I really appreciate this post. From being on the candidate side recently, and from hiring in smaller org settings, I’ve seen a lot of friction come from a reluctance to say out loud what excellence actually looks like for a given role.
When teams try to keep the funnel broad, they get hundreds of earnest applicants who were never going to be close to the bar. Candidates lose time, the signal gets lost, and everyone feels worse. Clear expectations up front, even if they narrow the pool, make the whole thing more honest and efficient.
I agree completely on treating hiring as a living system. We iterate everywhere else in EA, yet hiring often stays fixed and opaque. There’s a lot of benefit to experimenting, testing assumptions, sharing what works, and building more transparent models over time.
I’m very interested in this problem, especially approaches that combine clear bar-setting, structured evaluation, and genuine care for candidates. If you’re exploring ideas here, happy to chat.
Yep, I agree. I think a really good challenge organizations could work on is trying to get fewer applicants (without losing the best ones), because it just seems better for both candidates and organizations (candidates are more likely to get a role, orgs have fewer people to sort through).
I really appreciate this post. From being on the candidate side recently, and from hiring in smaller org settings, I’ve seen a lot of friction come from a reluctance to say out loud what excellence actually looks like for a given role.
When teams try to keep the funnel broad, they get hundreds of earnest applicants who were never going to be close to the bar. Candidates lose time, the signal gets lost, and everyone feels worse. Clear expectations up front, even if they narrow the pool, make the whole thing more honest and efficient.
I agree completely on treating hiring as a living system. We iterate everywhere else in EA, yet hiring often stays fixed and opaque. There’s a lot of benefit to experimenting, testing assumptions, sharing what works, and building more transparent models over time.
I’m very interested in this problem, especially approaches that combine clear bar-setting, structured evaluation, and genuine care for candidates. If you’re exploring ideas here, happy to chat.
Yep, I agree. I think a really good challenge organizations could work on is trying to get fewer applicants (without losing the best ones), because it just seems better for both candidates and organizations (candidates are more likely to get a role, orgs have fewer people to sort through).