Iāve 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 % ānegativeā 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 weāre 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 weāre 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 weāre 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 weāre aiming to provide more generalised feedback thatās hopefully still actionable to candidates where we can.
Weāve 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 ā 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 didnāt edit muchālmk if it would be helpful to clarify anything.)
Bottom line: If you look at Glassdoor applicant reviews and sort by recency, youāll 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 thatās 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). Weāve also added more details about future steps to every stage of our hiring processes.
Clearly signaling throughout the hiring process that we donāt plan to provide evaluative feedback to candidates, and that candidates should not expect this.
Changing the tone/āvoice of our candidate communication. This is hard to describe clearly, but I think weāve moved substantially away from language that felt cold/ādistant/ācorporate and toward language that feels personal/āinviting/āwarm, 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 quicklyāitās 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: Itās 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 thingāwanted 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 shouldnāt put too much stock in either the base or comparative informationāthe 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 āinterview ratingsā tab shows 40% positive, 28% neutral, and 32% negative.
Iāve 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 % ānegativeā 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 weāre 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 weāre 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 weāre 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 weāre aiming to provide more generalised feedback thatās hopefully still actionable to candidates where we can.
Weāve 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 ā 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 didnāt edit muchālmk if it would be helpful to clarify anything.)
Bottom line: If you look at Glassdoor applicant reviews and sort by recency, youāll 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 thatās 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). Weāve also added more details about future steps to every stage of our hiring processes.
Clearly signaling throughout the hiring process that we donāt plan to provide evaluative feedback to candidates, and that candidates should not expect this.
Changing the tone/āvoice of our candidate communication. This is hard to describe clearly, but I think weāve moved substantially away from language that felt cold/ādistant/ācorporate and toward language that feels personal/āinviting/āwarm, 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 quicklyāitās 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: Itās 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 thingāwanted 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 shouldnāt put too much stock in either the base or comparative informationāthe 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 āinterview ratingsā tab shows 40% positive, 28% neutral, and 32% negative.