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 €1,500. But the value of my time is way higher (5–10x).
3. What makes the break at interview: It’s 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. It’s that I can’t 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 don’t have the total number of applicants, but I’m thinking of the people who reached the 3rd round) will be twice as impactful. Let’s say very conservatively that the value of hired people’s time is 1⁄4 of my time (therefore the other pool would be 1⁄8 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 won’t 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/sourcing), then the case becomes less clear.
To run such a round for communication or marketing/SEO value is a novel approach, but isn’t without cost in terms of the sheer numbers of people spending time applying.
I wouldn’t 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: 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 €1,500. But the value of my time is way higher (5–10x).
3. What makes the break at interview: It’s 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. It’s that I can’t 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 don’t have the total number of applicants, but I’m thinking of the people who reached the 3rd round) will be twice as impactful. Let’s say very conservatively that the value of hired people’s time is 1⁄4 of my time (therefore the other pool would be 1⁄8 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 won’t 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/sourcing), then the case becomes less clear.
To run such a round for communication or marketing/SEO value is a novel approach, but isn’t without cost in terms of the sheer numbers of people spending time applying.
I wouldn’t 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.