Oof, 8 weeks of effort to get 0⁄20 positions is pretty brutal. It’s easy to see how that would feel like your “Hey you!…” paragraph. And while I suspect you’re a bit of an outlier in time spent and positions applied for, I also think you’re pointing at something true about the current situation re: job openings at EA-motivated employers, as evidenced by how many upvotes this post has gotten, some of the comments on this page, and the data I’ve got as a result of managing Open Phil’s 2018 recruitment round of Research Analysts, during which we had to say “no” to tons of applicants with quite impressive resumes.
I’ve been writing up some reflections on that recruiting round, which I hope to share soon. One of my takeaways is something like “The base of talent out there is strong, and Open Phil’s current ability to deploy it is weak.” In that way we might be an extreme opposite of Teach for America, and I suspect many other EA-motivated orgs are as well.
Anyway, I plan to say more on these topics when I share my “reflections” post, but in the meantime I just want to say I’m sorry that you spent so much time applying to EA orgs and got no offers. Also, setting the time investment aside, it’s also just emotionally difficult to get an “Unfortunately, we’ve decided…” email, let alone receive 20 of them in a row.
A couple other random notes for now:
- A colleague of mine has heard some EAs — perhaps motivated by considerations like those in this post — saying stuff like “maybe I shouldn’t even try to apply because I don’t want to waste orgs’ time.” In case future potential Open Phil applicants end up reading this comment, let it be known that we don’t think it’s a waste of our time to process applications. If we don’t have the staff capacity to process all the applications we receive, we can always just drop a larger fraction of applicants at each stage. But if someone never applies, we have no opportunity at all to figure out how good a fit they might be. Also, what we’re looking for is pretty unclear (especially to potential applicants), and so e.g. some of our recent hires are people who told us they probably wouldn’t have bothered applying if we hadn’t proactively encouraged them to apply. Of course, an applicant could be worried about whether applying is worth their time, and that’s a different matter.
- I think it would’ve been good to mention that some of these organizations pay applicants for some/all of the time they spend on the application process. (Hopefully Open Phil isn’t the only one?)
MIRI (and other EA orgs, I’d wager) would strongly second “we don’t think it’s a waste of our time to process applications. If we don’t have the staff capacity to process all the applications we receive, we can always just drop a larger fraction of applicants at each stage.”
I second the rest of Luke’s comment too. That run of applications sounds incredibly rough. The account above makes me wonder if we could be doing a better job of communicating expectations to people applying for jobs early in the process. It’s much, much easier to avoid setting misleadingly low or misleadingly high expectations when the information can be personalized and there’s an active back-and-forth, vs. in a blog post.
Regarding me being a bit of an outlier: Yes, I think so as well. I personally don’t know anyone who applied for quite as many positions. I still don’t think I am a *very* special case. I also got several private messages in response to this post, of people saying they had made similar experiences.
Regarding compensation: I was lucky enough to have decent runway, so the financial aspect wasn’t crucial for me, so I just forgot including it. I will edit that now.
Oof, 8 weeks of effort to get 0⁄20 positions is pretty brutal. It’s easy to see how that would feel like your “Hey you!…” paragraph. And while I suspect you’re a bit of an outlier in time spent and positions applied for, I also think you’re pointing at something true about the current situation re: job openings at EA-motivated employers, as evidenced by how many upvotes this post has gotten, some of the comments on this page, and the data I’ve got as a result of managing Open Phil’s 2018 recruitment round of Research Analysts, during which we had to say “no” to tons of applicants with quite impressive resumes.
I’ve been writing up some reflections on that recruiting round, which I hope to share soon. One of my takeaways is something like “The base of talent out there is strong, and Open Phil’s current ability to deploy it is weak.” In that way we might be an extreme opposite of Teach for America, and I suspect many other EA-motivated orgs are as well.
Anyway, I plan to say more on these topics when I share my “reflections” post, but in the meantime I just want to say I’m sorry that you spent so much time applying to EA orgs and got no offers. Also, setting the time investment aside, it’s also just emotionally difficult to get an “Unfortunately, we’ve decided…” email, let alone receive 20 of them in a row.
A couple other random notes for now:
- A colleague of mine has heard some EAs — perhaps motivated by considerations like those in this post — saying stuff like “maybe I shouldn’t even try to apply because I don’t want to waste orgs’ time.” In case future potential Open Phil applicants end up reading this comment, let it be known that we don’t think it’s a waste of our time to process applications. If we don’t have the staff capacity to process all the applications we receive, we can always just drop a larger fraction of applicants at each stage. But if someone never applies, we have no opportunity at all to figure out how good a fit they might be. Also, what we’re looking for is pretty unclear (especially to potential applicants), and so e.g. some of our recent hires are people who told us they probably wouldn’t have bothered applying if we hadn’t proactively encouraged them to apply. Of course, an applicant could be worried about whether applying is worth their time, and that’s a different matter.
- I think it would’ve been good to mention that some of these organizations pay applicants for some/all of the time they spend on the application process. (Hopefully Open Phil isn’t the only one?)
BTW my “reflections on the 2018 RA recruiting round” post is now up, here.
MIRI (and other EA orgs, I’d wager) would strongly second “we don’t think it’s a waste of our time to process applications. If we don’t have the staff capacity to process all the applications we receive, we can always just drop a larger fraction of applicants at each stage.”
I second the rest of Luke’s comment too. That run of applications sounds incredibly rough. The account above makes me wonder if we could be doing a better job of communicating expectations to people applying for jobs early in the process. It’s much, much easier to avoid setting misleadingly low or misleadingly high expectations when the information can be personalized and there’s an active back-and-forth, vs. in a blog post.
Hey :-)
Regarding me being a bit of an outlier: Yes, I think so as well. I personally don’t know anyone who applied for quite as many positions. I still don’t think I am a *very* special case. I also got several private messages in response to this post, of people saying they had made similar experiences.
Regarding compensation: I was lucky enough to have decent runway, so the financial aspect wasn’t crucial for me, so I just forgot including it. I will edit that now.
Of course, the one who writes the post about it is likely to be the outlier rather than the median.
I doubt you’re an outlier to be honest. Though I may swing more pessimistic than average.