I’m interested in your perspective on how the hiring process for EA organisations differs from other organisations—and perhaps advice for what to expect and try to showcase from one’s background for people who are transitioning from something more mainstream.
I’ve noticed the initial format seems different from what I have been used to: for example, being asked how you would donate your money and why. My first instinct was to be taken aback—but I get the feeling this has more to do with values alignment?
How much weight do you put on having engaged with EA ideas?
What things do people coming from non-EA organisations consistently get wrong or underestimate about EA hiring?
Hey Ben! I was really excited to see this post, being a part of the African diaspora myself!
Some quick thoughts:
- It seems like you are thinking about targeting the African diaspora, but with the expectation that people will want to move back to Africa to take up these roles. I’m not sure that is a fair assumption: sometimes people move away to pursue opportunities, or to send money back home to family, and their goals may not line up with moving back anytime soon. But the same people may still want to give back. So potentially looking at bringing together opportunities to do work in Africa but that can be done from outside Africa could be a more useful angle for the diaspora. Some of these opportunities already crop up on eg the Probably Good and 80,000 Hours jobs boards, but this could be expanded with greater knowledge of the African landscape.
- It seems to me that there is definitely room for advice that is more focused towards an African context. 80,000 Hours suggests that teaching or being a doctor is not particularly high impact—but in a context where there are high rates of illiteracy and not enough rural doctors, my expectation is that this advice should change. I would say this is for people based in Africa itself, rather than the diaspora.
- I think there’s a good opportunity to have an Africa-focused platform that could focus on both diaspora and in-Africa opportunities (see also the comment by abubakar below), and potentially to create a network of people, eg Slack, discussion groups, etc, to help to build links between people with this shared interest.
- I’m not sure how accurate it is that people only want to give back to their own country. I think that could be worth testing out with a survey or pilot. It might be that there’s a stronger motivation for people’s own country, my impression is (from only a handful of data points in my own network!) that it’s more of a drive to help the African continent, that comes from knowing something of the context.