Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Michelle! I find your framing of the process of applying taking its toll on me particularly useful.
You haven’t said anything about other options you’re considering. I wonder if there are other career paths that actually might be pretty appealing to you? For example if you were working in the civil service you’d still be an important part of the political process.
Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m well-suited to the hierarchical, rigid culture of government. My parents and several of my close friends agree, and I was a bit underwhelmed when I spent a day shadowing a civil servant working in policy. Government is obviously a huge organisation, though. So I’m careful not to tar all policy roles in the civil service with the same brush.
Ultimately I care about working through political barriers to achieve policy change. MPs believe that they are not constrained by quality evidence in support of or in opposition to a policy. Rather, the bottlenecks (p.11) are that they lack the time to sift through the evidence, or the evidence contradicts the party line or their own ideology. Dislodging these bottlenecks could unlock so much value, and this problem seems to be a good fit for my strengths, if not my temperament.
Until now, I’ve been excelling in a marketing role in the private sector. So I need to consider whether I should push again on the civil service, or more unconventional roles that a) could make progress on the above or other means of improving government, b) make use of my professional experience, and c) are more suited to me (‘do-er’ personality, strong communication skills, do well in flat hierarchies and with uncertain projects). For several years now, I’ve also had a strong interest in starting a business, but (to me at least) this seems small fry compared to achieving policy change, improving how policy is made, or improving how government budgets are spent, as 80k has previously argued.
...it would be really useful for you to know if you should actually take the lack of offers as evidence that it isn’t as good a match for your skills as you thought, or if there’s simply one particular area you need to work on, or just that you were unlucky.
Thank you for the suggestion—I will definitely push for this more.
Thanks, Ben. I’ll be taking your suggestions on board! A small note:
I think this is highly likely. Several Cabinet Ministers and Shadow Cabinet Ministers were told at a young age that they were either not a good fit for their party or would never achieve ministerial office, or struggled to get their foot in the door.
Despite this, they persisted, and I would love EAs to embrace this attitude more. Currently it seems that people are shutting themselves off from long-term paths too early because they’re not seeing near-term success or think they won’t be among the best of the best at something they really care about.