I would love to see hiring done better at EA organizations, and if there was some kind of “help EA orgs do hiring better” role I would jump at the chance. Judging and evaluating people is such a raw, human process, and it should be done with some compassion and care.
I’ve done quite a bit of hiring over the years for non-EA organizations. Generally speaking, any organization that systematically neglects applicants is losing potential talent and damaging their reputation. Part of hiring is convincing the candidate that this is a place they would want to work, and many organizations forget about that.[1]
While this is more conjecture than data, my impression is that many EA organizations are run by people who are young and relatively inexperienced, and they haven’t spent a lot of time in the professional world.[2] I don’t like how it feels kind of patronizing to write this, but I think that for a lot of people they just don’t know any better: they either haven’t learned, haven’t spent the time to think about it, or haven’t yet implemented it.[3]
Regarding the specific issues you mentioned:
Organizations not updating applicants on the status of the application is unfortunately common, and usually comes down to a mixture of “it isn’t a priority because it doesn’t add value” and “we are too busy.” Ideally, as soon as a decision either way is made the applicant is informed.
Ignoring emails is rare, and I can’t think of many situation where as a hiring manager I would consider that acceptable. I do know that when I ran hiring campaigns in the past I found it annoying to get multiple emails from people requesting status updates after two days when I had already told them we would let them know by the following week, and it is quite possible that sometimes more appropriate emails get lost in the pile of inappropriate emails.
Showing up late to interviews is a serious problem, and if somebody on my team did that more than once I would have a serious talk with them about how important it is to make a good impression on the applicant. Often, the interviewer is representing the whole organization, so if the interviewer is unprepared or late or gives any other negative first impression to the candidate, then the candidate will develop a negative perception of the whole organization.
I can’t tell you the number of hiring processes I’ve gone through as an applicant in which there was minimal (or no) effort from the organization to learn about what I want in my next job, or to show my how this role would be enjoyable/fulfilling.
I think that there are lots of foolish/bad/silly things in the professional world, but one thing that I think has some value is managing impressions and appearing professional: there is a combination of calm/relaxed, competent, attentive/engaged, and friend/warm that makes for a great experience.
I’ve had interviews with EA-orgs in which the interviewer appeared slovenly and scatterbrained, in which the interviewer appeared to both not have a clear idea of what the role would be and to not be listening to what I was saying, and in which irrelevant questions were asked. As a guy whose research interests and professional knowledge focuses around hiring processes (and especially around hiring interviews), I found it particularly disappointing.
I would love to see hiring done better at EA organizations, and if there was some kind of “help EA orgs do hiring better” role I would jump at the chance.
This would be great. Changing the human parts of the hiring process would be a lot of work, but if you can just get organizations to use some kind of software that automatically sends out “We received your application” and “Your application was rejected” e-mails then that would be a good start.
There actually is an organization doing this (that I won’t name) which I had a horrible experience with. I think they are focused on doing hiring better from an organizational standpoint as opposed to advocating for the candidates.
This is clearly a problem across all industries, the hiring process is extremely out of touch right now. I was just hoping for better from EA.
I would love to see hiring done better at EA organizations, and if there was some kind of “help EA orgs do hiring better” role I would jump at the chance. Judging and evaluating people is such a raw, human process, and it should be done with some compassion and care.
I’ve done quite a bit of hiring over the years for non-EA organizations. Generally speaking, any organization that systematically neglects applicants is losing potential talent and damaging their reputation. Part of hiring is convincing the candidate that this is a place they would want to work, and many organizations forget about that.[1]
While this is more conjecture than data, my impression is that many EA organizations are run by people who are young and relatively inexperienced, and they haven’t spent a lot of time in the professional world.[2] I don’t like how it feels kind of patronizing to write this, but I think that for a lot of people they just don’t know any better: they either haven’t learned, haven’t spent the time to think about it, or haven’t yet implemented it.[3]
Regarding the specific issues you mentioned:
Organizations not updating applicants on the status of the application is unfortunately common, and usually comes down to a mixture of “it isn’t a priority because it doesn’t add value” and “we are too busy.” Ideally, as soon as a decision either way is made the applicant is informed.
Ignoring emails is rare, and I can’t think of many situation where as a hiring manager I would consider that acceptable. I do know that when I ran hiring campaigns in the past I found it annoying to get multiple emails from people requesting status updates after two days when I had already told them we would let them know by the following week, and it is quite possible that sometimes more appropriate emails get lost in the pile of inappropriate emails.
Showing up late to interviews is a serious problem, and if somebody on my team did that more than once I would have a serious talk with them about how important it is to make a good impression on the applicant. Often, the interviewer is representing the whole organization, so if the interviewer is unprepared or late or gives any other negative first impression to the candidate, then the candidate will develop a negative perception of the whole organization.
I can’t tell you the number of hiring processes I’ve gone through as an applicant in which there was minimal (or no) effort from the organization to learn about what I want in my next job, or to show my how this role would be enjoyable/fulfilling.
I think that there are lots of foolish/bad/silly things in the professional world, but one thing that I think has some value is managing impressions and appearing professional: there is a combination of calm/relaxed, competent, attentive/engaged, and friend/warm that makes for a great experience.
I’ve had interviews with EA-orgs in which the interviewer appeared slovenly and scatterbrained, in which the interviewer appeared to both not have a clear idea of what the role would be and to not be listening to what I was saying, and in which irrelevant questions were asked. As a guy whose research interests and professional knowledge focuses around hiring processes (and especially around hiring interviews), I found it particularly disappointing.
This would be great. Changing the human parts of the hiring process would be a lot of work, but if you can just get organizations to use some kind of software that automatically sends out “We received your application” and “Your application was rejected” e-mails then that would be a good start.
There actually is an organization doing this (that I won’t name) which I had a horrible experience with. I think they are focused on doing hiring better from an organizational standpoint as opposed to advocating for the candidates.
This is clearly a problem across all industries, the hiring process is extremely out of touch right now. I was just hoping for better from EA.