Fantastic post, I would love to see 80k do this for every cause area they recommend. I often found myself recommending similar personal-fit tests for policy work which typically boiled down to variants of:
Read the legislation relevant to your field of interest, then come back and tell me what you think.
Follow a parliamentary plenary debate and see if you can stay awake, analyze the political positions of people speaking in relation to their party-lines.
The people do the cheap tests most often come back with thoughtful and nuanced takes, which they can later write up and share as a longer test of fit—What comes out is also great signal for potential EA employers that you’re informed on the topic and conscientious)
Strong +1 to the idea of following debates or meetings and writing up notes—as a benefit, this seems like a nearly unlimited source of projects and one that is substantively valuable as well.
Fantastic post, I would love to see 80k do this for every cause area they recommend. I often found myself recommending similar personal-fit tests for policy work which typically boiled down to variants of:
Read the legislation relevant to your field of interest, then come back and tell me what you think.
Follow a parliamentary plenary debate and see if you can stay awake, analyze the political positions of people speaking in relation to their party-lines.
The people do the cheap tests most often come back with thoughtful and nuanced takes, which they can later write up and share as a longer test of fit—What comes out is also great signal for potential EA employers that you’re informed on the topic and conscientious)
Strong +1 to the idea of following debates or meetings and writing up notes—as a benefit, this seems like a nearly unlimited source of projects and one that is substantively valuable as well.
This was pretty much my goal with this! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.