At Rethink Priorities, we don’t take people’s EA Forum user history into account at all when hiring
This seems incredibly surprising to me. Someone writes the best post in existence on whether mealworms suffer, you are considering hiring them to research invertebrate sentience, and you’re like “don’t care – your research was posted on the forum so I’m not going to look at it?”
Do you look at anything people have done before working at RP?
Disclaimer: Work at RP, but am not speaking on behalf of RP here or those involved in hiring processes.
I think this is basically accurate for the standard hiring round, depending on what you consider “when hiring”. For example, my understanding is that knowledge of an author who has written a post you described would likely contribute to whether RP reaches out to people inviting them to apply for a role (though this bar is much, much lower than whether someone has authored such a post), but these invitation confers no advantage during the hiring process itself, which leans rather heavily on the test task / skills assessment portions of the hiring process (one example here).
RP also aims to not select for knowledge and experience in EA beyond the extent that it is relevant for the specific role they are applying for (and keeping in mind that much of EA knowledge, like other knowledge, can be learned). My personal impression is that having a process of checking EA forum history, even if this was somehow blinded, would risk biasing this in favour of active EAF users in a way that was not reliably predictive for selecting the best candidate.
I have less insight into the processes that do not fit this standard hiring model (e.g. choosing who to reach out to as contractors).
Do you look at anything people have done before working at RP?
Not really. We mainly have people do test tasks. Usually people who have written really good things on the EA Forum also do really well on test tasks anyways.
In the past we have had people submit writing samples and we’ve graded those. That writing sample could be an EA Forum post. So in that case, a great EA Forum post could directly affect whether you get hired.
Definitely open to this being a bad approach.
The main thing I was trying to get at though is that having downvoted EA Forum comments or participating in some spicy takes doesn’t affect RP employment.
This seems incredibly surprising to me. Someone writes the best post in existence on whether mealworms suffer, you are considering hiring them to research invertebrate sentience, and you’re like “don’t care – your research was posted on the forum so I’m not going to look at it?”
Do you look at anything people have done before working at RP?
Disclaimer: Work at RP, but am not speaking on behalf of RP here or those involved in hiring processes.
I think this is basically accurate for the standard hiring round, depending on what you consider “when hiring”. For example, my understanding is that knowledge of an author who has written a post you described would likely contribute to whether RP reaches out to people inviting them to apply for a role (though this bar is much, much lower than whether someone has authored such a post), but these invitation confers no advantage during the hiring process itself, which leans rather heavily on the test task / skills assessment portions of the hiring process (one example here).
RP also aims to not select for knowledge and experience in EA beyond the extent that it is relevant for the specific role they are applying for (and keeping in mind that much of EA knowledge, like other knowledge, can be learned). My personal impression is that having a process of checking EA forum history, even if this was somehow blinded, would risk biasing this in favour of active EAF users in a way that was not reliably predictive for selecting the best candidate.
I have less insight into the processes that do not fit this standard hiring model (e.g. choosing who to reach out to as contractors).
Not really. We mainly have people do test tasks. Usually people who have written really good things on the EA Forum also do really well on test tasks anyways.
In the past we have had people submit writing samples and we’ve graded those. That writing sample could be an EA Forum post. So in that case, a great EA Forum post could directly affect whether you get hired.
Definitely open to this being a bad approach.
The main thing I was trying to get at though is that having downvoted EA Forum comments or participating in some spicy takes doesn’t affect RP employment.
Interesting, thanks!