform, which receives on average 45,000 visitors each month, will no doubt get you the exposure you need to find the best candidate. And it’s free! Using our years of expertise and close connection to the water and sanitation communities, we also offer several services to help you find the outstanding talent you’re looking for. We offer recruitment services and the opportunity for your job to stand out from the rest through our Featured Jobs listing. You can also reach our visitors by advertising on our platform. Please feel free to contact us if there’s another way you think we could be of service to your hiring organization.

Jobs

Is Josh’s Water Jobs an employment or recruitment agency?

We offer recruitment services! We use our expert knowledge to facilitate hiring for organizations, or recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), from start to finish. JWJ is unfortunately not a headhunting agency.

Are jobs removed from the database when they are filled?

If the deadline for applying for a job is known, the job is removed from our platform once the deadline has passed. However, not all employers include an application deadline in their job advertisement, and so these jobs remain on the platform for 60 days or until we are notified they are closed. If you see a job that you know has already been filled, let us know here so we can remove it from the list. Thank you!

What is the jobs list?

Each week we send out an email listing all of the new career opportunities! Don’t miss out, you can sign up here.

Where do the jobs come from?

The majority of the career opportunities you see posted on the platform are discovered and curated by Josh. If you have ever tried looking for water and sanitation jobs on the big job aggregator sites, you know how difficult it can be to find what you are looking for. Josh does this work for you – he’s honed the water and sanitation job search down to an art and shares the new opportunities with you daily. A handful of jobs come directly from organizations with open opportunities who want to spread the word through the platform.

What are the Featured Jobs?

Featured jobs get better visibility than non-featured jobs. These are regular, open jobs just like the others, except they’re highlighted at the top of the page and on social media via dedicated posts. Organizations pay to have their jobs appear as featured jobs on the platform.

Some jobs say “Local recruitment” – what does this mean?

The exact definition depends on the hiring organization, so make sure to check with HR. However, generally “local recruitment” means that the position can only be filled by someone who is legally allowed to work in the country where the job is located, whether this is a citizen or someone who already has a work permit. We try to identify these jobs as much as possible, but not all organizations provide this information in their posts.

Can you help me apply for the jobs listed on the platform?

We offer a variety of career development resources for free to our community of users. Have a read through our blog series and tune into our podcast for expert knowledge, stories, insightful advice and more related to all steps and milestones of your career. We develop resources to guide people at all stages of a career, regardless of location, age, job title or experience.

How can I post a job to Josh’s Water Jobs? Is it free?

Easily, and yes! Anyone can suggest an opportunity to be posted on the platform, and it’s free! Use this short form to tell us about the job or career opportunity you’d like posted here or email us at jobs@joshswaterjobs.com. If you’d like your job to be highlighted, don’t forget you can pay to have your open opportunity listed as a Featured Job.