I’m glad to hear you’re interested! I loved my time as an advisor, the conversations can be a lot of fun and very fulfilling!
I think of advising as a generalist position, we all talk to people interested in all sorts of careers and causes. Not having academic or professional experience in a top priority area certainly doesn’t rule you out.
That said, being familiar with the context around our top problems is important. Personally, I think I mostly picked up this context from listening to the 80,000 hours podcasts over the years, but there are lots of ways to gain this familiarity. In terms of trying to make your application strong without anything you can point to on your CV that relates to our top problems, I’d recommend making sure you’re happy with your answers on the form. Particularly question 10: “What do you think is the most promising way of helping the most people? Why does that need more attention (relative to other things)?”
I’m glad to hear you’re interested! I loved my time as an advisor, the conversations can be a lot of fun and very fulfilling!
I think of advising as a generalist position, we all talk to people interested in all sorts of careers and causes. Not having academic or professional experience in a top priority area certainly doesn’t rule you out.
That said, being familiar with the context around our top problems is important. Personally, I think I mostly picked up this context from listening to the 80,000 hours podcasts over the years, but there are lots of ways to gain this familiarity. In terms of trying to make your application strong without anything you can point to on your CV that relates to our top problems, I’d recommend making sure you’re happy with your answers on the form. Particularly question 10: “What do you think is the most promising way of helping the most people? Why does that need more attention (relative to other things)?”