Job Vacancies International Finance Corporation (IFC), January 2012

Job Vacancies International Finance Corporation (IFC)
Position: Evaluation Officer, Access to Finance
Location: United States of America ( The )
Closing Date: Wednesday, 01 February 2012

Background / General description
Note to Internal Staff: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 2 year renewable term appointment. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities—all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion. IFC’s support to the financial sector is implemented via its Access to Finance Business (A2F) Line and is organized around the following main themes:
Innovation/Base of Pyramid: including Microfinance, Mobile Financial Services, Housing Finance, Rural Finance, Responsible Finance.
Banking Services: SME Finance, Sustainable Energy Finance, Insurance, Agrifinance, Leasing, Trade Finance, Gender, Risk Management and Corporate Governance.
Financial Infrastructure: Credit Reporting, Collateral Registries and Secured Transactions, Securities Markets These services are delivered through regional Advisory Services (AS) facilities, with support from global product specialists, and in partnership with IFC’s Investment Services (IS) teams. IFC & Monitoring and Evaluation IFC has invested considerable resource in recent years in building a rigorous monitoring system to track and report on the results of its technical assistance interventions. In the last year, IFC has committed to a set of Development Goals, which are designed to drive its investment and advisory services programs toward maximizing development impact, while using increasingly robust methods for measuring and documenting the impact of IFC projects. In parallel, given the limitations of establishing impact through monitoring mechanisms only, IFC has begun to turn its attention to building more sophisticated evaluation programs so that a deeper understanding can be developed of the impact of IFC’s work, particularly at the level of end beneficiaries. The aim of our M&E work is four-fold:
To strengthen IFC’s monitoring capacity by creating efficient tools and mechanisms that build the capture of end beneficiary data into project design at the outset of a project, thereby maximizing the quality of data generated and minimizing the impact of data gathering on our clients;
To support a learning agenda, whereby IFC can more effectively learn from the results of its projects and gain deeper insights into what works and what does not work in client engagements from a developmental perspective;
To understand more clearly the impact of IFC projects at the end-beneficiary level; and
To package and disseminate insights and lessons learned from the work in a more comprehensive manner to the broader development community. IFC has recently received a grant from The MasterCard Foundation (MCF) in Sub-Saharan Africa that includes a large evaluation and learning program in microfinance and mobile financial services. To support this effort, IFC is seeking to build up a team of professionals with experience in the delivery of financial services to the base of the pyramid, as well as a complementary team with experience in rigorous evaluation of financial access programs.

Duties and Accountabilities
IFC is seeking to recruit a highly-motivated Evaluation Officer, with experience in designing and overseeing impact evaluations for development assistance programs, particularly in the financial sector. The selected candidate will work primarily on Africa but will be part of a larger global network responsible for developing IFC results measurement capabilities. The Officer will be headquarters staff, but will be seconded to the Africa department for a period of up to two years to support The MasterCard Foundation program, and will therefore have a primary reporting line to the Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for Africa, with a secondary reporting line to the Program Manager for The MasterCard Foundation Program. He or she will also report in to a Senior Evaluation Specialist from the World Bank, who will support the program on a part-time basis from Washington DC, and will help in the design and delivery of the program from a technical point of view. The Officer will also work closely with the Senior Specialists for Microfinance and for Mobile Financial Services, as evaluation and learning activities will need to be embedded into program implementation from the outset. Specific tasks include:
Work with the Program Manager, the Senior Evaluation Specialist and the technical specialists to develop an evaluation and learning strategy for the MCF program, building on the approach outlined in IFC’s proposal to The MasterCard Foundation.
Working within the agreed evaluation and learning strategy, support project teams in designing projects that embed evaluative approaches into project work plans from their inception, so that rigorous data can be collected with minimal disruption to clients.
Support project teams in the design of market research and use larger market research efforts to establish baselines for country and project level work.
Support implementation teams in designing appropriate and realistic monitoring frameworks for their projects at approval stage and support quality control of project documents in line with IFC’s monitoring and evaluation policies.
Work with implementation teams and the Senior Evaluation Specialist in selecting projects for deeper evaluation, based on agreed criteria that will maximize learning.
Work with the Senior Evaluation Specialist to develop project- specific evaluations, constructing TORs and selecting consultants to do the evaluation work. Hands-on supervision of consultants, through accompanying them on field missions, reviewing deliverables and managing consultant contracts.
Where feasible, draw on learning from project level evaluations to establish conclusions about program level impact.
Work with the Senior Microfinance and Mobile Financial Services specialist, as well as the Senior Evaluation Specialist, to extract key lessons learned from project and program level evaluations and prepare results for broader dissemination outside of IFC.
Contribute actively to knowledge management globally via the Results Measurement network and through technical support for the delivery of the Knowledge and Learning component of the MasterCard Foundation program, which includes not only monitoring and project evaluation s, but also the production of knowledge guides, market research and other pieces of technical research.
Training IFC and client staff on matters relevant to the above.

Selection Criteria
Master’s Degree in Economics, Sociology, International Relations, Political Science, or any other related social sciences, with solid training in quantitative and qualitative methods; PhD with strong empirical research in one of these fields is an asset.
At least ten years of operational experience in international development, with at least six years of experience in designing and managing different types of evaluations for donor-funded technical assistance programs, preferably related to microfinance and/or mobile financial services.
Experience in designing, managing and carrying out a broad range of evaluations (including large-scale beneficiary level impact evaluations, strategic theory-based evaluations, as well as smaller, low-key data gathering exercises). Experience should include direct project-level M&E a assistance. Hands-on evaluation experience in Africa is a plus.
Ability to operate flexibly and balance data gathering needs with sensitivities of working with private sector clients.
Knowledge of current debates and issues in the evaluation discipline is a must.
Ability to balance pragmatism with rigor an important personal attribute.
Willingness and ability to travel extensively.
Fluent written and spoken English a requirement. French language ability a very strong plus. Ability to operate in other regional languages an advantage.
Detail oriented, with excellent writing skills in English.
A keen interest in development finance and in working in a multicultural environment; previous experience in a multilateral finance institution would be an advantage.
Ability to work effectively in teams, communicate ideas clearly and confidently, articulate issues and recommend solutions. Only online applications are accepted. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interviews.

International Finance Corporation (IFC)
2121 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington, DC 20433-0005
(202) 473-7711




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