Giving scalable feedback to job applicants (BC #16)

Crossposted on Substack.

A while ago, I was running a hiring round for a role in AI safety fieldbuilding and sent the following rejection email to candidates we didn’t move forward with. At that stage of the process, I wasn’t able to provide individualized feedback, but I still wanted to offer some general orientation points to applicants.

Several candidates told me they appreciated the email, so I thought it might be useful to share it as an example of a relatively low-cost way to provide feedback to a large number of people who are filtered out early in hiring rounds.

The email:

Hey there,

I hope you are doing well. I’m writing this email as you have recently applied for the Director role at ENAIS.

I regret to inform you that we have decided not to move forward with your application at this time. 

While we cannot provide individualised feedback at this stage, I wanted to share some general observations that can help you understand the decision.

Our strongest candidates tended to have:

• A track record specifically in AI safety fieldbuilding with a focus on reducing catastrophic risk.
• A demonstrated understanding of catastrophic risks and how fieldbuilding efforts can address them.
• A focus on fieldbuilding or community-building interventions, such as organising events or research programs.
• Current residence in, or willingness to relocate to, Europe or the UK.
• Having attended several EAG conferences. (While this is not ideal for the broader field, we believe that currently they are the best place to network in AI Safety).
• Having taken courses from organisations such as BlueDot Impact, Atlas or The Centre for AI Safety.

Reasons we didn’t proceed with some applicants:

• Some candidates had a really impressive track record (more so than mine!), but didn’t have prior experience in AIS fieldbuilding.
• We had candidates with existing track records in fieldbuilding, but with otherwise limited work experience (less than ~3 years).
• Some candidates indicated an interest in working in what is commonly referred to as responsible AI or AI ethics, rather than on catastrophic risk reduction. This does not mean that we don’t think such areas are not important, but these areas are outside of the scope of this specific role.
• We judged that some candidates likely do not have enough context on AI Safety for the role. We also thought that such candidates have a limited network in the field of catastrophic risk reduction.

Please note that these are general trends we observed; they are not meant to imply that applicants lacked these entirely or have checked all the boxes.

For reference, we received over X applications for the role, which made it a particularly competitive hiring round. We are only moving forward with a small number of candidates.

Please don’t take this email as evidence that you wouldn’t be a good fit for similar roles. If you feel down upon reading this, we recommend reading these resources [1, 2, 3].

Additionally, I would like to share with you these 5 articles that I believe can really help find work in the field.

Thank you for being interested in working with us, and for the effort that you have put into your application. We wish you good luck in your job search.

Gergő