In my first year after finishing my degree and post-graduation summer internship, I only applied to ~7 roles, exclusively at EA organisations. That is way too small a number for anyone who actually wants a job!
Yeah, I think this is a really good point to highlight. Personally, I applied for ~30 roles in 2019 (after hearing about EA in 2018, and while working in a job that wasn’t especially high-impact). And I ended up with 2 job offers. So in some naive sense, I’d have been predicted to only get ~0.5 (7/​30) offers if I only applied for 7 roles.
Being miserable also hindered my ability to assess my prospects rationally. It took me a long time to properly give up on my EA job prospects: whenever I thought this path might not work out for me at all, the thought was too horrifying to seriously contemplate.
I’m really glad to hear that your change of direction (into UK civil service) seems to be going better and making you happier. And I definitely don’t want to second-guess that. And I think only a minority of EAs should be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs, and that even much of that minority should consider and apply for roles elsewhere (see also my other comment).
But, in line with the quote at the start of this comment, I don’t think applying for 7 roles at EA orgs and getting no offers is strong or even moderate evidence that you have bad prospects for an EA job. (Though perhaps you have other evidence of that, and—probably more importantly—having good prospects for an EA job doesn’t mean one should do an EA job. I’m just responding to this specific point.)
There were ~23 roles at EA orgs that I applied for but didn’t get before I got 2 offers. (And some roles I was applying for were quite low-level, or internships rather than jobs.) And evidence from this year indicates that it’s not like I was a borderline case that just happened to mildly fit a specific niche, but rather that I had pretty good prospects, yet such a person is just likely to get many rejections anyway. (The easiest-to-summarise part of that evidence from this year is that this year, with some EA org research experience under my belt, I’ve applied for ~11 roles at EA orgs, and received 4 offers.)
Again, I don’t think all or even most EAs should be primarily aiming for roles at explicitly EA orgs, and I don’t mean to suggest you should second-guess things. I just wouldn’t want readers to come away from this post thinking 7 rejections from some type of role/​org is by itself strong evidence that they should give up on that type of role/​org.
Thank you for pointing that out, I agree candidates should not consider such a low number of applications not resulting in full-time offers strong evidence against them having a chance.
I am not sure whether the question of whether one has a chance at an ‘EA job’ is even a good one however. ‘EA jobs’ are actually lots of different roles which are not very comparable to one another. They do not make for a good category one should be thinking about—but rather about which field someone might be interested in working in, and what kind of role might be a good fit. Some of which may so happen to be at EA orgs, but most will not.
Also, I appreciate I did not clarify this in the post, but I did not get rejected from all 7 roles I applied to in 2018 - I got rejected from 5, dropped out of 1 and could not do the 3-month trial stage I was invited to for visa reasons 1 time.
Yeah, I think this is a really good point to highlight. Personally, I applied for ~30 roles in 2019 (after hearing about EA in 2018, and while working in a job that wasn’t especially high-impact). And I ended up with 2 job offers. So in some naive sense, I’d have been predicted to only get ~0.5 (7/​30) offers if I only applied for 7 roles.
I’m really glad to hear that your change of direction (into UK civil service) seems to be going better and making you happier. And I definitely don’t want to second-guess that. And I think only a minority of EAs should be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs, and that even much of that minority should consider and apply for roles elsewhere (see also my other comment).
But, in line with the quote at the start of this comment, I don’t think applying for 7 roles at EA orgs and getting no offers is strong or even moderate evidence that you have bad prospects for an EA job. (Though perhaps you have other evidence of that, and—probably more importantly—having good prospects for an EA job doesn’t mean one should do an EA job. I’m just responding to this specific point.)
There were ~23 roles at EA orgs that I applied for but didn’t get before I got 2 offers. (And some roles I was applying for were quite low-level, or internships rather than jobs.) And evidence from this year indicates that it’s not like I was a borderline case that just happened to mildly fit a specific niche, but rather that I had pretty good prospects, yet such a person is just likely to get many rejections anyway. (The easiest-to-summarise part of that evidence from this year is that this year, with some EA org research experience under my belt, I’ve applied for ~11 roles at EA orgs, and received 4 offers.)
Again, I don’t think all or even most EAs should be primarily aiming for roles at explicitly EA orgs, and I don’t mean to suggest you should second-guess things. I just wouldn’t want readers to come away from this post thinking 7 rejections from some type of role/​org is by itself strong evidence that they should give up on that type of role/​org.
Thank you for pointing that out, I agree candidates should not consider such a low number of applications not resulting in full-time offers strong evidence against them having a chance.
I am not sure whether the question of whether one has a chance at an ‘EA job’ is even a good one however. ‘EA jobs’ are actually lots of different roles which are not very comparable to one another. They do not make for a good category one should be thinking about—but rather about which field someone might be interested in working in, and what kind of role might be a good fit. Some of which may so happen to be at EA orgs, but most will not.
Also, I appreciate I did not clarify this in the post, but I did not get rejected from all 7 roles I applied to in 2018 - I got rejected from 5, dropped out of 1 and could not do the 3-month trial stage I was invited to for visa reasons 1 time.