I’m currently reading a lot of content to prepare for HR certification exams (from HRCI and SHRM), and in a section about staffing I came across this:
some disadvantages are associated with relying solely on promotion from within to fill positions of increasing responsibility: ■ There is the danger that employees with little experience outside the organization will have a myopic view of the industry
Just the other day I had a conversation about the tendency of EA organizations to over-weight how “EA” a job candidate is,[1] so it particularly stuck me to come across this today. We had joked about how a recent grad with no work experience would try figuring out how to do accounting from first principles (the unspoken alternative was to hire an accountant). So perhaps I would interpret the above quotation in the context of EA as “employees with little experience outside of EA are more likely to have a myopic view of the non-EA world.” In a very simplistic sense, if we imagine EA as one large organization with many independent divisions/departments, a lot of the hiring (although certainly not all) is internal hiring.[2]
And I’m wondering how much expertise, skill, or experience is not utilized within EA as a result of favoring “internal” hires. I think that I have learned a lot about EA over the past three years or so, but I suspect that I would perform better in most EA jobs if I had instead spent 10% of that time learning about EA and 90% of it learning about [project management, accounting, bookkeeping, EEO laws, immigration law, workflow automation tools, product management, etc.]. Nonetheless, I also suspect that if I had spent less time delving into EA, I would be a less appealing job candidate for EA orgs, who heavily weigh EA-relevant experience.[3]
It does seem almost comical how we (people involved in EA) try to invent many things for ourselves rather than simply using the practices and tools that exist. We don’t need to constantly re-invent the wheel. It is easy to joke about hiring for a position that doesn’t require someone to be highly EA, and then using “be very EA” as an selection criteria (which eliminates qualified candidates). I’ll return to my mainstay: make sure the criteria you are using for selection are actually related to ability to perform the job. If you are hiring a head of communications to manage public relations for EA, then I think it makes sense that this role needs to understand a lot of EA. If you are hiring an office manager or a data analyst, I think that it makes less sense (although I can certainly imagine exceptions).
I’m imagining a 0-10 scale for “how EA someone is,” and I think right now most roles require candidates to be a 7 or 8 or 9 on the scale. I think there are some roles where someone being a 3 or a 4 on the scale would be fine, and would actually allow a more competitive candidate pool to be considered. This is all quite fuzzy, and I think there is a decent chance that I could be wrong.[4]
“How EA someone is” is a very sloppy term for a variety of interconnected things: mission-alignment, demonstrated interaction with the EA community, reads lots of EA content, ability to use frequently used terms like “counterfactual” and “marginal,” up-to-date with trends and happenings within EA, social connections with EAs…
Actually, I wonder if there are stats on this. It would be curious to get some actual estimates regarding what percent of hires made are from people who are within EA. There would certainly be some subjective judgement calls, but I would view being “within EA” as having worked/interned/volunteered for an EA org, or having run or having been heavily involved in an EA club/group.
I have a vague feeling that heavily weighing EA-relevant experience over non-EA experience is fairly common. I did have one person in a influential position at a central EA org mention that a candidate with a graduate degree (or maybe the words spoken were “MBA”? I don’t recall exactly) gets a bit less consideration. Nonetheless, I don’t know how much this actually happens, but I hope not often.
Especially since “how EA someone is” conflates several things: belief in a mission, communication styles, working preferences, and several other things that are actually independent/distinct. People have told me that non EAs have had trouble understanding the context of meetings and trouble communicating with team members. Could we take a generic project manager with 10 years of work experience, have them do two virtual programs, and then toss them into an EA org?
I think that the worries about hiring non-EAs are slightly more subtly than this.
Sure, they may be perfectly good at fulfilling the job description, but how does hiring someone with different values affect your organisational culture? It seems like in some cases it may be net-beneficial having someone around with a different perspective, but it can also have subtle costs in terms of weakening the team spirit.
Then you get into the issue where if you have some roles you are fine hiring EAs for and some you want them to be value-aligned for, then you may have an employee who you would not want to receive certain promotions or be elevated into certain positions, which isn’t the best position to be in.
Not to mention, often a lot of time ends up being invested in skilling up an employee and if they are value-aligned then you don’t necessarily lose all of this value when they leave.
Chris, would you be willing to talk more about this issue? I’d love to hear about some of the specific situations you’ve encountered, as well as to explore broad themes or general trends. Would it be okay if I messaged you to arrange a time to talk?
I’m currently reading a lot of content to prepare for HR certification exams (from HRCI and SHRM), and in a section about staffing I came across this:
Just the other day I had a conversation about the tendency of EA organizations to over-weight how “EA” a job candidate is,[1] so it particularly stuck me to come across this today. We had joked about how a recent grad with no work experience would try figuring out how to do accounting from first principles (the unspoken alternative was to hire an accountant). So perhaps I would interpret the above quotation in the context of EA as “employees with little experience outside of EA are more likely to have a myopic view of the non-EA world.” In a very simplistic sense, if we imagine EA as one large organization with many independent divisions/departments, a lot of the hiring (although certainly not all) is internal hiring.[2]
And I’m wondering how much expertise, skill, or experience is not utilized within EA as a result of favoring “internal” hires. I think that I have learned a lot about EA over the past three years or so, but I suspect that I would perform better in most EA jobs if I had instead spent 10% of that time learning about EA and 90% of it learning about [project management, accounting, bookkeeping, EEO laws, immigration law, workflow automation tools, product management, etc.]. Nonetheless, I also suspect that if I had spent less time delving into EA, I would be a less appealing job candidate for EA orgs, who heavily weigh EA-relevant experience.[3]
It does seem almost comical how we (people involved in EA) try to invent many things for ourselves rather than simply using the practices and tools that exist. We don’t need to constantly re-invent the wheel. It is easy to joke about hiring for a position that doesn’t require someone to be highly EA, and then using “be very EA” as an selection criteria (which eliminates qualified candidates). I’ll return to my mainstay: make sure the criteria you are using for selection are actually related to ability to perform the job. If you are hiring a head of communications to manage public relations for EA, then I think it makes sense that this role needs to understand a lot of EA. If you are hiring an office manager or a data analyst, I think that it makes less sense (although I can certainly imagine exceptions).
I’m imagining a 0-10 scale for “how EA someone is,” and I think right now most roles require candidates to be a 7 or 8 or 9 on the scale. I think there are some roles where someone being a 3 or a 4 on the scale would be fine, and would actually allow a more competitive candidate pool to be considered. This is all quite fuzzy, and I think there is a decent chance that I could be wrong.[4]
“How EA someone is” is a very sloppy term for a variety of interconnected things: mission-alignment, demonstrated interaction with the EA community, reads lots of EA content, ability to use frequently used terms like “counterfactual” and “marginal,” up-to-date with trends and happenings within EA, social connections with EAs…
Actually, I wonder if there are stats on this. It would be curious to get some actual estimates regarding what percent of hires made are from people who are within EA. There would certainly be some subjective judgement calls, but I would view being “within EA” as having worked/interned/volunteered for an EA org, or having run or having been heavily involved in an EA club/group.
I have a vague feeling that heavily weighing EA-relevant experience over non-EA experience is fairly common. I did have one person in a influential position at a central EA org mention that a candidate with a graduate degree (or maybe the words spoken were “MBA”? I don’t recall exactly) gets a bit less consideration. Nonetheless, I don’t know how much this actually happens, but I hope not often.
Especially since “how EA someone is” conflates several things: belief in a mission, communication styles, working preferences, and several other things that are actually independent/distinct. People have told me that non EAs have had trouble understanding the context of meetings and trouble communicating with team members. Could we take a generic project manager with 10 years of work experience, have them do two virtual programs, and then toss them into an EA org?
I think that the worries about hiring non-EAs are slightly more subtly than this.
Sure, they may be perfectly good at fulfilling the job description, but how does hiring someone with different values affect your organisational culture? It seems like in some cases it may be net-beneficial having someone around with a different perspective, but it can also have subtle costs in terms of weakening the team spirit.
Then you get into the issue where if you have some roles you are fine hiring EAs for and some you want them to be value-aligned for, then you may have an employee who you would not want to receive certain promotions or be elevated into certain positions, which isn’t the best position to be in.
Not to mention, often a lot of time ends up being invested in skilling up an employee and if they are value-aligned then you don’t necessarily lose all of this value when they leave.
Chris, would you be willing to talk more about this issue? I’d love to hear about some of the specific situations you’ve encountered, as well as to explore broad themes or general trends. Would it be okay if I messaged you to arrange a time to talk?
Sorry, I’m pretty busy. But feel free to chat if we ever run into each other at an EA event or to B book a 1-on-1 at an EA Global.