I can’t count the number of times I’ve faced a question on an application of some sort along the lines of “prove how incredibly impressive you are” or “prove to use how massive the impact of your efforts will be” and I find myself thinking on a much more humble scale.
I wish I could see inside the selection process so I could observe what kinds of different answers people provide.
It’s so true, all the social Enterprise stuff wants you to describe for them the 1 percent (or .1 percent) upper tail of potential positive impact, but frame it like it’s almost certainly going to happen (rather than the reality that it 99 percent most likely won’t). I’m usually too honest and when I write overly ambitiously I feel icky...
Thanks for posting this.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve faced a question on an application of some sort along the lines of “prove how incredibly impressive you are” or “prove to use how massive the impact of your efforts will be” and I find myself thinking on a much more humble scale.
I wish I could see inside the selection process so I could observe what kinds of different answers people provide.
It’s so true, all the social Enterprise stuff wants you to describe for them the 1 percent (or .1 percent) upper tail of potential positive impact, but frame it like it’s almost certainly going to happen (rather than the reality that it 99 percent most likely won’t). I’m usually too honest and when I write overly ambitiously I feel icky...
Hmm, have there been applications that are like “what’s your 50th percentile expected outcome?” and “what’s your 95th percentile outcome?”
I listed those on an SFF application last year, although I can’t remember if they asked for it explicitly. I think it’s a good idea.
Such a great idea love it—never seen that.
I think for EA style applications that could work well, for other applications it might be hard for many people to grasp.