I think this is a great explanation of an important dynamic and opportunity. I feel confident that doing the sorts of things explained in this post has benefited my career a lot.
Appreciated the footnote about informal hiring having tradeoffs; it’s not clearly good that hiring often operates this way. But the good news is that “just start really trying to do useful/impactful things” is not only helpful for the world, but helpful for people’s high-impact job search. A win-win!
Thanks for reading and for your comment Jamie! Exactly, in an ideal world, we’d run perfect, open hiring rounds for everything. But given how much hiring still happens informally, I think it’s worth naming this strategy publicly so more people can take advantage of it should they chose to. Even if it doesn’t lead directly to a job, it might be what gets someone noticed in a future hiring round. And as you said, it’s a win-win: impactful projects get done, and people build visibility along the way. Something I maybe didn’t highlight clearly enough but is worth adding is doing side things and being more visible about it can also be very exciting and enjoyable. So a win-win-win :)
I think this is a great explanation of an important dynamic and opportunity. I feel confident that doing the sorts of things explained in this post has benefited my career a lot.
Appreciated the footnote about informal hiring having tradeoffs; it’s not clearly good that hiring often operates this way. But the good news is that “just start really trying to do useful/impactful things” is not only helpful for the world, but helpful for people’s high-impact job search. A win-win!
Thanks for reading and for your comment Jamie! Exactly, in an ideal world, we’d run perfect, open hiring rounds for everything. But given how much hiring still happens informally, I think it’s worth naming this strategy publicly so more people can take advantage of it should they chose to. Even if it doesn’t lead directly to a job, it might be what gets someone noticed in a future hiring round. And as you said, it’s a win-win: impactful projects get done, and people build visibility along the way. Something I maybe didn’t highlight clearly enough but is worth adding is doing side things and being more visible about it can also be very exciting and enjoyable. So a win-win-win :)