I’m been mulling over the idea of proportional reciprocity for a while. I’ve had some musings sitting a a Google Doc for several months, and I think that I either share a rough/sloppy version of this, or it will never get shared. So here is my idea. Note that this is in relation to job applications within EA, and I felt nudged to share this after seeing Thank You For Your Time: Understanding the Experiences of Job Seekers in Effective Altruism.
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Proportional reciprocity
I made this concept up.[1] The general idea is that relationships tend to be somewhat reciprocal, but in proportion to the maturity/growth of the relationship: the level of care and effort that I express toward you should be roughly proportional to the level of effort and care that you express toward me. When that is violated (either upward or downward) people feel that something is wrong.[2] The general idea (as far as it relates to job applications and hiring rounds) is that the more of a relationship the two parties have, the more care and consideration the rejection should involve. How does this relate to hiring in the context of EA? If Alice puts in 3 hours of work, and then Alice perceives that Bob puts in 3 minutes of work, Alice feels bad. That the simplistic model.
As a person running a hiring round, you might not view yourself as having a relationship with these people, but there is a sort of psychological contract which exists, especially after an interview; the candidate expects you to behave in certain ways.
One particularly frustrating experience I had was with an EA organization that had a role with a title, skills, and responsibilities that matched my experience fairly well. That organization reached out to me and requested that I answer multiple short essay-type questions as a part of the job application.[3] I did so, and I ended up receiving a template email from a noreply email address that stated “we have made the decision to move forward with other candidates whose experience and skills are a closer match to the position.” In my mind, this is a situation in which a reasonable candidate (say, someone not in the bottom 10%) who spent a decent chunk of time thoughtfully responding to multiple questions and who actually does meet the stated requirements for the role, is blandly rejected. This kind of scenario appears to be fairly common. And I wouldn’t have felt so bitter about it if they hadn’t specifically reached out to me and asked me to apply. Of course, I don’t know how competitive I was or wasn’t; maybe my writing was so poor that I was literally the worst-ranked candidate.
What would I have liked to see instead? I certainly don’t think that I am owed an interview, nor a job offer, and in reality I don’t know how competitive the other candidates were.[4] But I would have liked to have been given a bit more information beyond the implication of merely “other candidates are a better match.” I would love to be told in what way I fell short, and what I should do instead. If they specifically contacted me to invite me to apply, something along the lines of “Hey Joseph, sorry for wasting your time. We genuinely thought that you would have been among the stronger candidates, and we are sorry that we invited you to apply only to reject you at the very first stage.” That would have felt more human and personal, and I wouldn’t hold it against them. But instead I got a very boilerplate email template.
Of course, I’m describing my own experience, but lots of other people in EA and adjacent to EA go through this. It isn’t unusual for candidate to be asked to do 3-hour work trials without compensation, to be invited to interview and then rejected without information, or to meet 100% of the requirements of a job posting and then get rejected 24 hours after submitting an application.[5]
If this is an example of the applicant putting in effort and not getting reciprocity, the other failure mode that I’ve seen is the applicant being asked for more and more effort. A hiring round from one EA adjacent organization involved a short application form, and then a three-hour unpaid trial task. I understand the need to deal with a large volume of applicants; interviewing 5-10 people is feasible, interviewing 80 is less so. What would I have liked to see instead? Perhaps a 30-minute trial task instead of a three-hour trial task. Perhaps a 10-minute screening interview. Perhaps an additional form with some knockout questions and non-negotiables. Perhaps a three hour task that is paid.
There are plenty of exceptions, of course. I can’t obligate you to form a friendship with me by doing favors or by giving you gifts. The genuineness matters also: a sycophant who only engages in a relationship in order to extract value isn’t covered by proportionally reciprocity. And there are plenty of misperceptions regarding what level a relationship has reached; I’ve seen many interpersonal conflicts arise from two people having different perceptions of the current level of reciprocity. I think that this is particularly common in romantic relationships among young people.
I don’t remember exactly how much time I spent on the short essays. I know that it wasn’t a five-hour effort, but I also know that I didn’t just type a sentence or two and click ‘submit.’ I put a bit of thought into them, and I provided context and justification. Maybe it was between 30 and 90 minutes? One question was about DEI and the relevance it has to the work that organization did. I have actually read multiple books on DEI and I’ve been exploring that area quite a bit, so I was able to elaborate and give nuance on that.
Maybe they had twice as much relevant work experience as me, and membership in prestigious professional institutions, and experience volunteering with the organization. Or maybe I had something noticeably bad about my application, such as a blatant typo that I didn’t notice.
the level of care and effort that I express toward you should be roughly proportional to the level of effort and care that you express toward me
maybe a version of this that is more durable to the considerations in your footnote is: the level of care and effort that I ask from you should be roughly proportional to the level that I express towards you
if I ask for not much care and effort and get a lot, that perhaps should be a prompt to figure out if I should have done more to protect my counterpart from overinvesting, if I accidentally overpromised or miscommunicated, but ultimately there’s only so much responsibility you can take for other people’s decisions
I’m been mulling over the idea of proportional reciprocity for a while. I’ve had some musings sitting a a Google Doc for several months, and I think that I either share a rough/sloppy version of this, or it will never get shared. So here is my idea. Note that this is in relation to job applications within EA, and I felt nudged to share this after seeing Thank You For Your Time: Understanding the Experiences of Job Seekers in Effective Altruism.
- - - -
Proportional reciprocity
I made this concept up.[1] The general idea is that relationships tend to be somewhat reciprocal, but in proportion to the maturity/growth of the relationship: the level of care and effort that I express toward you should be roughly proportional to the level of effort and care that you express toward me. When that is violated (either upward or downward) people feel that something is wrong.[2] The general idea (as far as it relates to job applications and hiring rounds) is that the more of a relationship the two parties have, the more care and consideration the rejection should involve. How does this relate to hiring in the context of EA? If Alice puts in 3 hours of work, and then Alice perceives that Bob puts in 3 minutes of work, Alice feels bad. That the simplistic model.
As a person running a hiring round, you might not view yourself as having a relationship with these people, but there is a sort of psychological contract which exists, especially after an interview; the candidate expects you to behave in certain ways.
One particularly frustrating experience I had was with an EA organization that had a role with a title, skills, and responsibilities that matched my experience fairly well. That organization reached out to me and requested that I answer multiple short essay-type questions as a part of the job application.[3] I did so, and I ended up receiving a template email from a noreply email address that stated “we have made the decision to move forward with other candidates whose experience and skills are a closer match to the position.” In my mind, this is a situation in which a reasonable candidate (say, someone not in the bottom 10%) who spent a decent chunk of time thoughtfully responding to multiple questions and who actually does meet the stated requirements for the role, is blandly rejected. This kind of scenario appears to be fairly common. And I wouldn’t have felt so bitter about it if they hadn’t specifically reached out to me and asked me to apply. Of course, I don’t know how competitive I was or wasn’t; maybe my writing was so poor that I was literally the worst-ranked candidate.
What would I have liked to see instead? I certainly don’t think that I am owed an interview, nor a job offer, and in reality I don’t know how competitive the other candidates were.[4] But I would have liked to have been given a bit more information beyond the implication of merely “other candidates are a better match.” I would love to be told in what way I fell short, and what I should do instead. If they specifically contacted me to invite me to apply, something along the lines of “Hey Joseph, sorry for wasting your time. We genuinely thought that you would have been among the stronger candidates, and we are sorry that we invited you to apply only to reject you at the very first stage.” That would have felt more human and personal, and I wouldn’t hold it against them. But instead I got a very boilerplate email template.
Of course, I’m describing my own experience, but lots of other people in EA and adjacent to EA go through this. It isn’t unusual for candidate to be asked to do 3-hour work trials without compensation, to be invited to interview and then rejected without information, or to meet 100% of the requirements of a job posting and then get rejected 24 hours after submitting an application.[5]
If this is an example of the applicant putting in effort and not getting reciprocity, the other failure mode that I’ve seen is the applicant being asked for more and more effort. A hiring round from one EA adjacent organization involved a short application form, and then a three-hour unpaid trial task. I understand the need to deal with a large volume of applicants; interviewing 5-10 people is feasible, interviewing 80 is less so. What would I have liked to see instead? Perhaps a 30-minute trial task instead of a three-hour trial task. Perhaps a 10-minute screening interview. Perhaps an additional form with some knockout questions and non-negotiables. Perhaps a three hour task that is paid.
Although some social psychologist has probably thought of it before me and in much more depth.
There are plenty of exceptions, of course. I can’t obligate you to form a friendship with me by doing favors or by giving you gifts. The genuineness matters also: a sycophant who only engages in a relationship in order to extract value isn’t covered by proportionally reciprocity. And there are plenty of misperceptions regarding what level a relationship has reached; I’ve seen many interpersonal conflicts arise from two people having different perceptions of the current level of reciprocity. I think that this is particularly common in romantic relationships among young people.
I don’t remember exactly how much time I spent on the short essays. I know that it wasn’t a five-hour effort, but I also know that I didn’t just type a sentence or two and click ‘submit.’ I put a bit of thought into them, and I provided context and justification. Maybe it was between 30 and 90 minutes? One question was about DEI and the relevance it has to the work that organization did. I have actually read multiple books on DEI and I’ve been exploring that area quite a bit, so I was able to elaborate and give nuance on that.
Maybe they had twice as much relevant work experience as me, and membership in prestigious professional institutions, and experience volunteering with the organization. Or maybe I had something noticeably bad about my application, such as a blatant typo that I didn’t notice.
None of these are made up scenarios. Each of these has happened either to me or to people I know.
maybe a version of this that is more durable to the considerations in your footnote is: the level of care and effort that I ask from you should be roughly proportional to the level that I express towards you
if I ask for not much care and effort and get a lot, that perhaps should be a prompt to figure out if I should have done more to protect my counterpart from overinvesting, if I accidentally overpromised or miscommunicated, but ultimately there’s only so much responsibility you can take for other people’s decisions