Well done, this is a valuable and thoughtful piece.
I agree that a lot of talent appears to be left on the table currently. There’s a high workload for hiring organisations, who need to sort through increasing numbers of applications (including AI prepared submissions). And there’s a high workload for applicants, who might collectively spend thousands of hours applying for a single post.
It seems there are worthwhile ideas on how hiring practices could be made more efficient—standardising taxonomies (what do we call positions and functions), establishing competency frameworks for common roles and tasks, standardised terms of reference for common roles, addressing challenges of AI use in applications etc. Through to more ambitious approaches, like running joint recruitments, establishing rosters of pre-qualified candidates, and expanding lower risk / lower commitment ways for organisations and applicants to test their fit.
It’s great that organisations can be selective and appoint the top 1% of talented applicants. But if the field needs to grow to meet urgent timelines and risks, it’s important to think about other ways that we can do things, while still preserving the culture and values. I think there are models and lessons learned from other industries, and some of these could be valuable for AI safety organisations.
A question—I understand there’s an operations group for colleagues working on Ops in EA organisations. Is there any HR working group to look at some of these HR challenges across the field, rather than taking an organisation by organisation approach?
Mark, thank you for the thoughtful reflection and the questions. You’ve raised some questions that we keep as open for now ourselves, as they require deeper research we haven’t done yet.
We indeed wonder if there’s anything like PMF but in other industries with multiple actors, to learn more about joint recruitment practices and preservation of values through scaling there.
And I’m not aware of any publicly operating AIS groups or channels dedicated specifically to HR, but would appreciate learning if there is one. Thank you for the idea.
Well done, this is a valuable and thoughtful piece.
I agree that a lot of talent appears to be left on the table currently. There’s a high workload for hiring organisations, who need to sort through increasing numbers of applications (including AI prepared submissions). And there’s a high workload for applicants, who might collectively spend thousands of hours applying for a single post.
It seems there are worthwhile ideas on how hiring practices could be made more efficient—standardising taxonomies (what do we call positions and functions), establishing competency frameworks for common roles and tasks, standardised terms of reference for common roles, addressing challenges of AI use in applications etc. Through to more ambitious approaches, like running joint recruitments, establishing rosters of pre-qualified candidates, and expanding lower risk / lower commitment ways for organisations and applicants to test their fit.
It’s great that organisations can be selective and appoint the top 1% of talented applicants. But if the field needs to grow to meet urgent timelines and risks, it’s important to think about other ways that we can do things, while still preserving the culture and values. I think there are models and lessons learned from other industries, and some of these could be valuable for AI safety organisations.
A question—I understand there’s an operations group for colleagues working on Ops in EA organisations. Is there any HR working group to look at some of these HR challenges across the field, rather than taking an organisation by organisation approach?
Mark, thank you for the thoughtful reflection and the questions. You’ve raised some questions that we keep as open for now ourselves, as they require deeper research we haven’t done yet.
We indeed wonder if there’s anything like PMF but in other industries with multiple actors, to learn more about joint recruitment practices and preservation of values through scaling there.
And I’m not aware of any publicly operating AIS groups or channels dedicated specifically to HR, but would appreciate learning if there is one. Thank you for the idea.