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)?
Haven’t read much here, but just flagging that the first sentences of my post were not merely “just apply” but rather:
Don’t spend too long thinking about the pros and cons of applying to an opportunity (e.g., a job, grant, degree program, or internship). Assuming the initial application wouldn’t take you long, if it seems worth thinking hard about, you should probably just apply instead.” [emphasis changed]
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.
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.)