AMA with recruiters at impact-focused orgs
Happy Career Conversations Week!
We are a group of recruiters at impact-focused organizations, and we’re happy to answer your questions about applying to jobs, work trials, interviewing, references, and anything in between.
We’ll answer all the questions we can (subject to personal time constraints) by August 1. Ask us anything!
Participants include:
Calum Richards (Recruiter at GiveWell)
Dee Kathuria (Recruiting Consultant at Open Philanthropy)
Evan Vandermeer (Recruiter at Open Philanthropy)
Judith Rensing (Chief of Staff at Charity Entrepreneurship / Ambitious Impact; previously Director of Recruitment and Talent Specialist)
Phil Zealley (Recruiting Lead at Open Philanthropy)
Rika Gabriel (People Operations Senior Associate at the Centre for Effective Altruism)
A couple caveats:
You should think of our answers as personal opinions or advice; not as official views from our employers. Also, individual participants speak only for themselves.
If we run into serious time constraints, we’ll prioritize questions with more upvotes.
We might not answer every question. In particular, we won’t share commentary on active or past applications to our employers, and it’s unlikely that we’ll respond to specific requests for feedback on job application materials.
We’re not attempting to compete with the Career Advisors AMA; some questions might be better asked there!
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Hi everyone thank you for your time and thoughts here.
Can you weigh in on work tests? I have done ~4 work tests now, and a role was posted that I was excited about that required a 7 hour (!) paid work test, and it’s really diminished my motivation to apply there. I have my own opinions as a 15 year professional, but would love to get other views—both from hiring managers and job seekers. Full disclosure.… that 7 hour thing is hot on my mind and doesn’t represent the typical length I’ve seen (more like 4). Also I value work tests—for both sides—everything below is about course correction for efficient interview effort vs hiring satisfaction, not direction changing away from work tests.
1 − 80k’s book cites a big study where correlation between selection test and job performance is 0.54 (1st place) for Work Sample Tests, and 0.51 (3rd place) for Interviews (structured) - IQ test is 2nd. Not a huge gap, and neither very impressive overall. I understand prioritizing the best, but it seems an immense amount of priority is placed on tests vs interviews. Both employer and candidate put a ton of collective work into work test sampling—creating, doing, and assessing.
2 - I appreciate the payment that comes with most tests. I am lucky enough to be a) fully employed and b) not care too much about work test payment, and care more about my time. But 7 hours.. I’m kind of like jeesh… If you have a full time job (me) or a family (me) or just a lot going on in your life (everyone), 7 hours is two free nights, or a whole weekend day. It just seems overkill as a screening method, or even after a single screening call which is mostly what I see.
3 - I’ve never experienced work tests outside the impact space, but I also know that my (corporate non-impact) org which does a great job recruiting capable folks also does not use them—instead a combination of personality tests (which I have yet to see in the impact space) and interviews. Not saying it wouldn’t improve with work tests being added in, but it seems like it can be effective without.
To me—emotionally—it just feels like some orgs are taking work test duration too far and dissuading capable folks from applying. Maybe it’s meant as a scarecrow for the uncommitted. It has a flavor to me of SAT-testing elitism a little bit (which I admit isn’t totally fair—these aren’t standardized tests you can hire a tutor for) where it’s a signal of seriousness. Could there be a university/academia-testing bias, given the impact space’s educated demo? Or do experienced hiring managers really see efficient value in beefing up work tests like this? Or is there some unique challenge going on in impact work that requires this kind of selection? Is this different when it’s an internal hiring team vs. consultant-driven? What about those of you that hire without work tests?
This may read as complaining, but I imagine there’s a good case for cutting way down on work test duration and getting equivalent performance results out of your selected hire for less effort on everyone’s part. Love to hear your thoughts!
Thanks for your thoughts and questions, Andrew! I’ve not addressed everything you touched on, but here are my quick takes:
I wouldn’t say an immense amount of priority is placed on work tests over interviews, at least at OP, though we do find them to be an extremely useful part of our decision-making process. It’s true that a lot of time and effort goes into creating, completing, and assessing them, but a lot of time and effort also goes into interviews, e.g. in preparation, conducting multiple rounds, taking notes, in team discussions, etc. Maybe what you’re getting at is that hiring processes are disproportionately front-loaded with WTs—which is fair!
I totally hear you on the lengthy work test bit—7 hours is a huge commitment, especially for people with full-time jobs or a family or simply a life to live (which as you say, includes everyone). I think there’s probably a point of diminishing returns with work test length, but I imagine it’s different for each depending on the signal sought: maybe one type of role doesn’t need a WT that’s longer than 2 hours, but some others are so nuanced that the point of diminishing returns doesn’t hit until 7-8 hours. This isn’t hard for me to believe, but to your point I think it’s probably right for orgs that administer WTs to always be asking, “Can we make this shorter while still capturing the signal we want to capture?” It’s a good push!
I definitely agree that a hiring process can be effective and successful without work tests. However, I think they make hiring even more successful, and the tradeoffs (e.g. the time it takes us to develop and assess them, the risk of putting off candidates who might be strong in the role) feel acceptable. Whether or not there’s an academic bias in impact orgs’ liking of WTs, I can say that hiring managers at OP, at least, find great value in the data points provided by longer WTs (otherwise, we’d retire them!).
Appreciate your response and insider view, Evan! Certainly some nuances to consider here, and I’ll keep your points in mind when I’m applying for these kinds of roles.
I also wonder whether we could do some kind of standardized test once a year on things that EA orgs uniquely care about, like reasoning transparency or understanding of EA, and then various EA orgs could use that for their hiring.
If requires some initial coordination & investment, but after that it could save both orgs and applicants quite some time and money.
Strongly upvoted, thanks!
I’ve heard this many times, and I feel like some orgs might indeed overdo it with work tests. I’d be curious how much more info recruiters get from 4-8h work test, compared to 1-2h + a (short) interview, and maybe allowing people to submit an existing work sample or so.
I’m glad to hear it resonates with you and others!
Right agreed—like hypothetically if you plotted a curve of [work test duration] and [employer/employee satisfaction ~6 months after the hire], where would you start to see that curve level off? I would bet it’d be a lot earlier than 7 hours (as long as hiring is still based on interviews etc)!
To your other comment about standardized tests, I think that’s interesting. I don’t know too much about where/when standardized tests are most effective when it comes to assessment in the working adult population. On the one hand, that would be pretty broad coordination with all the organizations, and there is such a broad skillset requirement dependent on roles. I think we’d know it’s valuable if hiring orgs didn’t do something in their hiring process, now that they had that assessment result for each candidate. But on the other hand, maybe there are some fundamentals like the ones you mention that could be a shorter path to screening. Another question for the recruiting folks!
I’ve noticed that candidate-review sites (e.g. Glassdoor) show a surprisingly high share of negative interview feedback for several EA orgs (GiveWell sits around ~40 % “negative” responses), which is higher than what you typically see for reputable private employers (Google, BCG, etc.). My own interviews at these Fortune 100 firms have been demanding but still felt transparent and fair, whereas many reviewers describe EA hiring as opaque:
Is the data misleading, or are EA orgs genuinely struggling to offer a good candidate experience?
If the latter, what are the main frictions (limited HR capacity, specific test exercises, risk averse calibration)?
Which parts of the process could be made more transparent (timelines, criteria, feedback) without compromising the rigor EA values?
Ultimately, how can we make sure EA organizations remain talent magnets rather than inadvertently deterring people who are otherwise keen on high-impact careers?
Curious to hear perspectives from recruiters and anyone who has tried to improve this within their org. Thank you for doing this!
Hi Saramago, thanks for the question and sorry that it got missed initially! This made me curious about how Open Phil compares on this metric to the companies you mentioned, and it turns out we’re actually pretty similar to Google and BCG (slightly fewer positive and negative responses, slightly more neutral responses). We also keep an internal candidate survey which shows a broadly similar picture. So I think we’re doing some things right, but I agree there are pain points as well:
Our main reasons for negative feedback are the length of our process and the lack of feedback. The former involves difficult tradeoffs against making sure we’re hiring the best candidate from each hiring round, but we have been placing higher weight on it in recent months and looking for ways to shorten the process e.g. by using one work test rather than two where feasible. The latter is difficult to solve at scale without huge investments of staff time, but we’re aiming to provide more generalised feedback that’s hopefully still actionable to candidates where we can.
We’ve also invested in setting out clearer timelines and communicating these with candidates from near the start of our processes, and have found that this often mitigates many of the negative impacts of longer round timelines.
Finally, I would love to hear if you or anyone else has been put off from applying to Open Phil by perceptions about what the hiring process will be like, either due to Glassdoor or otherwise – this kind of data is extremely valuable and really hard to get!
This is a really interesting question! (flagging that I wrote this comment hastily and didn’t edit much—lmk if it would be helpful to clarify anything.)
Bottom line: If you look at Glassdoor applicant reviews and sort by recency, you’ll note that in the last ~year and a half, GiveWell has only received 2-3 negative reviews, which is about 10% of the total reviews. I think that’s a departure from years prior, in which we received many more negative reviews.
I spent a lot of time thinking about Glassdoor shortly after I joined GiveWell (IIRC I was thinking about this in late fall 2023?). My diagnosis was that we were doing a pretty bad job of informing candidates about what to expect from our hiring processes, we were moving too slowly with candidates, and our communications were weak. Here are a few specific things that I think contributed to the improvement in our reviews:
More up-front communication about the requirements of our hiring processes (for example, see this Research Hiring FAQ, and the FAQs on our jobs page). We’ve also added more details about future steps to every stage of our hiring processes.
Clearly signaling throughout the hiring process that we don’t plan to provide evaluative feedback to candidates, and that candidates should not expect this.
Changing the tone/voice of our candidate communication. This is hard to describe clearly, but I think we’ve moved substantially away from language that felt cold/distant/corporate and toward language that feels personal/inviting/warm, without necessarily changing the factual content of the communication.
Moving faster with candidates. This was mostly accomplished by hiring dedicated recruiting staff. Before we had dedicated recruiting staff, we often (and fairly!) received the critique that our hiring processes moved very slowly. Now our hiring processes move quickly—it’s rare for us to take more than a week to get back to candidates at any stage, and we sometimes make same-day decisions on initial applications.
I also echo much of what @PhilZ said in his response to your question, especially: It’s very difficult to get information about the extent to which Glassdoor (or similar) reviews deter strong candidates from applying. This is painful; I wish we had better information.
Last thing—wanted to quickly note current Glassdoor data (which I think is somewhat different than what you describe):
Right now GiveWell has a 4.5 overall rating. Glassdoor notes this is higher than companies of a similar size and in the same industry, but we probably shouldn’t put too much stock in either the base or comparative information—the former is based on 9 reviews, and the latter is based on comparison to companies that probably have very different hiring processes than GiveWell.
The “interview ratings” tab shows 40% positive, 28% neutral, and 32% negative.
What % of roles are filled with applications vs other methods (what are the other methods?)
What are some reasons hires did not work out and how did that affect the hiring process?
Hey Richard :)
% of roles filled through applications: Can’t speak for all orgs, but at GiveWell a substantial majority of roles are filled through applications. We’ve previously made a small number of opportunistic hires, but not recently.
reasons hires didn’t work out: By policy, my org just doesn’t share detailed commentary on this sort of thing in any venue, even in most internal settings. But, I think the big-picture reasons for most staff departures at my org are fundamentally quite normal (growth opportunities, personal/family life demands, performance issues, etc.). When relevant, we use performance data to reassess our calibration on past hiring rounds and make changes for future rounds.
Thank you.
Related question: How often do you run a public open hiring round and end up hiring someone already on your radar, who would have been part of your closed hiring round as well?
Not saying this is always bad, the public hiring round might still have been worthwhile in expectation, I’m just curious how often these things happen. Probably various a lot between roles & orgs.
Rarely.* If we think we have a good shot of hiring someone through a closed hiring round, we typically wouldn’t open a public round. I think the only exception to this would be a situation where we’re inventing a new role that’s relatively unique to GiveWell. In cases like that, we might have one or more potential internal candidates, but we’ll likely feel uncalibrated on what strong candidates look like because we lack comparators for the role. So, we might still launch a public round so that we can obtain more comparators and avoid missing strong external talent.
*can’t speak for all orgs
Do any of you have heuristics for when to “give up” or “pivot” in a job search? Examples could be aiming lower / differently if no response after 10 applications.
Thankfully this is not something I have to worry about for a long time. But I think it’s useful to have some balance to the usual advice of “just keep trying; job searching takes a long time”. Sometimes a job really is unrealistic for a person’s current profile (let’s operationalize that as 1000 job searching hours would still only result in a 1% chance of getting a certain set of jobs).
hey geoffrey, here are a few drafty thoughts that boil down to “You should probably invest a bunch of time before giving up” and “It’s hard to get useful data from rejections”:
Like Dee, I spent months and hundreds of hours applying to ~80 jobs before I found my current role. If I were job hunting right now, I would probably invest a similar or greater amount of effort. My impression from many conversations in my personal life is that more people under-apply than over-apply. There’s almost certainly some amount of effort that’s too much, but I’d guess most people won’t hit it.
Tbc, I’m not making the claim that you should unreflectively apply to any job that you see—you shouldn’t do that! But if you’re doing a lot of reflection and generally think you’re pointed in the right direction, I think the marginal job application is positive EV. Dee’s four questions and resources above are a great start for thinking carefully about the general direction of your search!
I think you should be pretty careful about updating your beliefs about the relevance of any particular rejection to your job hunt because:
Rejections are statistically more likely than not. Rejections from even a high number of jobs don’t necessarily imply that your general job hunt is poorly designed. I don’t know how to put precise numbers on this, but if you have e.g. a 1% chance of getting any particular job, being rejected from 20+ shouldn’t be intellectually dismaying at all (although it’s of course very emotionally discouraging). And, a 1% chance is probably too high—for most jobs I manage, more than 100 applicants seem plausibly qualified at application review.
Some rejections happen because of communications/legibility issues, not because of real lack of fit. Here’s a personal anecdote: I once learned a year after the fact that I was rejected at the application review stage from one organization because my short answers showed insufficient evidence of alignment with effective altruism. That surprised me because at that time of my application I had been involved with EA for nearly a decade, but didn’t know I needed to signpost that on my application. Tbc, I’m not saying that the lesson here is “always say how much you love EA on your applications,” or “you should assume that organizations are wrong to reject you,” or “the organization was correct to evaluate candidates in that way”, just that: It’s relatively easy for a failure mode to happen where candidates and organizations lack shared understanding about (1) what qualities the org is searching for and (2) how candidates ought to display their possession of those qualities. Hiring teams spend a lot of time thinking about how to avoid that sort of failure mode, but it’s impossible to completely eliminate it.
Many rejections happen because of organization-specific idiosyncrasies, not because of lack of fit with a general type of work. For example, my org might reject someone from a research role because there’s a specific, weird professional trait that’s important in our specific work environment and we don’t think it’s easily trainable. But that doesn’t indicate that (1) the candidate isn’t good at research in general, (2) the candidate couldn’t do a different job at our organization, (3) the candidate shouldn’t pursue work that they consider impactful and motivating.
In most cases, you will not receive informative feedback with a rejection. Because of that it’s just really hard to know if and how you should update your general approach to your job hunt.
Thanks for asking, Geoffrey – I think this is a helpful and important question. My own personal heuristic after switching jobs as a mid-career professional ~2 years ago was something like: if I spend ~100h and get no signal or make any progress, I should either pivot or give up. Now, I think that number could be meaningfully lower or higher for different people and would depend on internal factors like a) time/capacity to search for a job, b) finances (if searching without a steady stream of income in place), and c) intrinsic motivation, and external factors like the “EA job market”.
Granted, when I first started, I broadly took Michael Aird’s advice to not think and just apply, but I burnt out halfway through and ended up volunteering at several orgs instead, along with strategizing the roles I applied to a bit more.
It took me 5 months, >20 applications, and ~100 hours of research, prep, interviews and tests to land the right role, or any role, which happened to be the highest impact for me. I did not apply for any role I wouldn’t be excited by, and assumed others would feel the same way, so competition was high. Throughout the job search, though, the key thing that kept the needle moving for me was that through rejections, I was making progress, and the most helpful bit was receiving rejections at later stages. The later in the process I received a rejection, the more information I received about my fit for the role and general performance, though granted, some of that signal was noisy and much of it was self-interpreted.
I think the ways one could tailor applying to roles better is through tiering their search by:
Seniority of the role
Organization (how impressive and aligned/relevant their work is to you/your experience)
This both helped shape my perspective on whether I was applying to the right org and the right level.
If, through this process, the answer to the below questions is a resounding no, I’d consider rethinking my approach, pivoting, or an upskilling phase:
Have I received any positive signals from processes I’ve been a part of?
Do I have a competitive advantage over any of the roles I want?
Would another 100-200 hours meaningfully shift the odds?
Are there any roles that seem to fit my skills (but I think I just didn’t perform well)?
I think this 80k podcast: Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work, is a treasure trove of helpful and varied advice for people generally thinking about their career. I also find it useful to read about founders’ incredibly difficult decisions to shut down their charity (e.g., this incredibly thorough post shutting down MHI). I hope this helps!
Haven’t read much here, but just flagging that the first sentences of my post were not merely “just apply” but rather:
This is indeed ideally complemented by heuristics about which specific things to apply to, and with some other career-capital-building moves like doing courses or bootcamps.
And I expect some people did further than ideal with “just apply” due to my post (e.g. reading the title alone), but that it was on net a useful nudge.
(What Dee writes above looks useful to me.)
This doesn’t directly answer your question, but building on Calum’s and Dee’s points—I think it might also be helpful to first clarify what approach you’re taking in your job search, since different strategies have very different success rates and timelines.
It might be helpful to think of job searching as existing on a spectrum—on one end, you have applying through job boards and official channels, and on the other end, you have less structured approaches like networking, volunteering and turning that into a full-time role, creating your own side projects, etc.
For the more structured application approach, I personally use a tiered approach that balances my long-term career vision (the one I spend 100s of hours discerning) with current personal constraints (needing a salary, visa sponsorship, supporting family). It may look like something like this, where I allocate a percentage of my job hunting time to specific roles under the following tiers:
Tier 1: Organizations I genuinely want to work for or roles I want to be in—these align with my 10-year career goals (70% of the time I budget for structured applications)
Tier 2: Roles that could be stepping stones to Tier 1 positions i.e., can help me build career capital for my dream role (20% of my time)
Tier 3: Positions that meet my immediate financial or other personal needs (10% of my time)
However, the actual number of roles I apply for varies significantly—I have a very specific career path in mind, so there aren’t many positions that fit Tier 1, especially when factoring in my personal constraints. This means I might apply to fewer Tier 1 roles in absolute numbers compared to Tier 2 or 3, but invest more time crafting each Tier 1 application.
This approach of focusing on time invested rather than sheer number of applications is useful because it takes into account the realities of the job market (e.g., how many jobs that fit Tier 1 are actually available right now), the actual amount of time you have for job hunting (which varies depending on whether you have full-time work, etc.), and other personal factors (like whether you’re prioritizing an impactful role right now instead of meeting immediate financial needs). I also spend about half my time exploring the less structured approaches to job searching—mixing both helped me land my current and previous roles. Worth noting that everyone’s situation is different—those with strong safety nets might focus more % of their time on Tier 1 roles, while others might need to prioritize Tier 2 or 3 initially.
A helpful estimate someone told me during my freshman year in college that I still use today is expecting around 1 response per 10 applications. This might even be optimistic given that there are likely 50-500 (sometimes even more) applicants per role and only 1 person will be hired, but it helps me set realistic expectations and stay motivated rather than getting discouraged. During my last job search, I remember applying to at least 50 jobs within 1 month.
I agree with Calum about being careful about updating your beliefs based on rejection data—many factors beyond your individual qualifications and fit for the role affect outcomes.
Hope this was helpful!
Quick question! What’s the best way to handle having long gaps on your resume?
Hi Joseph! My take:
Don’t worry too much about it for EAish orgs, as long as your CV is relevant enough to pass the earlier stages, you have a lot of opportunities to demonstrate your fit that goes beyond CV info
If you did something in the meanwhile that you can frame in a way that credibly shows something beneficial or interesting about yourself (e.g., international travel, self-study), I’d probably put it in
If you didn’t, just leave it out. After a couple years in the workforce, people’s stations tend to get too long for the ideal CV length for most roles anyway (ideally 1 page, 2 pages max) and you’ll likely end up leaving out whole irrelevant job stages anyway. For early stages, what’s usually most important is that there is (some) relevant experience in your CV, how much differs for each role and org.
In the later stages, I will probably look at your LinkedIn to see if I can find out what happened during a long gap and if there’s nothing in there I’ll ask about it in the interview. By that stage you’ll already have impressed through things like test tasks so it’s a smaller piece of info unlikely to strongly change my impression unless it’s relevant for the role
If it’s something that could be relevant for a job (such as burnout), what I am then ideally looking for is a sense of “the candidate has reflected on it, understood why it happened, and taken convincing measures to keep it from happening again”, plus hopefully the thing(s) that caused it aren’t things likely to happen in the role you’re applying for
Most of the above may apply a bit less in other EAish orgs, and definitely outside EAish ogs
All the best! :-)
I’d like to learn more about what Charity Entrepreneurship considers a strong or ideal candidate. What traits, experiences, or motivations make someone a good fit for your programs?
Hi Nnaemeka! The short answer is, there is no single ideal candidate; we usually end up with 10-15 quite different folks on the program. That said, there are perhaps ~10 common archetypes, such as “the disgruntled nonprofit worker”, “the medical professional unhappy with how little impact they’re having”, “the consultant who wants to radically switch careers to change the world” etc.
Perhaps more useful for you to develop a sense of your fit for yourself, I’d like to share a recording of a talk I gave on this question 2 years ago: youtube link to 20 minutes 16 seconds in. This both presents some misconceptions, then the top 5 traits, and has some questions for you to ask yourself to explore if this could be you for each trait. Quick overview:
Ambitiously altruistic
Results-focused
Start-up fit
Scientific mindset & good epistemics
Collaborative and ecosystem/community-oriented
In case of doubt I recommend to just apply! :-)
Furthermore, I recommend Probably Good’s nonprofit entrepreneurship career profile, and the adjacent for-profit entrepreneurship profile!
I’m interested in your perspective on how the hiring process for EA organisations differs from other organisations—and perhaps advice for what to expect and try to showcase from one’s background for people who are transitioning from something more mainstream.
I’ve noticed the initial format seems different from what I have been used to: for example, being asked how you would donate your money and why. My first instinct was to be taken aback—but I get the feeling this has more to do with values alignment?
How much weight do you put on having engaged with EA ideas?
What things do people coming from non-EA organisations consistently get wrong or underestimate about EA hiring?
Hey Clare, quick thoughts:
How do EA hiring processes differ from other organizations? I think the main characteristic of EA hiring that people typically point to is work trial usage—EA-ish hiring processes typically rely on those heavily! But, whether work trial usage differs from other organizations probably depends on the comparators—for example, it’s common for tech companies to also rely heavily on work trials, but it’s uncommon for nonprofits to do so. One other feature of EA-ish hiring processes that I hear people talk about frequently is values alignment, which I’ll very roughly define here as ‘a combination of personal values, attitudes, and habits of work/mind that the organization regards to be crucial to supporting its impact.’ Here, I’m not sure that EA-ish organizations care much more about values alignment than other organizations, but I do believe they often have stranger and harder-to-find values.
Initial format of applications: I don’t know precisely what job you’re referring to here, but that sounds like an interesting question! I think I agree with your intuition that it’s likely providing some indirect information on values alignment, but that’s probably not all—it’s probably also providing some signal on writing ability and how capably one structures one’s thoughts. Sometimes the main value of ‘unusual’ or ‘weird’ application questions is that they force candidates to generate fresh, original thoughts instead of relying on standard, pro forma language.
How much weight on engaging with EA ideas: This question just doesn’t have a universal answer; it will differ markedly by organization and by role within an organization. At GiveWell we have very successful team members with all levels of prior engagement with EA ideas, and the same is true for several other organizations in the EA space that I know well.
What do people get wrong: Hm, I think people probably consistently underestimate the value of being casual, direct, forthcoming, and plain in all aspects of their applications (and especially in their writing). And on work trials, I think people underestimate the value of including meta-commentary on their thinking processes, even if the commentary is rough!
Hello and thank you for making this space available.
From a recruiter’s point of view, what is your take on pitching high impact organizations directly? What, if anything, could make this approach work, and what mistakes do pitchers make? Any other tips on using this approach would be highly appreciated.
Hey hey, thanks for participating! Your questions:
General take: Pitching (along with all kinds of cold messages) is probably underrated, but I think it takes careful thought and hard work to get right.
Make it work by: Understanding your target very well and saying legible things about the value you can add.
Mistake: Being overconfident!
Low confidence tip (would be curious if others disagree): At bigger organizations, it might be more effective to pitch program/research staff instead of recruiting staff. The former group is more likely to have insight into poorly formed staffing needs that haven’t yet developed into full hiring rounds.
Additional loose thoughts:
I can’t speak for all organizations (seriously! this is something I’d expect to wildly vary across org type and size), but at my organization (GiveWell) it’s currently unlikely that any cold pitch for full-time employment or a contract would be successful. I receive lots of pitches, and I typically ignore or decline them. That’s because at our current size and level of specialization:
We think pretty carefully about headcount planning and post any full-time hiring needs quickly. If we don’t have a role posted on our job board, the most likely reasons for that role’s absence are (1) we just don’t have the hiring need or (2) we aren’t interested in accepting applications from the public.
Volunteers and contractors have very high management and training overhead relative to the value they produce.
External people are unlikely to have a good grasp of our highest-priority needs.
I can imagine a cold pitch that would be useful, but it would need to be related to a hiring need that met some of these criteria: (1) it’s pretty complex and hard to describe legibly to external folks, (2) it requires very high context on our work and we think it would be difficult to find the right person with an external search, (3) Neither of the previous conditions apply, but we just don’t have time to design a job application process at the moment.
The biggest mistake I think pitchers make is being very confident about their ability to provide value without really understanding the organization they’re pitching—that’s a big turnoff! Fwiw, this is a failure mode for all kinds of cold messages.
This message is very light on advice for making pitching work (sorry), but that’s only because I haven’t experienced many successful pitches. I hope these thoughts were useful, and good luck!
Hi, thank you so much for being here.
I care deeply about making an impact in the animal welfare space. I have a background as a vet (small animals), and I’m pivoting towards EA-aligned roles — ideally in research or think tank settings. I would also be open to other suggestions. I often find the roles advertised are quite senior (e.g. project manager or director), and I struggle to see how I can bridge the gap between my clinical experience and the kind of experience these roles seem to require.
Beyond the common advice around networking or browsing job boards, are there concrete ways to become competitive for these roles? For example, are there skills or kinds of experience that are particularly valued but often overlooked by applicants coming from adjacent sectors like clinical practice? Or are there entry-level roles or fellowships in the space that might not be widely advertised?
And are there mistakes you commonly see from applicants — where they have the right potential or values, but don’t frame their background in the right way?
Any input appreciated, thank you!
Hey Antonia—thanks for the thoughtful questions!
First, your vet experience is likely way more expansive than you think. I suspect you’re not fully accounting for some critical aspects of your work: you’ve been doing project management, people management, and administrative work this entire time, even if you haven’t been calling it that. Every treatment plan is essentially a complex project with multiple stakeholders (e.g. owner, specialists, staff), budget constraints, timeline pressures, and success metrics. I’m sure you’ve been analyzing data, communicating technical information to non-experts, managing resources, and supervising people. These are important skills that research orgs and think tanks need. Your challenge is drawing that clear, credible line between what you’ve actually been doing and what these job descriptions are asking for. Don’t make hiring managers do the translation work—spell it out for them.
At the same time, there genuinely aren’t really shortcuts to getting jobs you’re not demonstrably qualified for, especially at the senior level where organizations are understandably risk-averse. But you can (somewhat, and maybe) help bridge experience gaps by your alignment with the org’s mission and values. If you can show a deep, specific understanding of why their work matters (not just “I care about animals” but “I’ve seen how X policy gap affects animal welfare outcomes in ways that your Y initiative directly addresses”), hiring managers may become more confident that you’ll spin up quickly.
There aren’t secret entry-level roles floating around, but many orgs do closed recruitment rounds where they only invite people already on their radar. The way onto that radar isn’t mysterious—if you volunteer with target organizations, show up to EAGs, join relevant communities, and submit thoughtful applications even when you don’t get the role, your name is more likely to percolate and stick. The goal is becoming someone they think of when the right opportunity emerges.
As for proper framing, a common missed opportunity I’ve noticed is writing resumes that list responsibilities instead of highlighting impact on the organization’s mission, e.g. “Implemented protocols that reduced average treatment time by 15%” over “responsible for patient care”. I’d also recommend resisting the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach—craft something lean where every single line directly supports your case for a specific role. For me, at least, an exaggerated, 10-page resume inflates away credibility rather than establishes it.
Your clinical background is genuinely valuable here, you just need to translate it in ways that make the value obvious to people who’ve never worked in veterinary medicine. Animal Advocacy Careers will prove to be a very useful resource here!
thank you so much Evan!
Hi Antonia, I’m not an expert in the animal space, but my soft sense here is:
as Evan wrote, your prior exp is likely more relevant than you think and you should use your CV to explain how in the way Evan mentioned—titles are a bit less important than types of things you did (e.g., I imagine being a vet did involve a bunch of planning and juggling priorities and optimising processes).
The animal welfare space even more so than other spaces does thrive on connections and relationships—going to conferences and connecting e.g. via Hive can be really beneficial both to get information and hear about opportunities
Internships and volunteering are particularly common I’d say and super useful ways to move into the space and new types of roles. Given the effective animal advocacy space is so small, having a great reference from a known org doing a project for them or e.g. organising a meetup or mini-conference can open many doors and puts that recent experience on your CV
Personally, at AIM we get a lot of people with (human medicine) clinical backgrounds. To us, clinical backgrounds generally indicate 1. altruism/impact drive, 2. empathy, 3. ability to juggle and fix difficult, potentially high pressure situations, 4. general competency, from finishing the education and getting the job.
If you haven’t already, it can also be useful to spend a bit of time figuring out what types of roles are a really great fit for you. I’m mentioning this because a lot of the human medicine clinical background folks we get at AIM end up on average being better fits for smaller, more early stage orgs where they can be a generalist, things are pretty urgent, and they see the impact of their work more directly. A “project manager” role at a small org will end up being a very different role, and look for quite different traits and amounts of experience (spoiler: much less), than a “project manager” role in a 50+ people org.
All the best! :-)
thank you so much Judith!
I hope this is not too broad, but: Could you share aspects that put candidates higher on your priority list, and on the opposite end maybe red flags?
Some examples that come to my mind: Is being at a company for a very long time a negative or positive signal, or does it not even matter? Do a lot of certificates in the CV help, or are they irrelevant? Is a nice cover letter important to you? Maybe you have some anecdotes of unexpected things that completely changed your mind on a candidate?
I know this might be very individual and sometimes more of a “general gut feeling when seeing the whole picture” thing, but I thought there might be some helpful nuggets of wisdom!
Thanks for the question Christoph! I’ll start with my takes on the examples you listed and then pivot to some broader thoughts:
Being at one company for a long time: this really depends on the specifics. The main reasons I might see this as a negative signal are a) if I worry that the long tenure indicates that someone will find it difficult to translate their experience to a different working environment or b) that they haven’t been successful in their career and have been stuck in one role for a long time (if they haven’t switched roles as well as not switching companies). I think these can both be real concerns, but there are often mitigating factors too, and frequent job-hopping can also be a relevant concern. The question of ‘would staying or leaving be better for my career’ is really the thing to worry about IMO—if you’re making the decision on that basis, you’ll probably have a convincing story to tell.
CV certificates: it depends on the role! Usually a good job description will highlight skills or qualifications that are relevant to it, and certificates that demonstrate those can be helpful, especially in more technical roles. If there’s no obvious connection, they probably won’t be helpful (or harmful).
Cover letters: I would recommend being guided by the application form on this front. If it includes an option for a cover letter, I’d almost always recommend including one. If it doesn’t, I’d almost always recommend not including one. This is a personal preference, but I don’t enjoy reading unsolicited cover letters myself!
Speaking more generally, the key things that often put candidates higher on the priority list are the straightforward factors of e.g. do they seem to understand the role / organization and to be excited about it for genuine reasons, are their skills and experience a good fit for our requirements, do they communicate effectively, etc. If you’re demonstrating these things in a way that’s easy for a recruiter to understand even on a quick review, you’re likely doing just fine—I don’t think there are any special tricks here.
This is great! I’m pinning it alongside the other AMA :) Thanks for doing this!
What operations/project management soft/hard skills, experience and talents are most needed in your orgs/teams?
What is your opinion on which of these skills are trainable vs learned on the job?
Mid-Career Transition into High-Impact Roles from South Asia
I’m a mid-career professional with 13+ years in finance, investments, and energy infrastructure, currently based in South/Southeast Asia. I’m actively exploring a transition into high-impact work, particularly in AI governance and policy roles where I can make a meaningful difference.
I’ve been reading up and getting involved in some EA work and would really like to make a difference through the skills I’ve built so far.
My Key Questions
1. Geographic Reality Check How common is it for impact-focused organizations to actually hire remote candidates from Asia? I’m seeing many EA and other impact-focused roles listed as “remote” but wonder if there are unspoken preferences for US/Europe-based candidates due to time zones, legal/tax complications, or other practical factors. Should I be realistic about geographic constraints limiting my options?
2. Cross-Domain Transitions in Impact Work My expertise is in traditional finance, investments, and energy infrastructure, but I’m drawn to AI governance and policy work. How receptive are mission-driven organizations to professionals pivoting from adjacent but not directly relevant fields? Are there particular ways to frame transferable skills (regulatory analysis, stakeholder management, risk assessment) that resonate in AI governance contexts?
3. Fellowship vs. Direct-Entry Strategy Many opportunities I’m seeing are fellowships (policy fellowships, governance programs, etc.) rather than direct-hire positions. For someone with established professional experience, is it worth “starting over” in fellowship programs, or should I focus on roles that better leverage my existing seniority? What’s the typical career trajectory for fellowship participants?
4. Skill-Building Pathways Are there recognized bridge programs, courses, or project-based opportunities that help professionals transition into high-impact fields like AI governance? I’m particularly interested in understanding what technical knowledge vs. policy/regulatory background is most valued in these roles.
5. Application Prioritization Given the time investment required for quality applications, how would you recommend prioritizing between:
High-fit roles in familiar domains (impact investing, sustainable finance)
Exploratory fellowships in target cause areas (AI governance)
Hybrid opportunities that bridge my background with new impact areas
What I’m Looking For
Honest perspectives on geographic hiring realities
Insights from others who’ve made similar career transitions
Recommendations for specific skill-building or networking opportunities
Feedback on my approach or role selection strategy
I’m committed to contributing meaningfully to important causes and am willing to invest significant time in building relevant expertise—I just want to be strategic about the path forward.
Thanks for any guidance you can share!
What is the best approach to connecting with recruiters for 15 mins of gathering insight on application materials? I know many of you have a firm no feedback policy, but it feels redundant as a candidate to continue to submit my resume and application answers that don’t get traction.
As a determined candidate with 15 years of standout experiences working in and around innovation and emerging tech policy, and trying to move more firmly into AI safety and governance, I struggle with the lack of constructive engagement that continues to get me the same results.
For example, after participating in HIP’s IAP program and sitting through a presentation with an OP recruiter encouraging applications for funding, I did an extensive amount of due diligence and submitted an idea for the AI governance EOI, which was promptly rejected less than 12 hours later.
I would love any guidance on successful methods for collecting input and would be so grateful for some human-led direction on my AI governance vision.
Thanks,
Elana
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elanabanin/
Thanks for asking, Elana! I think your question likely has two parts: application feedback, and feedback on RFP’s; I’ll answer the former first: I completely understand that it can feel frustrating and repetitive to submit similar materials without receiving feedback. However, I think it’s still worthwhile to apply to different roles and processes, especially if each of these has distinct requirements and application questions, and your answers may evolve meaningfully across them.
To your latter point: In practice, our hiring process is quite separate from Open Phil’s grantmaking and RFP processes, so we wouldn’t typically be involved in the review of EOIs or project ideas like the one you submitted.
That said, I appreciate your interest in finding ways to engage more constructively. If you’re looking to get feedback on your resume or EOI materials, a few potential options might include:
Connecting with others from programs like GovAI, TASP, IAPS etc. who are further along in the AI governance space. My assumption is they’d be happy to share what’s worked for them.
Exploring advising options from orgs like 80,000 Hours or Probably Good. You might want to check their AMA as well!
Participating in smaller group career events or office hours that sometimes happen around EA conferences or city groups: these tend to offer more opportunity for back-and-forth than more formal channels.
I know that doesn’t solve the broader challenge of getting direct feedback, but I hope it gives you a few leads that feel a bit more human and responsive.
Hi all!
I’m currently transitioning out of a senior marketing and communications role in education consulting and exploring roles at high-impact orgs, especially in global health and development.
My background is in nonprofit marketing strategy, multi-channel campaigns, and building donor engagement systems. I’ve also led cross-functional comms teams and worked on messaging and branding across partner networks. I’m currently pursuing an MBA in Global Sustainable Development and have a strong interest in applying these skills in a more direct-impact context.
Questions for you:
Are there types of roles (especially in smaller or growing orgs) where a marketing/strategy skill set is particularly in demand?
What would help someone with my background stand out when applying to EA-aligned orgs, especially if I haven’t worked at one yet?
Are there specific job boards or networks you’d recommend beyond HIP, ProbablyGood, 80K, and EA for Christians?
I’m open to remote or hybrid work, and also exploring what it might look like to found a high-impact org. Thanks so much for your time!
Not a recruiter from this ama but just wanted to add:
I’ve seen a number of marketing roles advertised in the past year across field building and effective giving orgs in particular, but also (IIRC) some more direct work AI safety orgs.
There’s also been calls for e.g. and AI Safety focused marketing agency and things like that.
Probably stemming from two things:
recent influx in new effective giving orgs, which are now making their first hires (naturally, marketing + reaching new counterfactual audience is a top priority)
in general other orgs in the EA space are seeing the value of marketing as they are going through growth phases
the most developed / large marketing team in the meta or field bulding space is 80K’s I believe. Most other meta orgs are very small
I think animal welfare orgs also have more developed ones, while global health orgs don’t as much since they do most of their fundraising from foundations
You might want to check out the work Good Impressions do—and this forum post they wrote: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8M8jGsCLcTzTnYtsw/opportunities-to-improve-ea-communications
Importantly if you can demonstrate comfort with doing 0 to 1 marketing (as that’s where most orgs are at) - that would help.
Hey Micah! Thanks for the helpful context. I’ll address your questions below in the order you’ve posed them:
It’s hard to say if these roles are in demand relative to other roles you’ll commonly find on EA job boards, but operations roles of various stripes certainly draw on many of the skills you’ll have developed working in marketing and communications: clear writing, cross-functional coordination, systems and process design, and data analysis, to name but a few. Operations staff at smaller and growing orgs in the EA space tend to wear many hats, so being openminded and attentive to actual job descriptions even if the job titles don’t immediately grab your eye is helpful (e.g. an Operations Coordinator at a young org could very well be a key contributor to that org’s communications function). I’ll further add that, from my experience, strong writing skills seems more like a common denominator than a differentiator in the EA ecosystem, and so it’s relatively tough to find jobs for which that’s your comparative advantage. Superb project and stakeholder management skills are in shorter supply.
From my perspective, the value of knowing a job applicant comes from an EA org is being able to more or less trust that that person cares about actually high-impact work. But you can get on fine without this heuristic benefit. Does your resume reflect your own tangible contributions to the orgs you’ve worked at, rather than generalized fluff? When filling out job applications, do you provide examples of how you improved processes that needed improving? Have you demonstrated initiative to solve problems that officially fell outside your remit, but mattered for your organization’s mission? Consider these questions (and others like them) when polishing your application materials. Prove you care about impact—and that you have the track record to deliver more of it—and you’ll more likely stand out. (By the way, I’ve deliberately skipped over some of the more obvious answers to your question that nonetheless remain true, e.g. clear and error-free writing, thoughtful application answers, etc.)
I’m going to let my colleague, Dee Kathuria, speak to your third question—she drafted a response at the same time I did, and hers is better than mine 😀
Hi Micah, fellow (ex) marketer here! I largely agree with what Evan says, and I made a similar switch a few years ago. The resources you mentioned are great ones, some others that really helped me were:
Successif’s program (specifically for careers in AI Safety)
Joining HIP’s Talent Directory (like you mentioned + their Accelerator program)
Intro to EA course
Facebook EA jobs group
Attending EA conferences whenever possible
Generally, lots of 1:1 conversations (I think these were disproportionately more helpful than I first predicted)
Local/smaller groups—e.g., city groups, EA for Christians, etc., may also be helpful for discussions and connections.
Hi Dee,
It’s great to hear from a fellow (ex) marketer!
I really appreciate the additional resource suggestions, especially HIP’s accelerator program and the reminder about 1:1s. I’ve found these first few informal conversations valuable already and will keep seeking out more. Also, your career path gives me hope that a pivot into higher-impact work from a comms background is not only possible but can really add value.
Thanks again for the encouragement and practical tips. Hope we can stay in touch!
Best,
Micah
Hi @evandermeer!
Thank you for the detailed response.
Your point about ops roles drawing on transferable skills from marketing and communications really helped reframe how I’m approaching certain job titles. I’ll definitely look more closely at roles that may not explicitly mention comms but involve cross-functional work and systems design. Also really appreciated your comment on writing being a baseline rather than a standout. That’s a helpful nudge to emphasize project ownership, process improvement, and initiative more clearly in my resume and applications.
This was really helpful!
Thanks again,
Micah
If you could set the dial on how interested you wanted candidates to be in taking a position before applying, do you have any thoughts on where you would set it? For example, would you generally hope that candidates who would put their probability of taking the job if offered at 25 percent apply?
If that seems too abstract, could you generally comment on how much resources you put into evaluating the marginal candidate in a hiring round?
Relatedly, how often do your top candidates decline offers and how much does that throw off your process?
Great question, justsaying! I’ll answer Q1 as concretely as I can and skip Q2, as I don’t think your question is too abstract. I don’t think there’s an expectation for candidates to have a high probability of accepting a role at early stages, above a simple yes to basic questions like “is this role interesting? Would I like working at OP? Do I think I can have an impact there?”
One of the reasons we build in work tests, interviews and an admittedly intensive process around hiring is for candidates to have sufficient context and understanding of the role, team, and org they’d be joining, so I’d be equally happy with someone applying with a <10% chance of accepting but then updating that throughout the process, as I would with someone applying with a >90% probability of accepting off the bat. Of course, there’s a caveat that it’s not ideal to have all applicants come in with an extremely low probability of accepting a role, but I’d also be okay with that if they’re open to changing their mind if they are, in fact, a good fit!
At later stages, I’d hope they’re at least 50% likely to accept, and that we haven’t wasted their time.
I don’t have precise figures on declined offers to hand; it’s relatively uncommon but certainly does happen! We encourage candidates to be transparent with us about how excited they are about the role, what they would say if we made them an offer, etc. Hiring is time-consuming and important, and it definitely helps us to know in advance whether someone is unlikely to accept. The more surprising it is if/when a candidate declines our offer, the more likely it is to cause delays to our process.
Hi,
I am a doctoral candidate in the final stages of my studies (finalising my thesis for print and submission at this point). I am looking for advise or maybe a direction on where should I begin from if I wish to pursue a postdoc especially from universities abroad, as my education from my undergrad and doctoral studies has been based in India.
In the last few months I have received rejections from every position/place I applied for. I believe that it is the lack of publications that is putting me behind in all these applications, but I am not sure. I do have some publications, but they are very interdisciplinary in nature, like one or two focus purely on a region based peace or conflict issue, while one or two are based on AI and its use in international law within context of my thesis. I would be happy to share my CV, if that is where the problem persists. So I would like to ask if any of you who were at the final stage of doctoral work, how did you navigate the process of choosing a long term career/short term opportunity to enhance skillset.
Also, another issue that I continually face, and I think is the biggest hurdle when applying abroad is recommendation letter for each and every application. In India the norm is that we as students are supposed to write them, the professor signs it on his letterhead and recommends us. Moreover, I am very hesitant to ask for a reference because of the thought of writing it on my own and then ending up getting rejected, as it is the major thing apart from the CV/SOP that makes or breaks the application. Writing the SOP is already a humongous task, when justifying how one is the best candidate and if we have to recommend ourselves too then I don’t know if one should even apply. How do I navigate this issue, I would like to know whether others write their own recommendation letter too in other places and get it signed by their professors?
Thanks for asking, Sen, and congratulations on making it to the last leg of your PhD! As someone who hasn’t gone the academic route, I’m probably not the best person to advise on postdoc applications or academic career paths, especially when it comes to things like publishing expectations or letters of recommendation. I do think connecting with a career adviser or mentor in academia could be really helpful (I see you’ve asked this in the AMA with career advisors, so you’re ahead of me here).
You might also have better luck posting in academic-focused spaces (like the Effective Thesis network, perhaps), where folks have been through similar challenges and could offer more specific advice.
Thank you so much for the advice! I will surely look into the Effective Thesis network. :)
Although on the flip side, what do you think is the best skill/aspect of a candidate that stands out to recruiters when recruiting people purely from academia within industry positions?
(Not answering for any organization in particular, this is non-extensive and would depend heavily on the role) From my experience, some qualities may stand out when evaluating candidates coming from academia for roles in applied research:
Relevance of work/field of research: Have they worked on problems that are directly relevant to the role? Even if the topic isn’t a perfect match, the underlying skills, e.g. such as data analysis, modeling, literature synthesis, etc., can often transfer well.
Intellectual humility: I think this is underrated, but also difficult to “list” in your CV, for example. Either way, I think it’s generally a good trait to have when looking for academics (and others).
Translating complexity: it’s impressive when someone from academia can explain their research and general surrounding topics clearly, transparently, and accessibly across audiences (to both experts and non-experts). This feels like a good proxy for sensible reasoning and epistemic humility. While peer-reviewed publications help, so does public writing like a blog, Substack, or thoughtful Twitter/X threads.
Broad/cross-domain experience: significantly role-dependent, but in positions that require generalist thinking or frequent context switching, someone who can operate across different domains stands out. This could look like interdisciplinary collaborations, switching topics or methods over time, or participating in cross-functional projects.
Hi! I note that you’ve said ‘it’s unlikely that we’ll respond to specific requests for feedback on job application materials’ - but I nevertheless want to say that that is exactly what would be most useful to myself and potentially others right now. It fits squarely within ‘questions about applying for jobs’.
I understand if you don’t want to give live feedback publicly, but could folks perhaps mention here if they’d like some feedback, and then you DM those people?
Hey Siobhan, totally makes sense that you feel individualized feedback would be the most useful thing for you. I’m sorry that we’re unlikely to provide that as part of this AMA! Fwiw, my personal reasoning for not responding to requests for feedback is:
It’s difficult to give useful, quick, and legible feedback on application materials / resumes to people I don’t know well. I usually need lots of interpersonal context and careful thought to do that.
I have limited free time to devote to the AMA, and I’d like to focus my time on answering other questions that I expect to be useful to both the question-asker and other readers.
Giving pre-application feedback to people who might apply to an organization where I work can create (and has created, in the past) awkward, unpleasant interpersonal/social dynamics. I’m not saying that would happen in your or any other particular case, just that it’s a type of risk that exists and that I’d prefer not to incur.
In general, I think it’s ~always ok to cold message individual people and ask for their advice. In fact, I’d encourage you to do that: cold messages are probably under-sent, and they’ve been very useful for my career journey. But, I don’t want to offer a blanket guarantee that I or others will respond to all requests for individualized feedback (regardless of whether the requests are made in private or public) because in some cases people will wish to decline the requests for valid personal reasons.
Notwithstanding the above, all of us are doing this AMA because we want to be helpful—so we really hope you’ll ask any other questions that would be useful!
Hi Calum, yes I imagined the reasons were in that direction.
I am a fully qualified science teacher, took a break to do a PhD in Maths, which will be finishing in the next year or two, then will be looking to get into a longer term career. I have a lot of experience in the education sector, but am very interested in new challenges, broadening my horizon and even looking at the EA sector itself, because I find it all very philosophically interesting too.
I want to maximise my impact and don’t have much interest in AI (I find it very interesting in general, unrelated to the EA ‘interest’).
I enjoy thinking long term, difficult technical challenges, working with people, but unsure of what directions to pursue and what actions to start taking now. I want to start thinking more about building towards an impact focused career, as opposed to just having a particular job, but I’m not really sure what to do or build to start moving in that direction. Any advice appreciated and follow up questions welcome!
Hi there, ElectricSheep! This is a good question—thanks for asking.
To my mind, your question boils down to the following: “How can folks who want to maximize their impact build towards an intentional, impact-focused career?”
I realize that phrasing strips away some of the details you shared about your own personal situation (e.g. that you’re completing a PhD in Maths, that you’re not interested in AI, etc.), but my advice is the same: leverage career guides (e.g. 80,000 Hours and Probably Good), be attentive to aligned job boards (again 80,000 Hours and Probably Good), build career capital (e.g. by volunteering with related orgs, getting involved with local or virtual EA groups), and talk to people (e.g. through participating in AMAs!).
I’ll end there, since I know you posted this on the Career Advisors AMA and think this question is a good fit for that conversation.
Brilliant, thank you for the reply, I appreciate it!