And applying for jobs in EA orgs also doesn’t have to come at great personal expense
I want to push back against this point a bit. Although I completely agree that you shouldn’t treat working at non-EA orgs as a failure!
In my experience, applying for jobs in EA orgs has been very expensive compared to applying to other jobs, even completely ignoring any mental costs. There was a discussion about this topic here as well, and my view on the matter has not changed much—except I now have some experience applying to jobs outside EA orgs, backing up what I previously thought.
To get to the last stage of a process in the application processes I went through at EA orgs routinely took a dozen hours, and often dozens. This did not happen once when I applied to jobs outside of EA orgs. Application processes were just much shorter. I don’t think applying to EA jobs as I did in 2018 would have been compatible with having a full-time job, or only with great difficulty.
Something I also encountered only in EA org application processes were them taking several months or being very mismanaged—going back and forth on where someone was in the application process, or having an applicant invest dozens of hours only to inform them that the org was actually unable to provide visas.
Interesting. For what it’s worth, that doesn’t match my own experience. (Though I’m of course not contesting that that was the case for you, and I don’t know whether your or my experiences would be more representative of the experiences other people have had/would have.) I’ll share my own experience below, in case the extra data point is useful to anyone.
I found some EA org application processes quite quick, some moderately long, and some quite long, and found the same for non-EA org application processes. I don’t think there was an obvious difference in average time taken for me.
I think the two longest application processes I’ve gone through were for the Teach For Australia program (which I got into; this was before I learned about EA) and the UK Civil Service Fast Stream (where I got to the final stage but ultimately didn’t receive an offer)
Though some of my EA org application processes did come close to the length of those two
I did these applications while doing a full-time job
Though I’m a sort of person who for some reason finds it natural to do work-like things for long hours (as long as I feel fairly autonomous in how I do this), which I know won’t be true for everyone
From memory, there were two cases where EA orgs’ application processes involved long gaps in response time and/or seemed mismanaged, in a way that I don’t think I experienced with non-EA applications.
But I also applied to fewer roles outside of EA orgs, so maybe there just weren’t enough rolls of the dice for that to come up.
And there were quite a few times where I just never heard back, and eventually assumed I hadn’t got the job but they hadn’t told me. This happened in some applications to EA orgs and some to non-EA orgs, and probably somewhat more often per application to non-EA orgs.
I never got far enough through application processes where I’d require a visa for the visa issue to come up, so can’t comment on that.
I should emphasise again that:
I’m just sharing my own experience
I agree with the broader point that most EAs probably shouldn’t be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs
I’m glad you’re now on a track that you’re much happier with and seemingly having more success in :)
For anyone else reading this, the UK Civil Service Fast Stream is a 4+month application process that at one point requires you to take a day off work and travel in to do work tests; it’s a leadership programme with an application process that’s much more time-consuming than anything I’ve ever applied for before or since.
I’ve also experienced the average EA org application process to be a bit more disordered/chaotic than the average non-EA job I applied to (though I was also ghosted for weeks after a final-round interview with a major financial firm). I expect this is almost entirely a function of org size, but it’s still unfortunate and something I hope is changing.
As far as time required by application processes, I had a very different experience while applying to many orgs, leaving me unsure of how the “average” process compares to the average private-sector process. I’m glad to see you re-sharing your previous comment about this; I’ll link to my previous reply so that people can have a bit more data.
I want to push back against this point a bit. Although I completely agree that you shouldn’t treat working at non-EA orgs as a failure!
In my experience, applying for jobs in EA orgs has been very expensive compared to applying to other jobs, even completely ignoring any mental costs. There was a discussion about this topic here as well, and my view on the matter has not changed much—except I now have some experience applying to jobs outside EA orgs, backing up what I previously thought.
To get to the last stage of a process in the application processes I went through at EA orgs routinely took a dozen hours, and often dozens. This did not happen once when I applied to jobs outside of EA orgs. Application processes were just much shorter. I don’t think applying to EA jobs as I did in 2018 would have been compatible with having a full-time job, or only with great difficulty.
Something I also encountered only in EA org application processes were them taking several months or being very mismanaged—going back and forth on where someone was in the application process, or having an applicant invest dozens of hours only to inform them that the org was actually unable to provide visas.
Interesting. For what it’s worth, that doesn’t match my own experience. (Though I’m of course not contesting that that was the case for you, and I don’t know whether your or my experiences would be more representative of the experiences other people have had/would have.) I’ll share my own experience below, in case the extra data point is useful to anyone.
I found some EA org application processes quite quick, some moderately long, and some quite long, and found the same for non-EA org application processes. I don’t think there was an obvious difference in average time taken for me.
I think the two longest application processes I’ve gone through were for the Teach For Australia program (which I got into; this was before I learned about EA) and the UK Civil Service Fast Stream (where I got to the final stage but ultimately didn’t receive an offer)
Though some of my EA org application processes did come close to the length of those two
I did these applications while doing a full-time job
Though I’m a sort of person who for some reason finds it natural to do work-like things for long hours (as long as I feel fairly autonomous in how I do this), which I know won’t be true for everyone
From memory, there were two cases where EA orgs’ application processes involved long gaps in response time and/or seemed mismanaged, in a way that I don’t think I experienced with non-EA applications.
But I also applied to fewer roles outside of EA orgs, so maybe there just weren’t enough rolls of the dice for that to come up.
And there were quite a few times where I just never heard back, and eventually assumed I hadn’t got the job but they hadn’t told me. This happened in some applications to EA orgs and some to non-EA orgs, and probably somewhat more often per application to non-EA orgs.
I never got far enough through application processes where I’d require a visa for the visa issue to come up, so can’t comment on that.
I should emphasise again that:
I’m just sharing my own experience
I agree with the broader point that most EAs probably shouldn’t be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs
I’m glad you’re now on a track that you’re much happier with and seemingly having more success in :)
For anyone else reading this, the UK Civil Service Fast Stream is a 4+month application process that at one point requires you to take a day off work and travel in to do work tests; it’s a leadership programme with an application process that’s much more time-consuming than anything I’ve ever applied for before or since.
Yeah, thanks for giving that extra context.
The Teach For Australia application process is quite similar.
I’ve also experienced the average EA org application process to be a bit more disordered/chaotic than the average non-EA job I applied to (though I was also ghosted for weeks after a final-round interview with a major financial firm). I expect this is almost entirely a function of org size, but it’s still unfortunate and something I hope is changing.
As far as time required by application processes, I had a very different experience while applying to many orgs, leaving me unsure of how the “average” process compares to the average private-sector process. I’m glad to see you re-sharing your previous comment about this; I’ll link to my previous reply so that people can have a bit more data.