There are not as many people around the world with a degree in evaluation as there are lawyers or economists. Our colleagues in the West have Master’s and PhD degree programs in evaluation, but given its interdisciplinary nature, the number of people in this profession is not determined by the number of those who received a University degree, experts say.

So where do specialists in evaluation come from, and how do they build a professional career? Alexey Kuzmin says that the Association of American, Canadian, and European specialists in evaluation, which has several thousand members each, consists of people with very different backgrounds.

“Let me list: just in terms of the underlying education, there are psychologists, sociologists, educators, medics, engineers, computer technology specialists, economists, managers, statisticians. Of course, if you graduated from a University program where you received training in sociological research methods, it’s a good help,” he says.

The expert himself came to the evaluation in the late 1990s from organizational development consulting. In 1999 he became a member of the American Evaluation Association, attended conferences and seminars abroad, read literature in English, and in 2001 he decided to attend a PhD program in the United States, specializing in organizational behavior and program evaluation.

“A lot of people overseas that I know of have professional careers as internal evaluation specialists. This is, of course, common in large companies. The common denominator for all stories is that at some point a person faces the need for evaluation, and something resonates inside, they find it exciting. And that’s where you start a turn in this direction – searching for information, training, searching for specialists who do this,” says Alexey Kuzmin.

Elena Malitskaya also cites 1998–1999 as the years in which her work became closely tied to evaluation. “At that time, we at the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center were conducting our own grant competitions. So we had a need for monitoring, evaluation and training. We just started integrating evaluation into our work routine and into the work of our network of resource centers. In 2000, we held the first school of evaluation and international conference in Novosibirsk, which eventually grew into regular activities,” Elena Malitskaya says.

Alena Bogomolova, head of the Resource and Methodological Center of the Road Home Charitable Foundation and a board member of the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation, is one of those who received training from SCISC and The Garant Center at the International School of Evaluation. Alena Bogomolova is a sociologist by education. She says she had done many practical projects during her University years that were related to evaluation in one way or another, except that it was called differently at the time. “It was called sociological support in the early 2000s, at least in Cherepovets. But the set of activities was the same as what we now call evaluation, or evaluation design. I have studied before, I am studying now, and I will continue to study, because evaluation is a constantly evolving profession,” she says.

Irina Efremova-Garth and Natalia Kosheleva received their Master’s degrees from American universities. Irina earned her MPA (Master of Public Administration) from the School of Public Administration at the University of Delaware.

“In my two years of training, my schedule included classes on various research methods, on evaluation in general, on evaluation in nonprofit organizations. It was so delicious, so interesting, and so exciting that all my plans to go into the government went straight to the bottom of my priority list. I returned to Moscow realizing that I would be involved in evaluation and nonprofit organizations,” the expert continues.

She says she has been in different roles: the customer of evaluation, internal evaluator, and external evaluator. Her work at IBM had given her some interesting insights: data-savvy and digitally savvy nonprofits are much more likely to achieve their mission, to be able to prove their contribution to addressing the social problem at hand.

Natalia Kosheleva learned about evaluation during her Master’s degree studies at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

“It was March 1996. I came across a vacancy announcement for a specialist to evaluate two environmental projects funded by IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board). That was the first time I saw evaluation might be a thing. The beauty of an American university is that it has an open library. I just went in, found some books on the topic, read them, got an idea about the general principle, and applied. And they hired me,” Natalia Kosheleva explains.

Irina Sinelina, a specialist in program and project evaluation at International Labor Organization (ILO), received her Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management in the United States and interned at a nonprofit organization in New York. Then she returned to Moscow and got her first job at a nonprofit organization, where she was to analyze the effectiveness of trainings, before coming to work at the International Labor Organization, as an evaluation officer.

“Like all UN organizations, ILO has an internal evaluation system. This is done for the purpose of donor accountability, increased experience, and work improvement. Like the rest of the UN system, we follow the standard criteria developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). There are five basic principles: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact. Two years ago, another one was added – coherence,” Irina Sinelina says.

Marina Mikhailova learned the principles and approaches to evaluation (including organizational development evaluation and personnel evaluation) from Process Consulting and the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center, and international schools.

“All the small pieces got together, one after another, to build the big theoretical experience. In practice, it is, first of all, extensive experience in evaluating projects submitted for grant competitions. We, at the Garant Center, have been organizing these contests since 2001 in Arkhangelsk Region. Later I took part in reviewing applications for other contests and evaluating the results of the projects we had supported. I also had some experience in evaluation from the times I was the director of a recruitment agency. as such, I had to evaluate personnel and the management system in the organization,” Marina Mikhailova continues.

The topic of knowledge and competencies in evaluation is closely related to the topic of learning. If we know what the competencies are needed, we know what to teach them, and how to write job descriptions.

Since the late 1980s, various professional associations of evaluators started publishing lists of competencies. For example, the UN Evaluation Group believes that an evaluator should have basic professional competencies, technical skills, management skills, interpersonal skills, and promote a culture of evaluation.

Canada, a country that has established a certification system for evaluators, suggests the following areas of competence for a practicing evaluation specialist[18]:

1. Reflexive – competencies related to fundamental norms and values in the field of evaluation, as well as awareness of one’s own expertise and needs for professional growth.

2. Technical – competencies related to specific aspects of evaluation: planning, data collection, data analysis, reporting.

3. Situational – competencies related to evaluative thinking applied to analyze and consider the interests, problems, and circumstances specific to each evaluation.