1. Money Spent: Basically nothing. We just spent ā¬200 trying to boost visibility on LinkedIn offers and the platform Jobs that make sense. For LinkedIn, the quality was too low, and for the second one, it didnāt lead to significantly more applicants.
2. Data Outreach/āreferrals: We donāt easily have this data, and itās difficult to attribute someone who saw the offers on multiple channels and applied a few days after. I think our LinkedIn posts (not the LinkedIn job offer) did the majority of our outreach in terms of quantity.
3. Focus on one channel: At our stage, our priority was to find the really best people and we were ready to invest the time. Even though there is quality variation between channels and between sources, you can still find your superstar on any channel. I think I will keep all the channels, and I will just reconsider LinkedIn job offers depending on whether I find a linear way for us to evaluate the first step.
4. Reuse our pool: The majority of the people who made it to the interview didnāt pass the bar to be hired at Mieux Donner, meaning that even if there was no one else applying, we would probably not have hired them. Therefore, there are only a few people from the finalists that we might re-interview. Maybe I can send an email saying that if I re-open a job, I would send an email to the top 5% saying that if the situation has significantly evolved and they have developed new skills in the past year, I would encourage them to apply again (inspired by the āShould I reapplyā from CE).
5. Value back: I think if two out of the three people stay one year, it will have been a great success.
6. Simiar role: Itās difficult to say. Some have the generalist background, some were in the sector of the role (not the exact role). Almost all of the top candidates were actively looking for a job. We still had plenty of people who were employed when they applied.
1. Sorry, I wasnāt clear. I meant the cost of the 160 hours of staff time. Was that 160 hours total across the team, or 160 hours per person involved? Either way, do you have a rough estimate of the monetary value of that time?
2. If the outreach/āreferrals bucket produced the two strongest candidates but cannot be decomposed further, then it seems hard to know which part of the process generated the most value. It also makes it hard to tell whether a closed or semi-closed round would have been cheaper and more efficient in this case.
3. From your description, Iād imagine that skills had already been assessed before the final interview. Iām curious what, specifically, was missing among the final interviewees who did not meet the bar. Was the final interview surfacing new disqualifying information, or were they strong and hireable candidates facing a limited number of positions?
4. On retention, Iām surprised that two of the three hires staying one year would already count as a great success. Given the time invested by the team, and by many candidates, I would have thought the process would need to produce longer-term retention of exceptional talent. One year seems like a low bar for such a high bar, especially if you then have to run a similar round again.
To be upfront, I am sceptical that typical EA hiring processes are a judicious use of donor money (or candidate time). I may be wrong, but that is why Iām interested in the numbers here. If there is a more efficient way to hire, one should try to find it rather than defaulting to process templates from other organisations.
Transparent write-ups like this are valuable because they let us examine the trade-offs directly. My underlying question is whether an organisation could get most of the value by starting with a much smaller pool: top referrals, strong previous finalists, or otherwise directly sourced candidates, before running a large open process.
1. Money Spent: As I said, I was the only one involved in the process and I have a low salary (and a high number of hours), so it cost the charity ā¬1,500. But the value of my time is way higher (5ā10x).
3. What makes the break at interview: Itās value alignment, real motivation toward effective generosity principles, and a mindset oriented toward results that make a difference. If you request access to the questions, you will have a better sense.
4. Open vs closed: My intuition is that finding the real best person has tremendous value, and when these people work even for one year, they can get you so much more done. My organisation was constrained in terms of ideas and my network pool was very limited. Right now the limiting factor is my personal time, but actually much more so the generation of new ideas and ways to fundraise more money. Itās that I canāt easily spend money to buy myself more time, so I need to hire people.
Disclaimer: rough BOTEC coming. In my case, I think the value created by the people I hire versus the best people from the direct referral pool (I donāt have the total number of applicants, but Iām thinking of the people who reached the 3rd round) will be twice as impactful. Letās say very conservatively that the value of hired peopleās time is 1ā4 of my time (therefore the other pool would be 1ā8 of mine). Two people for one year = 4,000h. The open process took me 160h (120h more than a closed one). So the cost of 120h would generate 500h without additional costs.
I think in plenty of other contexts, depending on the questions I put at the beginning, it will not be valuable to do an open round. Plus, as I said, for Mieux Donner it also has communication value. At foundation events, different people heard about Mieux Donner and effective giving through the communication of the process.
For example, if next year I want someone capable of doing detailed research on niche effective altruism subjects, I will not do an open round. It wonāt be worth my time, because the people who can do the job well are probably already in my network.
Your BOTEC seems to depend on the assumption that the people hired through the open process will be roughly twice as impactful as the best people available through a closed process. That seems like a big uncertainty, but I appreciate it was a rough sketch.
If the open process produced people who are 2x as impactful, then yes, 120 additional hours looks very worthwhile. But if the difference is much smaller, or if a semi-closed process would have brought in the same people (which is why I wanted to know whether the two you mentioned were found via personal outreach/āsourcing), then the case becomes less clear.
To run such a round for communication or marketing/āSEO value is a novel approach, but isnāt without cost in terms of the sheer numbers of people spending time applying.
I wouldnāt say that open hiring should never be used, but that orgs should stop defaulting to elaborate processes when targeted hiring may be more efficient. I agree with your final point that an open round may not be worth it in some cases.
1. Money Spent: Basically nothing. We just spent ā¬200 trying to boost visibility on LinkedIn offers and the platform Jobs that make sense. For LinkedIn, the quality was too low, and for the second one, it didnāt lead to significantly more applicants.
2. Data Outreach/āreferrals: We donāt easily have this data, and itās difficult to attribute someone who saw the offers on multiple channels and applied a few days after. I think our LinkedIn posts (not the LinkedIn job offer) did the majority of our outreach in terms of quantity.
3. Focus on one channel: At our stage, our priority was to find the really best people and we were ready to invest the time. Even though there is quality variation between channels and between sources, you can still find your superstar on any channel. I think I will keep all the channels, and I will just reconsider LinkedIn job offers depending on whether I find a linear way for us to evaluate the first step.
4. Reuse our pool: The majority of the people who made it to the interview didnāt pass the bar to be hired at Mieux Donner, meaning that even if there was no one else applying, we would probably not have hired them. Therefore, there are only a few people from the finalists that we might re-interview. Maybe I can send an email saying that if I re-open a job, I would send an email to the top 5% saying that if the situation has significantly evolved and they have developed new skills in the past year, I would encourage them to apply again (inspired by the āShould I reapplyā from CE).
5. Value back: I think if two out of the three people stay one year, it will have been a great success.
6. Simiar role: Itās difficult to say. Some have the generalist background, some were in the sector of the role (not the exact role). Almost all of the top candidates were actively looking for a job. We still had plenty of people who were employed when they applied.
Hi Romain, thanks for engaging!
1. Sorry, I wasnāt clear. I meant the cost of the 160 hours of staff time. Was that 160 hours total across the team, or 160 hours per person involved? Either way, do you have a rough estimate of the monetary value of that time?
2. If the outreach/āreferrals bucket produced the two strongest candidates but cannot be decomposed further, then it seems hard to know which part of the process generated the most value. It also makes it hard to tell whether a closed or semi-closed round would have been cheaper and more efficient in this case.
3. From your description, Iād imagine that skills had already been assessed before the final interview. Iām curious what, specifically, was missing among the final interviewees who did not meet the bar. Was the final interview surfacing new disqualifying information, or were they strong and hireable candidates facing a limited number of positions?
4. On retention, Iām surprised that two of the three hires staying one year would already count as a great success. Given the time invested by the team, and by many candidates, I would have thought the process would need to produce longer-term retention of exceptional talent. One year seems like a low bar for such a high bar, especially if you then have to run a similar round again.
To be upfront, I am sceptical that typical EA hiring processes are a judicious use of donor money (or candidate time). I may be wrong, but that is why Iām interested in the numbers here. If there is a more efficient way to hire, one should try to find it rather than defaulting to process templates from other organisations.
Transparent write-ups like this are valuable because they let us examine the trade-offs directly. My underlying question is whether an organisation could get most of the value by starting with a much smaller pool: top referrals, strong previous finalists, or otherwise directly sourced candidates, before running a large open process.
1. Money Spent: As I said, I was the only one involved in the process and I have a low salary (and a high number of hours), so it cost the charity ā¬1,500. But the value of my time is way higher (5ā10x).
3. What makes the break at interview: Itās value alignment, real motivation toward effective generosity principles, and a mindset oriented toward results that make a difference. If you request access to the questions, you will have a better sense.
4. Open vs closed: My intuition is that finding the real best person has tremendous value, and when these people work even for one year, they can get you so much more done. My organisation was constrained in terms of ideas and my network pool was very limited. Right now the limiting factor is my personal time, but actually much more so the generation of new ideas and ways to fundraise more money. Itās that I canāt easily spend money to buy myself more time, so I need to hire people.
Disclaimer: rough BOTEC coming. In my case, I think the value created by the people I hire versus the best people from the direct referral pool (I donāt have the total number of applicants, but Iām thinking of the people who reached the 3rd round) will be twice as impactful. Letās say very conservatively that the value of hired peopleās time is 1ā4 of my time (therefore the other pool would be 1ā8 of mine). Two people for one year = 4,000h. The open process took me 160h (120h more than a closed one). So the cost of 120h would generate 500h without additional costs.
I think in plenty of other contexts, depending on the questions I put at the beginning, it will not be valuable to do an open round. Plus, as I said, for Mieux Donner it also has communication value. At foundation events, different people heard about Mieux Donner and effective giving through the communication of the process.
For example, if next year I want someone capable of doing detailed research on niche effective altruism subjects, I will not do an open round. It wonāt be worth my time, because the people who can do the job well are probably already in my network.
Thanks, this is helpful and clarifies the crux.
Your BOTEC seems to depend on the assumption that the people hired through the open process will be roughly twice as impactful as the best people available through a closed process. That seems like a big uncertainty, but I appreciate it was a rough sketch.
If the open process produced people who are 2x as impactful, then yes, 120 additional hours looks very worthwhile. But if the difference is much smaller, or if a semi-closed process would have brought in the same people (which is why I wanted to know whether the two you mentioned were found via personal outreach/āsourcing), then the case becomes less clear.
To run such a round for communication or marketing/āSEO value is a novel approach, but isnāt without cost in terms of the sheer numbers of people spending time applying.
I wouldnāt say that open hiring should never be used, but that orgs should stop defaulting to elaborate processes when targeted hiring may be more efficient. I agree with your final point that an open round may not be worth it in some cases.
Anyway, thanks again for writing this up.