Quick profile of me: I’m a 31-year-old British translator (working languages French, German and Spanish, plus beginner’s Mandarin) working for a language learning app. Have been interested in EA for ~8 years but always been daunted by the prospects of changing careers and not sure what I would be best suited to. I quite enjoy my job but don’t think the company has a particular positive impact on the world.
I had a short, general EA careers advice call a couple of months ago and have since been trying to research jobs which would make use of my language skills first and foremost. For now, I’ve slightly changed my thinking from “I’d probably have to learn new skills in order to find an effective career” to “perhaps I can apply my specific skills as a translator somewhere more effective”.
So far, from looking at job boards and so on, my impression is that my language skills could come in useful in quite a lot of roles, but roles which focus primarily on language skills are going to be extremely rare or hard to find. I see language abilities (mostly just in English, occasionally in foreign languages) mentioned or implied in role descriptions such as copywriters, customer service, operational support, marketing / communications.
I wonder if I’m missing anything. Can anyone think of better applications of language skills than what I’ve mentioned above? (Foreign policy stuff was suggested to me on the Reddit thread.)
The discussion on another comment here about trying to do more networking and chatting to people, rather than limiting myself to jobs which are advertised on job boards, also seems relevant to me; and someone commented on Reddit that I might also try emailing various organizations I’m interested in asking if they have a need for a translator. My main stumbling block in that regard currently is that I don’t have strong opinions about cause prioritisation or specific areas that I want to work in, so feel like I don’t know where to start. When I look at lists of problem areas, they strike me as all very important. Do you think getting a clearer answer to that question for myself is an important step for me?
Also, I wonder if I’m limiting myself by mainly looking at English-language organisations and job boards. Perhaps I need to find the equivalent resources (to 80k, Animal Advocacy Careers, things like that) in French/German/Spanish-speaking places and look at those, since they are probably more likely to value linguists with English as a native language. (I have found some initial resources in French, though they are fairly limited.)
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been finding this tough. Career choice is really daunting, particularly if you think you might need to make a fairly big shift in the kind of work you do.
Foreign service roles sound sensible as both being high impact and requiring language skills. I wonder whether working for intergovernmental organisations like the UN or NATO might also be a good option. There doesn’t seem to have been much focus on those kinds of roles in effective altruism, but they seem really important for improving global governance.
Your idea of looking at job boards etc in other languages sounds sensible to me. It might be worth reaching out to some of the people doing community building in France or Germany for suggestions.
As to how important it is for you to get a better sense of what problems you think are most pressing: This generally seems pretty important to do earlier rather than later to me, because you can have so much more impact working on some problems than others. In your case, it also sounds as if it would be useful to get a focus for which types of organisations to start reaching out to and getting experience at. On the other hand, I also think it would be reasonable to decide that you’re unlikely to make headway at this, and it seems better to actually have a go at applying for some roles rather than spending more time agonising over whether there are even better ones to go for. You might find our career planning resources useful for thinking this through.
Hi, I posted this question on the subreddit recently ( https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/ju4ok5/request_for_career_transition_thoughts_advice/ ), but would like to see if there are any fresh perspectives here:
Quick profile of me: I’m a 31-year-old British translator (working languages French, German and Spanish, plus beginner’s Mandarin) working for a language learning app. Have been interested in EA for ~8 years but always been daunted by the prospects of changing careers and not sure what I would be best suited to. I quite enjoy my job but don’t think the company has a particular positive impact on the world.
I had a short, general EA careers advice call a couple of months ago and have since been trying to research jobs which would make use of my language skills first and foremost. For now, I’ve slightly changed my thinking from “I’d probably have to learn new skills in order to find an effective career” to “perhaps I can apply my specific skills as a translator somewhere more effective”.
So far, from looking at job boards and so on, my impression is that my language skills could come in useful in quite a lot of roles, but roles which focus primarily on language skills are going to be extremely rare or hard to find. I see language abilities (mostly just in English, occasionally in foreign languages) mentioned or implied in role descriptions such as copywriters, customer service, operational support, marketing / communications.
I wonder if I’m missing anything. Can anyone think of better applications of language skills than what I’ve mentioned above? (Foreign policy stuff was suggested to me on the Reddit thread.)
The discussion on another comment here about trying to do more networking and chatting to people, rather than limiting myself to jobs which are advertised on job boards, also seems relevant to me; and someone commented on Reddit that I might also try emailing various organizations I’m interested in asking if they have a need for a translator. My main stumbling block in that regard currently is that I don’t have strong opinions about cause prioritisation or specific areas that I want to work in, so feel like I don’t know where to start. When I look at lists of problem areas, they strike me as all very important. Do you think getting a clearer answer to that question for myself is an important step for me?
Also, I wonder if I’m limiting myself by mainly looking at English-language organisations and job boards. Perhaps I need to find the equivalent resources (to 80k, Animal Advocacy Careers, things like that) in French/German/Spanish-speaking places and look at those, since they are probably more likely to value linguists with English as a native language. (I have found some initial resources in French, though they are fairly limited.)
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been finding this tough. Career choice is really daunting, particularly if you think you might need to make a fairly big shift in the kind of work you do.
Foreign service roles sound sensible as both being high impact and requiring language skills. I wonder whether working for intergovernmental organisations like the UN or NATO might also be a good option. There doesn’t seem to have been much focus on those kinds of roles in effective altruism, but they seem really important for improving global governance.
Your idea of looking at job boards etc in other languages sounds sensible to me. It might be worth reaching out to some of the people doing community building in France or Germany for suggestions.
As to how important it is for you to get a better sense of what problems you think are most pressing: This generally seems pretty important to do earlier rather than later to me, because you can have so much more impact working on some problems than others. In your case, it also sounds as if it would be useful to get a focus for which types of organisations to start reaching out to and getting experience at. On the other hand, I also think it would be reasonable to decide that you’re unlikely to make headway at this, and it seems better to actually have a go at applying for some roles rather than spending more time agonising over whether there are even better ones to go for. You might find our career planning resources useful for thinking this through.
Doing more networking and chatting to people sounds great. You could consider going to an EA Global conference. You might also want to think about how you can reach out to organisations and quickly show them how you can provide value to them, perhaps by designing your own internship.