Impact Tuesdays
The latest from humanitarian and early impact-careers coach, Daniel Higgins
Hey Everyone!
Welcome to your weekly dose of Impact Tuesdays, your go-to roundup for students and recent grads ready to launch a career that matters.
Each edition, I’ll share 4 quick wins, fresh tools, and real-world lessons to help you move from “just thinking about it” to actually building your impact career. Expect practical tips, honest reflections, and a few shortcuts I wish I’d known when I started out.
Something new with me
The website is live.
In vanities sake, you can find me here: danielhiggins.me
Accelerators, free workshops and other fun projects are active. Feel free to email or book a consultation if you want to hear more.
Something cool for you
AI agents.
Really freaking cool, but making a lot of junk and nonsense in the broader scheme.
Okay, so imagine having an idea for app but lacking ANY coding skills. No worries. Just pop your app idea into these smart software assistants, answer a few questions and hey presto, you automagically have a designed app/website/coded thing done for you.
A powerful example of this is the Replit Agent, an AI tool that can build an entire app or website from a simple text description. Unlike AI coding assistants that just suggest lines of code, the Replit Agent acts like a personal software engineer. It handles the entire process: setting up the project, writing the code, and getting everything ready to go live.
So if you are a savant and are looking to create some IP (intellectual property) this could be your golden egg.
My thinking; 90% is just gonna be a load of junk apps and websites that won’t get proper attention and will be filled with bugs. Ultimately, wasting resources (energy to run the AI agents) on nonsensical crap.
Something useful you might not know
Applicant Tracking System or ATS.
The assh*le who picked you last on the team every week at PE. Or maybe the arbitrary rating you get after reading a poem at a poetry slam. Either way, ATS is annoying as hell.
Ever felt like your resume vanished into a digital black hole after you hit "submit"? You can probably thank an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for that.
This software scans your resume and gives it a score based on how well it matches the job description. This "match rating" determines if a human recruiter ever sees your application. In fact, ATS systems filter out up to 75% of resumes before they reach a person. While an average score is 60-70%, you should aim for 80% or higher to pass the initial screening.
However, here’s the secret: the score is often a made-up metric. With over 200 different ATS programs, each with unique settings, a score from an online checker is more of a guideline than a hard fact. Recruiters might see candidates ranked in tiers, and in roles with many applicants, they often only review the top-ranked pile. If the system scores you poorly, your application may be effectively rejected without ever being seen by human eyes.
Luckily many INGOs don’t use such systems, but you might want to wrap your head around it if applying more broadly.
You can use Jobscan ATS Resume Checker and Job Search Tools with your next application, but don’t take everything it suggests for granted. Use your head.
Quote from the sector
Jane Goodall, primatologist and anthropologist
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to choose what kind of difference you want to make."
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