Applying for jobs related to effective altruism

Effective Altruism (EA) can be considered many different things—a social community, philosophy, call-to-action; and also, a professional network. If you’ve recently applied to an EA-aligned organisation, you probably know that it’s not a particularly easy network to get into. Whether you’re interested in operations or want to research ant welfare, there are probably only a handful of open positions at any one time. And while it varies by organisation and position, there are probably a lot of applicants.

To make things a bit harder, the average application process is long. In my case, all the roles I applied to (at places like Open Philanthropy, 80,000 Hours, and CEA) involved interviews and multiple work trials (which were compensated). The most intense process, by far, was with Effective Ventures. I applied to be Office Manager for a biosecurity hub opening up in Boston. I did a personality test and psychometric tests followed by a timed work trial, two interviews, a two-day work trial (which I flew to Oxford for), and another interview with the biosecurity team. I didn’t get the job :’)

As you can imagine, I was very sad (and tired). I joked that the person they hired was my new EA nemesis. Unfortunately, when I later met him, he was amazing and likeable (as you’d expect [also on the off chance you’re reading this, hi cutie!!!]). I would’ve hired him easily. That’s the other thing about these positions—many of your fellow applicants are incredibly intelligent, competent, compassionate, hard-working, etc. It’s both comforting and distressing.

So how does one find themselves in the position of undergoing several trials and a transatlantic flight for the chance to manage an office? There are several ways, but one familiar pipeline is something like: “I read Doing Good Better or The Precipice at 19 and then got really into EA, and geared my studies towards it, and now I’m so excited to enter the workforce and join an EA org and have an impact, and oh shit okay it’s actually kind of hard.” 

Having experienced this pipeline (more or less), I have two main thoughts:

1. Effective Altruism is a really potent ideology. At its core, I genuinely believe it is novel, exciting, and straightforwardly, immensely good. Helping as many people as possible using evidence and reason, metrics like the ITN-framework, considering catastrophic, existential-risks that get so little attention—it resonated with me deeply at 19 and it still does at 23. It seems strongly reasoned and transformative—I’m grateful that I found this community, both social and professional. But outside the core arguments, it is a network run by humans. And humans, no matter how many incredible traits they possess, face a lot of constraints. They take shortcuts and make mistakes. Organisations can only grow so fast, consider so much, ask so much of their employees. However, given that this particular professional network is entangled with so many things: a social community, a moral ideology, rejection can sting people badly. Especially when part of that ideology involves encouraging you to do things in your career. But the professional network itself is still just that: a network of people. When your application is rejected, it’s rejected by a hiring manager or a small team who are constrained—not by the ideology or the community. This is really important to remember and internalise. Easier said than done of course, but this point still seems worth writing out.

2. The application processes tend to place significant burden on applicants, such that I expect some number of good people (who eventually would be hired) end up leaving the applicant pool. At least, this is my guess (based on my experience). I was working full-time while work-trialing and it was exhausting. Life was also happening. If I’d had dependents, I’m quite confident I would’ve thrown up my hands and said, “forget it”. I imagine there are skilled people out there with families, great jobs, and ample experience who are not going to do such rigorous hiring rounds. I do wonder if this is a problem, especially in operations or management-type jobs where experience can be really valuable. 

If you’re currently applying for EA-related jobs and finding it difficult, just know I am rooting for you so hard (seriously).

If you’re interested, you can look at this doc which has a rough log of my rejections (the ones I remembered to record). Ideally this post would contain job hunting advice, but I basically don’t have any besides: take care of yourself, try your best, check out the 80,000 Hours job board, and definitely consider applying for EA Global.

Also, if any hiring managers happen to read this, here are some suggestions that really improved my experience as an applicant: 

• Make sure work trials are timed, including the multi-day ones. Otherwise, you’re partly testing how much free-time someone has during the trial period. 

• Keep up communication between stages and try to provide rough timelines on when applicants can expect to hear back.

• Try to be very clear about the full application process early on, so applicants can decide if they’re willing to commit. 

• I think it’s nice if some justification is provided for why you’ve included each trial task. Sometimes, a trial question would feel repetitive or wasn’t obviously necessary to me, and that demotivated me a lot. Asking someone to spend 5 hours doing a bunch of tests, on top of their normal obligations, is not a small ask (in my opinion)—even if it’s paid. Personally, I felt much better when I roughly understood why the trial was 5 hours instead of 4 or 3 or 2.