I think 80k has tried to emphasize personal fit in the content, but something about the presentation seems to dominate the content, and I think that is somehow related to social dynamics. Something seems to get in the way of the “personal fit” message coming through; I think it is related to having “top recommended career paths”. I don’t know how to ameliorate this, or I would suggest it directly.
I’m sure this is frustrating to you too, since like 90% of the guide is dedicated to making the point that personal fit is important; and people seem to gloss over that.
One thing that could help would be eliminating the “top recommended career paths” part of the website entirely. That will be very unsatisfying to some readers, and possibly reduce the ‘virality’ of the entire project, so may be a net bad idea; but it would help with this particular problem. I am afraid I don’t have any better ideas.
I agree this is an important point, but also think identifying top-ranked paths and problems is one of 80K’s core added values, so don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater here.
One less extreme intervention that could help would be to keep the list of top recommendations, but not rank them. Instead 80K could list them as “particularly promising pathways” or something like that, emphasizing in the first paragraphs of text that personal fit should be a large part of the decision of choosing a career and that the identification of a top tier of careers is intended to help the reader judge where they might fit.
Another possibility, I don’t know if you all have thought of this, would be to offer something that’s almost like a wizard interface where a user inputs or checks boxes relating to various strengths/weaknesses they have, where they’re authorized to work, core beliefs or moral preferences, etc., and then the program spits back a few options of “you might want to consider careers x, y, and z—for more, sign up for a session with one of our advisors.” Then promote that as the primary draw for the website more than the career guides. Just a thought?
I think 80k has tried to emphasize personal fit in the content, but something about the presentation seems to dominate the content, and I think that is somehow related to social dynamics. Something seems to get in the way of the “personal fit” message coming through; I think it is related to having “top recommended career paths”. I don’t know how to ameliorate this, or I would suggest it directly.
I’m sure this is frustrating to you too, since like 90% of the guide is dedicated to making the point that personal fit is important; and people seem to gloss over that.
One thing that could help would be eliminating the “top recommended career paths” part of the website entirely. That will be very unsatisfying to some readers, and possibly reduce the ‘virality’ of the entire project, so may be a net bad idea; but it would help with this particular problem. I am afraid I don’t have any better ideas.
I agree this is an important point, but also think identifying top-ranked paths and problems is one of 80K’s core added values, so don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater here.
One less extreme intervention that could help would be to keep the list of top recommendations, but not rank them. Instead 80K could list them as “particularly promising pathways” or something like that, emphasizing in the first paragraphs of text that personal fit should be a large part of the decision of choosing a career and that the identification of a top tier of careers is intended to help the reader judge where they might fit.
Another possibility, I don’t know if you all have thought of this, would be to offer something that’s almost like a wizard interface where a user inputs or checks boxes relating to various strengths/weaknesses they have, where they’re authorized to work, core beliefs or moral preferences, etc., and then the program spits back a few options of “you might want to consider careers x, y, and z—for more, sign up for a session with one of our advisors.” Then promote that as the primary draw for the website more than the career guides. Just a thought?