Inter-American Development Bank reviews

The IDB is highly political in the worst possible way. In the reorganization of the private sector, the people heading the transition team awarded themselves the top jobs and the new head of investments proceeded to liquidate all the existing management and retain her cronies. HR set up bogus interview panels that all received instructions from the same person. The career management system is a joke - it all depends on who you know not what you know.

IDB has some of the advantages of Latin America -friendly atmosphere, human relations- but also several of its limitations -nepotism, lack of strategic vision. Your career management depends almost entirely on having good relations with your boss and build up a network. Of course networking is important in every organization, but in the IDB, it seems overwhelming. There are not clear HR rules, and you may be praised and rewarded by your job if your boss likes you, or completely crashed and humiliated for the exact same job if he does not, as there are no clear criteria for evaluating performance (of course there is a formal career point system, but it is easily overlooked). Most internal positions are filled through 'lateral transfers' , which means most positions are not even published for internal competition, and staff devote then a huge amount of energy to networking and align themselves not to corporate objectives, but political (office politics) ones.