Can someone elaborate on what assessing candidates’ value-alignment/morality and making decisions about that looks like in practice? I work in the ‘traditional’ charitable sector (for lack of a better word), and the number one piece of advice that I’ve always heard given to hiring managers is “ask people about their skills, never about their morality or commitment to the cause” (and, as a addendum, dock people who spend too much time in the interview talking about those things). Obviously there are special cases to avoiding considering someone’s value-alignment—e.g. cases where people avoid hiring candidates with associations with organizations that seem a little ‘questionable’ vis-a-vis the cause—but overall I’ve not really heard a lot about assessing or taking into account people’s value-alignment/morality during hiring decisions.
So, with that in mind—do some EA-aligned organizations screen candidates based on morality/commitment/value-alignment? If so, how do they go about doing that—what sort of interview questions can get that information out of people accurately?
the number one piece of advice that I’ve always heard given to hiring managers is “ask people about their skills, never about their morality or commitment to the cause”
The rationale is mostly borne of experience, from what I can tell (e.g. managers experiencing consistent success with this set up), but formally it is that 1) you should hire based on who will do the most good in the position, and 2) asking about experience and skills is the best way of figuring out if they’ll do the most good.
Outside of corruption, which is a whole other discussion, the difference between very moral person A and mediocre-ly moral person B is that person B may dedicate more time to thinking about and working on the cause, which in turn becomes results. If person A is not as smart as person B, but works harder and gets better results as a result, you should hire person A. As a converse, if person B really doesn’t care that much, slacks off a lot, but is a genius who consistently gets better results than person A, you should hire person B. In both cases, asking about their morality isn’t going to tell you who will be most effective—it’s an easy thing to lie about, and when it does play a large role it will show up in your skills and experience anyway (past success is an indicator of future success).
Interesting stuff, thanks! So I guess this could be a motivating factor for lower salaries at nonprofit organizations, if accepting a low salary is a credible indicator of being a moral person? (I see your comment downthread is also about this and is interesting.)
Possibly! Outside of a few annoying high-profile groups (who shall not be named), you don’t really hear people working for charitible causes say “I’m in it for the money”. I’m pretty sure this situation is mostly driven by a lack of money mixed with the availability of people who are willing to take a pay cut to work in aid, rather than it being a conscious attempt at screening workers for morality. It may be worth researching the ‘screening for morality’ aspect further—I haven’t really seen much on the implications of it (hence my curiosity about how it would work in practice—it’s a very interesting thought!). Either way, there’s a sweet spot somewhere, it’s just a question of where—how much below market rate do you need to pay charitable workers in order to maximize the costs/benefits between screening for morality, saving money, and minimizing possible side effects like those I mentioned downpost?
In humanitarian work, for example, I think we’ve gone too far (as one writer put it, “it’s unrealistic to expect us to live like monks”. On a related note, it may be worth looking into the large debate on the professionalization of the humanitarian aid sector. Basically, for a very long time the humanitarian aid sector under-invested in the professional development, mental health, safety, and general wellbeing of its workers, because the kind of people who work in frontline aid work tend to be willing to do it anyway even if they are getting paid next to nothing, are in serious danger all the time, and are under-invested in by their organization. Unsurprisingly, burn-out and untreated PTSD are common. As an aside, professionalization also seems to be slowly increasing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, which is great.
Can someone elaborate on what assessing candidates’ value-alignment/morality and making decisions about that looks like in practice? I work in the ‘traditional’ charitable sector (for lack of a better word), and the number one piece of advice that I’ve always heard given to hiring managers is “ask people about their skills, never about their morality or commitment to the cause” (and, as a addendum, dock people who spend too much time in the interview talking about those things). Obviously there are special cases to avoiding considering someone’s value-alignment—e.g. cases where people avoid hiring candidates with associations with organizations that seem a little ‘questionable’ vis-a-vis the cause—but overall I’ve not really heard a lot about assessing or taking into account people’s value-alignment/morality during hiring decisions. So, with that in mind—do some EA-aligned organizations screen candidates based on morality/commitment/value-alignment? If so, how do they go about doing that—what sort of interview questions can get that information out of people accurately?
Is there a rationale given for this advice?
The rationale is mostly borne of experience, from what I can tell (e.g. managers experiencing consistent success with this set up), but formally it is that 1) you should hire based on who will do the most good in the position, and 2) asking about experience and skills is the best way of figuring out if they’ll do the most good. Outside of corruption, which is a whole other discussion, the difference between very moral person A and mediocre-ly moral person B is that person B may dedicate more time to thinking about and working on the cause, which in turn becomes results. If person A is not as smart as person B, but works harder and gets better results as a result, you should hire person A. As a converse, if person B really doesn’t care that much, slacks off a lot, but is a genius who consistently gets better results than person A, you should hire person B. In both cases, asking about their morality isn’t going to tell you who will be most effective—it’s an easy thing to lie about, and when it does play a large role it will show up in your skills and experience anyway (past success is an indicator of future success).
Interesting stuff, thanks! So I guess this could be a motivating factor for lower salaries at nonprofit organizations, if accepting a low salary is a credible indicator of being a moral person? (I see your comment downthread is also about this and is interesting.)
Possibly! Outside of a few annoying high-profile groups (who shall not be named), you don’t really hear people working for charitible causes say “I’m in it for the money”. I’m pretty sure this situation is mostly driven by a lack of money mixed with the availability of people who are willing to take a pay cut to work in aid, rather than it being a conscious attempt at screening workers for morality. It may be worth researching the ‘screening for morality’ aspect further—I haven’t really seen much on the implications of it (hence my curiosity about how it would work in practice—it’s a very interesting thought!). Either way, there’s a sweet spot somewhere, it’s just a question of where—how much below market rate do you need to pay charitable workers in order to maximize the costs/benefits between screening for morality, saving money, and minimizing possible side effects like those I mentioned downpost?
In humanitarian work, for example, I think we’ve gone too far (as one writer put it, “it’s unrealistic to expect us to live like monks”. On a related note, it may be worth looking into the large debate on the professionalization of the humanitarian aid sector. Basically, for a very long time the humanitarian aid sector under-invested in the professional development, mental health, safety, and general wellbeing of its workers, because the kind of people who work in frontline aid work tend to be willing to do it anyway even if they are getting paid next to nothing, are in serious danger all the time, and are under-invested in by their organization. Unsurprisingly, burn-out and untreated PTSD are common. As an aside, professionalization also seems to be slowly increasing the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, which is great.