EA Orgs: Not enough people filling out your form? Maybe it has too many mandatory fields
TL;DR Philosophy: Adding mandatory fields means [saving time in calls you have with applicants] at the expense of [reducing the amount of applicants]. Is this a tradeoff you are interested in?
TL;DR recommendation: Make all the fields optional except for (1) CV/linkedin, and (2) email. Then, in the first call, ask whatever’s missing
Q: But the fields help us filter
A: Yep, you’ll get more bad applicants if you do this
Q: What if we get too many applicants?
A: Then stop this. My suggestion will get you lots more bad applicants and a few more good applicants, I think. If that’s not a good tradeoff for you, dump it. I think it is totally legit to prioritize your own time!!! As my friend says, “know the stats of the card you’re playing”
Q: Probably nobody drops out of our form anyway
A: Well, my priors from startups are that long forms sure do hurt the funnel, but maybe in your specific case these priors are wrong?
I’d recommend you do hallway testing: Grab someone in the hall, ask them to fill out your form, watch them do it.
Or save stats about how many people start your form and how many complete it. You can do that easily by posting a bit.ly link that leads to your application form, it will count how many people click it. Better but harder: Google Analytics.
You don’t know it until you measure it.
Q: Everyone who drops probably doesn’t want it bad enough!
Maybe there’s a better way to check if someone “wants it bad enough”? This doesn’t sound like an intentional decision
Are you telling your candidates that you are letting them do extra work to make sure they “want it bad enough”? (If you’re asking for a cover letter, then the answer is implicitly yes)
Q: Give us practical examples! Since when do you write such theoretical posts anyway?
You’re right, here are some examples:
“What makes you a good fit for this role”—hits directly on people’s impostor syndrome, which is so common in EA that I am going to bet that even you, dear anonymous reader, have impostor syndrome
“How do you define good”—is a question that I am personally stuck on in the 80k hours form. This is so stupid. They WROTE that I’m not supposed to spend too long on it. I’m usually totally a “do things quickly” person. But here, I admit it, this is my situation. Or maybe I don’t want their advice enough to be worth their time? I don’t know
Q: Tell us your real opinion, it must be super controversial!
How did you know?? It’s like you’re reading my mind..!
Ok, I think that if you’re hiring from a small pool of EAs (who’re full of impostor syndrome regardless of their skill level, and who spend hours writing applications) and if you’re struggling to get more to apply, and this is important enough to be worth your management focus… HAVE ZERO REQUIRED FIELDS.
I said it. Zero.
If you only get someone’s email: You’ll have a mailing list of people interested in working for you, is that so bad? (Well maybe it is, in which case don’t do that)
I expect most people will fill in lots of the fields, and you can interview those people first, and then you can chose to invite the people who only submitted their CV, or send an email to everyone who only submitted their address, probably better than having them drop out of your form.
And a very few people (bots) will probably submit empty forms. Yes.
And if this doesn’t work out, revert back to mandatory fields.
Optimization: Delegation
The person who does the first call and asks “what’s your experience with EA” doesn’t need to be the startup’s founder. This task can be delegated
At least do hallway user testing, like, once
I wonder if 80k have ever done this for their enormous form. If they see this post, do hallway testing once, decide to make the form easier, and get 10% more applicants from now on, could I get a cookie?
Or save stats about how many people start your form and how many complete it. You can do that easily by posting a bit.ly link that leads to your application form, it will count how many people click it. Better but harder: Google Analytics.
A lot of form builders record this automatically, as well. Typeform does, for example.
(In case you are interested: the “Why are you a good candidate for the role(s) of ___” question you alluded to above causes a bit less than 1% of applicants to drop out of the CEA application form.)
EA Orgs: Not enough people filling out your form? Maybe it has too many mandatory fields
TL;DR Philosophy: Adding mandatory fields means [saving time in calls you have with applicants] at the expense of [reducing the amount of applicants]. Is this a tradeoff you are interested in?
TL;DR recommendation: Make all the fields optional except for (1) CV/linkedin, and (2) email. Then, in the first call, ask whatever’s missing
Q: But the fields help us filter
A: Yep, you’ll get more bad applicants if you do this
Q: What if we get too many applicants?
A: Then stop this. My suggestion will get you lots more bad applicants and a few more good applicants, I think. If that’s not a good tradeoff for you, dump it. I think it is totally legit to prioritize your own time!!! As my friend says, “know the stats of the card you’re playing”
Q: Probably nobody drops out of our form anyway
A: Well, my priors from startups are that long forms sure do hurt the funnel, but maybe in your specific case these priors are wrong?
I’d recommend you do hallway testing: Grab someone in the hall, ask them to fill out your form, watch them do it.
Or save stats about how many people start your form and how many complete it. You can do that easily by posting a bit.ly link that leads to your application form, it will count how many people click it. Better but harder: Google Analytics.
You don’t know it until you measure it.
Q: Everyone who drops probably doesn’t want it bad enough!
Maybe there’s a better way to check if someone “wants it bad enough”? This doesn’t sound like an intentional decision
Are you telling your candidates that you are letting them do extra work to make sure they “want it bad enough”? (If you’re asking for a cover letter, then the answer is implicitly yes)
Q: Give us practical examples! Since when do you write such theoretical posts anyway?
You’re right, here are some examples:
“What makes you a good fit for this role”—hits directly on people’s impostor syndrome, which is so common in EA that I am going to bet that even you, dear anonymous reader, have impostor syndrome
“How do you define good”—is a question that I am personally stuck on in the 80k hours form. This is so stupid. They WROTE that I’m not supposed to spend too long on it. I’m usually totally a “do things quickly” person. But here, I admit it, this is my situation. Or maybe I don’t want their advice enough to be worth their time? I don’t know
Q: Tell us your real opinion, it must be super controversial!
How did you know?? It’s like you’re reading my mind..!
Ok, I think that if you’re hiring from a small pool of EAs (who’re full of impostor syndrome regardless of their skill level, and who spend hours writing applications) and if you’re struggling to get more to apply, and this is important enough to be worth your management focus… HAVE ZERO REQUIRED FIELDS.
I said it. Zero.
If you only get someone’s email: You’ll have a mailing list of people interested in working for you, is that so bad? (Well maybe it is, in which case don’t do that)
I expect most people will fill in lots of the fields, and you can interview those people first, and then you can chose to invite the people who only submitted their CV, or send an email to everyone who only submitted their address, probably better than having them drop out of your form.
And a very few people (bots) will probably submit empty forms. Yes.
And if this doesn’t work out, revert back to mandatory fields.
Optimization: Delegation
The person who does the first call and asks “what’s your experience with EA” doesn’t need to be the startup’s founder. This task can be delegated
At least do hallway user testing, like, once
I wonder if 80k have ever done this for their enormous form. If they see this post, do hallway testing once, decide to make the form easier, and get 10% more applicants from now on, could I get a cookie?
A lot of form builders record this automatically, as well. Typeform does, for example.
(In case you are interested: the “Why are you a good candidate for the role(s) of ___” question you alluded to above causes a bit less than 1% of applicants to drop out of the CEA application form.)
Ok, I stand convinced!
Update: Somebody at EAGx told me that they didn’t contact me virtually because I have too many fields in my Calendly
(While I’m ranting about other people having too many fields in their forms)