Although private industry and EA organisations may have different incentives, a lot of law for the former will apply to the latter. Per Khorton, demanding the right to publish successful applicants CVs would be probably illegal in many places, and some âcoordinationâ between EA orgs (e.g. a draft system) seems likely to run afoul of competition law.
Further:
The lowest hanging fruit here (which seems a like a good idea) is to give measures of applicant:place ratios for calibration purposes.
Independent of legal worries, one probably doesnât need to look at resumes to gauge applicant poolâmost orgs have team pages, and so one can look at bios.
More extensive feedback to unsuccessful applicants is good, but it easier said than done, as explained by Kelsey Piper here.
I donât think EA employers are âaccountable to the communityâ for how onerous their hiring process is, provided they make reasonable efforts inform potential applicants before they apply. If theyâve done this, then Iâd default to leaving it to market participants to make decisions in their best interest.
I was aware of the possibility of relevant competition law, but didnât mention it because Iâm just not that familiar. My assumption was that it would not be the same for non-profits, but that could be untrue. I am not very excited about coordination between employers in any case.
Independent of legal worries, one probably doesnât need to look at resumes to gauge applicant poolâmost orgs have team pages, and so one can look at bios.
This is a good point.
Thanks for the post by Kelsey. My thought is that we shouldnât expect organizations to worry too much about whether the feedback is constructive or even easy to understand, which seems to be the bulk of the work Kelsey is describing. On the one hand itâs bad if EA orgs alienate applicants via the mechanisms Kelsey describes, on the other hand I do still think that something is better than nothing given sufficient maturity. Nonetheless I take your point seriously.
There are serious legal risks to giving feedback of any kind, let alone feedback that is neither âconstructiveâ nor âeasy to understandâ. I found this book on U.S. employment law to be an accessible introduction to legal restrictions around hiring with good citations (though it is written in an alarmist, of-the-moment tone).
We might hope that candidates with an EA mindset wouldnât sue after getting feedback, but not all candidates will have strong EA ties, and even people with strong EA ties sometimes do surprising things.
Other difficulties with feedback include:
Making it harder to implement work tests in the future (Open Phil tells me I didnât do X on their test, so I do it next time and tell my friends to do it next time and everyoneâs natural ability is now a bit murkier)
Creating arguments with disgruntled candidates (âthatâs not enough justification for not hiring me, Iâm going to send you nasty emails nowâ; âyou told me I didnât have X, but I actually do and accidentally left it out of my resume, youâd better hire me nowâ)
Creating a sense of bias/âfavoritism (person A is a really strong candidate on the cusp of getting hired and gets detailed feedback; person B is a really weak candidate and would be much less useful to provide with feedback; person B hears that person A got feedback and is angry)
Personally, I love feedback, and I appreciate Ben West of Ought for giving the best feedback of any org I applied to in my last round of job-hunting, but I can understand why organizations often donât give out very much.
Although private industry and EA organisations may have different incentives, a lot of law for the former will apply to the latter. Per Khorton, demanding the right to publish successful applicants CVs would be probably illegal in many places, and some âcoordinationâ between EA orgs (e.g. a draft system) seems likely to run afoul of competition law.
Further:
The lowest hanging fruit here (which seems a like a good idea) is to give measures of applicant:place ratios for calibration purposes.
Independent of legal worries, one probably doesnât need to look at resumes to gauge applicant poolâmost orgs have team pages, and so one can look at bios.
More extensive feedback to unsuccessful applicants is good, but it easier said than done, as explained by Kelsey Piper here.
I donât think EA employers are âaccountable to the communityâ for how onerous their hiring process is, provided they make reasonable efforts inform potential applicants before they apply. If theyâve done this, then Iâd default to leaving it to market participants to make decisions in their best interest.
I was aware of the possibility of relevant competition law, but didnât mention it because Iâm just not that familiar. My assumption was that it would not be the same for non-profits, but that could be untrue. I am not very excited about coordination between employers in any case.
This is a good point.
Thanks for the post by Kelsey. My thought is that we shouldnât expect organizations to worry too much about whether the feedback is constructive or even easy to understand, which seems to be the bulk of the work Kelsey is describing. On the one hand itâs bad if EA orgs alienate applicants via the mechanisms Kelsey describes, on the other hand I do still think that something is better than nothing given sufficient maturity. Nonetheless I take your point seriously.
There are serious legal risks to giving feedback of any kind, let alone feedback that is neither âconstructiveâ nor âeasy to understandâ. I found this book on U.S. employment law to be an accessible introduction to legal restrictions around hiring with good citations (though it is written in an alarmist, of-the-moment tone).
We might hope that candidates with an EA mindset wouldnât sue after getting feedback, but not all candidates will have strong EA ties, and even people with strong EA ties sometimes do surprising things.
Other difficulties with feedback include:
Making it harder to implement work tests in the future (Open Phil tells me I didnât do X on their test, so I do it next time and tell my friends to do it next time and everyoneâs natural ability is now a bit murkier)
Creating arguments with disgruntled candidates (âthatâs not enough justification for not hiring me, Iâm going to send you nasty emails nowâ; âyou told me I didnât have X, but I actually do and accidentally left it out of my resume, youâd better hire me nowâ)
Creating a sense of bias/âfavoritism (person A is a really strong candidate on the cusp of getting hired and gets detailed feedback; person B is a really weak candidate and would be much less useful to provide with feedback; person B hears that person A got feedback and is angry)
Personally, I love feedback, and I appreciate Ben West of Ought for giving the best feedback of any org I applied to in my last round of job-hunting, but I can understand why organizations often donât give out very much.
+1 to Ought giving great job-search feedback.