Hey! I’ve been digging through your posts, and I quite appreciate that you’ve taken the time to write all this advice, because I know it’s easy to land the job you want and then forget to come back to help guide those still on the path who haven’t found their own end yet.
Question here though: how do you cultivate references when you don’t have any explicit history in that sort of job? To give a bit more here, I’m a generalist who thought I might be able to leverage the variety of experience when applying for a variety of EA aligned jobs, but listing any single person from this generalist experience rarely lines precisely up with the more specific aspects of x job I’m applying to, so I find myself unable to produce any great references when needed.
I suppose maybe this interfaces with another big question I’ve had reading your various forum posts: it seems like you’re assuming some degree of background work experience (I think somewhere you said you’d been working for 10 years already when you began this process?) so how much of this will I be able to do if I have little to no work experience (just out of college)? I know part of the answer here will be job dependent (I’m most interested in EA Community Building and General Longtermism Research) but I also just kind of feel like this amorphous concept of EA jobs is this impenetrable fortress that I’m not going to be able to make any headway towards without getting a non-EA job first and gaining some specific, relevant experience.
Hey Tristan, thanks for this! Glad you’ve found the posts useful:)
To your point about references: ideally references should be just a tick box exercise of fact checking and should testify to your character and ability to do great work. Which means that all your good references should do for all future jobs (keep in mind that most employers want two most recent places of work). Some organisations still ask questions about your ability to do that particular job which I don’t agree with as all jobs are different. To help with that I’d advise to cultivate references who believe in you and will testify to your ability to do completely new tasks. This is easier if you demonstrate in the job that you can handle new things and be good at them quickly. I personally really struggled with going from management to leadership, and if not for people who believed in me, encouraged me and saw my potential, I’d probably still be in my old role.
I think that while EA jobs and adjacent roles are preferable, remember that they are not the only options. My first three roles weren’t EA—very entry level work, but without it I’d never have gotten my subsequent animal roles. Id certainly continue job hunting in EA if I were you but I’d also be open to non EA roles simply to get experience. In the end EA roles are mostly usual roles like HR, Ops, Strategy etc, all these skills you can get outside and then come back when a role comes up. The movement is very competitive, not going to lie, but it’s definitely possible to get a role, especially if you spend time building your network from now on, and maybe have a volunteer side project.
Let me know if you have any more questions, I feel like I should try and write a more suitable post for entry level folks:)
Thank you, that’s a pretty helpful framing that I think I’ve probably heard before but haven’t internalized quite this way until now. In sum, references are generally a testament to character and general skills, not specific aptitudes for given work.
I do have question in response, but perhaps I’ll instead just speak in favor of making a post geared towards what you think entry level EA aligned people should do for work. Or perhaps a “things I wish I’d known starting out” or “if I could do it all again this is what I’d do” sort of deal. Your content has been great so far, and don’t feel like you need to rewrite anything with just a slightly changed veneer to be adaptable, but if you do feel like there’s enough you might want to say along these lines, I’d love to read a post from you on it! :)
Hey! I’ve been digging through your posts, and I quite appreciate that you’ve taken the time to write all this advice, because I know it’s easy to land the job you want and then forget to come back to help guide those still on the path who haven’t found their own end yet.
Question here though: how do you cultivate references when you don’t have any explicit history in that sort of job? To give a bit more here, I’m a generalist who thought I might be able to leverage the variety of experience when applying for a variety of EA aligned jobs, but listing any single person from this generalist experience rarely lines precisely up with the more specific aspects of x job I’m applying to, so I find myself unable to produce any great references when needed.
I suppose maybe this interfaces with another big question I’ve had reading your various forum posts: it seems like you’re assuming some degree of background work experience (I think somewhere you said you’d been working for 10 years already when you began this process?) so how much of this will I be able to do if I have little to no work experience (just out of college)? I know part of the answer here will be job dependent (I’m most interested in EA Community Building and General Longtermism Research) but I also just kind of feel like this amorphous concept of EA jobs is this impenetrable fortress that I’m not going to be able to make any headway towards without getting a non-EA job first and gaining some specific, relevant experience.
Hey Tristan, thanks for this! Glad you’ve found the posts useful:)
To your point about references: ideally references should be just a tick box exercise of fact checking and should testify to your character and ability to do great work. Which means that all your good references should do for all future jobs (keep in mind that most employers want two most recent places of work). Some organisations still ask questions about your ability to do that particular job which I don’t agree with as all jobs are different. To help with that I’d advise to cultivate references who believe in you and will testify to your ability to do completely new tasks. This is easier if you demonstrate in the job that you can handle new things and be good at them quickly. I personally really struggled with going from management to leadership, and if not for people who believed in me, encouraged me and saw my potential, I’d probably still be in my old role.
I think that while EA jobs and adjacent roles are preferable, remember that they are not the only options. My first three roles weren’t EA—very entry level work, but without it I’d never have gotten my subsequent animal roles. Id certainly continue job hunting in EA if I were you but I’d also be open to non EA roles simply to get experience. In the end EA roles are mostly usual roles like HR, Ops, Strategy etc, all these skills you can get outside and then come back when a role comes up. The movement is very competitive, not going to lie, but it’s definitely possible to get a role, especially if you spend time building your network from now on, and maybe have a volunteer side project. Let me know if you have any more questions, I feel like I should try and write a more suitable post for entry level folks:)
Thank you, that’s a pretty helpful framing that I think I’ve probably heard before but haven’t internalized quite this way until now. In sum, references are generally a testament to character and general skills, not specific aptitudes for given work.
I do have question in response, but perhaps I’ll instead just speak in favor of making a post geared towards what you think entry level EA aligned people should do for work. Or perhaps a “things I wish I’d known starting out” or “if I could do it all again this is what I’d do” sort of deal. Your content has been great so far, and don’t feel like you need to rewrite anything with just a slightly changed veneer to be adaptable, but if you do feel like there’s enough you might want to say along these lines, I’d love to read a post from you on it! :)