A considerable literature examines the efforts of emerging powers to increase their representation in the decision-making structures of international organizations (IOs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and UN Security Council. But governments’ influence within IOs is exercised not just through formal procedures but through informal mechanisms, key among which is the ability to have fellow nationals appointed within IOs’ professional staffs. How successful have emerging powers been at increasing their representation within these international bureaucracies? We examine the representation of the BRIC countries in the IMF, WTO and UN Secretariat in the period 1996 to 2016. The analysis shows (1) that the gap between emerging and established powers is enormous and has hardly changed in the last twenty years, (2) that among the BRICs, India has been the most successful at increasing its share of staff, while China has stagnated and Brazil and (especially) Russia have actually fallen, and (3) that emerging powers’ representation at the IMF and WTO has improved much more than at UN. The results highlight that staffing patterns are only loosely related to realist forms of national power and that changing them may be even harder than achieving formal forms of redistributive change.