Thanks for sharing your comment about personalized invitations, that’s interesting. At Open Phil, almost all our personalized invitations (even to people we already knew well) were only lightly personalized. But perhaps a noticeable fraction of people misperceived that as “high chance you’ll get the job if you apply,” or something. The Open Phil RA hiring committee is discussing this issue now, so thanks for raising it.
It sounds like this issue is at least fairly straightforward to address: in subsequent rounds OpenPhil could just include a blurb that more explicitly clarifies how many people they’re sending emails to, or something similar.
(I’ll note that this a bit above/beyond what I think they are obligated to. I received an email from Facebook once suggesting I apply to their lengthy application process, and I’m not under any illusions this gave me more than a 5-10% chance of getting the job. But the EA world sort of feels like it’s supposed to be more personal and I think it’s make for better overall information-and-resource-flow to include that sort of metadata)
Thanks for sharing your comment about personalized invitations, that’s interesting. At Open Phil, almost all our personalized invitations (even to people we already knew well) were only lightly personalized. But perhaps a noticeable fraction of people misperceived that as “high chance you’ll get the job if you apply,” or something. The Open Phil RA hiring committee is discussing this issue now, so thanks for raising it.
[Deleted]
It sounds like this issue is at least fairly straightforward to address: in subsequent rounds OpenPhil could just include a blurb that more explicitly clarifies how many people they’re sending emails to, or something similar.
(I’ll note that this a bit above/beyond what I think they are obligated to. I received an email from Facebook once suggesting I apply to their lengthy application process, and I’m not under any illusions this gave me more than a 5-10% chance of getting the job. But the EA world sort of feels like it’s supposed to be more personal and I think it’s make for better overall information-and-resource-flow to include that sort of metadata)
FWIW: I think I know of another example along these lines, although only second hand.