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!
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!