I'm Dom Jackman. I founded Escape the City in 2010 to help people leave corporate jobs and find work that matters. 16 years later, 500k+ professionals have used the platform - mostly people 5-15 years into careers at places like McKinsey, Deloitte, Google, the big banks - who feel a growing gap between what they do all day and what they actually care about.
I'm not from the EA community. I'm writing this because I think there's a real overlap between the people I work with and what the EA talent ecosystem actually needs. I want to test that before investing serious time in it.
Reading through talent discussions on this forum, there's a consistent theme: the pipeline is strongest for early-career people. 80,000 Hours does great work for students and recent grads. Probably Good provides broad guidance. BlueDot, MATS, Talos build skills for specific cause areas.
But mid-career professionals with real commercial experience keep coming up as underserved. The "Gaps and opportunities in the EA talent & recruiting landscape" post nails it: these people "don't have 'EA capital,' may be poorly networked and might feel alienated by current messaging." The post calls for "custom entry points" for this group.
I know these people. They're my entire audience.
Escape's users aren't students figuring out what to do. They're programme managers, product leads, strategy consultants, ops directors - people with 8-15 years of running teams, managing budgets, shipping things. A lot of them are actively looking at climate, global health, AI policy, effective nonprofits.
But they end up in B-Corps and social enterprises because that's what they can find. They don't know AI governance orgs need people with policy experience. They don't know biosecurity labs need programme managers. They don't know GiveWell-recommended charities need experienced operators. Nothing connects their skills to the roles where they'd actually have the most impact.
An AI-powered matching tool that sits between this audience and high-impact roles. Not career advice (80K Hours and Probably Good do that). Not 1:1 coaching (Successif and High Impact Professionals cover that). Infrastructure:
The differentiator isn't the tech. It's the audience. These 500k people have already self-selected by signing up to a platform about career change toward meaningful work. We don't need to find them. They're already there.
Is this actually neglected? I know about 80K, Probably Good, HIP, Successif, and the cause-specific programmes. Is someone already doing AI-powered matching at scale for mid-career people moving into high-impact roles? If so I'd rather help them than duplicate.
Would EA orgs actually hire through this? Does an AI governance think tank or a GiveWell charity want a tool that surfaces experienced corporate professionals? I have no signal on this.
Broad or narrow? My instinct is to cover the full range of cause areas - global health, AI safety, climate, animal welfare, biosecurity - rather than picking one. But that risks being a mile wide and an inch deep.
What makes this credible? I'm an outsider to EA. I've spent 16 years on meaningful careers but not within the EA framework. I take the ideas seriously - cause prioritisation, neglectedness, tractability - and I think they're largely right. But I don't want to build something that looks like EA language slapped onto a generic careers platform. What would make this genuinely useful?
Not pitching anything here. Looking for honest signal on whether this is worth building, and how to do it properly. If you work at an EA-aligned org and have views on mid-career hiring, or you've made this transition yourself, I'd really like to hear from you.
Hey! I'm a co-director at EA Netherlands. According to various indicators, we're the fourth largest national EA community in the world, we target mid-career professionals, and I think what you're proposing is very interesting! But I'm not sure I understand - why build a new tool? Why not just build in some EA thinking into your existing service? Similar to what Charity Navigator has done.
Have you already spoken with Nina at HIP? Maybe check out the School for Moral Ambition as well.
Thanks James. Nice to hear resonated. Yes it doesn't necessarily need to be a new standalone tool but thought it could be useful as a standalone tool because we have conflicts of interests in terms of adding more unpaid job listings to our platform as there is a friction between how we keep the lights on (paid job listings) and getting more of the right jobs in front of the right people.
No haven't reached out to Nina at HIP yet but i will certainly do so. Thank you for that tip. Will also check out School for Moral Ambition.
Thanks so much
Just to point out the obvious: encouraging some of these professionals to think more about earning to give can also be very valuable.
Thanks for writing this, Dom. I constantly hear that mid to senior career professionals are a bottleneck for the community. As far as I know, 80k does some AI powered job-matchmaking, but it would be really good if you could also do this, or have your group share their information with 80k, such as by filling out this census. (Maybe check with them first about what is the best way to get these people on their radar, though.)
I also wanted to offer a word of caution. For most roles, connecting a competent professional to a job listing won't be sufficient. I have written on the importance of what I call "context" here. Your people will need to upskill on EA causes and network at EAGs in order to qualitfy for these roles. Orgs are not despeate for experienced professionals, they are desperate for high-context experienced professionals (especially in leadership roles).
I would also recommend sending them to take peer-led, high-absorption courses, such as CEA's virtual program, Bluedot's courses, AIS Collab's Atlas fellowship, or Scaling Altruism's career planning program. (I asked the last to to send you their EOIs). These are a good entry step that allows people to start building context.
There are many EA groups that your members could turn to in order to connect with the local community.
Hi Dom! I run the Career Services team at 80,000 hours. We're also in the early stages of trying to build a product in this space! I feel very excited about the vision of scalably helping users find their comparative advantage in the impactful job landscape.
That said, when we've been working on these early prototypes, we've realised that there are a bunch of different visions for how to use AI to achieve this and we don't have capacity to really try every option. So I'd love to see competition in the space to increase the chance that one of us finds a great product. You can see some of our beta-versions here and here. We also all have different audiences, so I can imagine that we might each end up with different products that are tailored to our own audience.
I don't have any insight, but what you are proposing looks good to test out, perhaps starting small and validating the hypothesis.
Thanks for sharing this, Dom! We're currently working on something relevant (AI-assisted headhunting at scale for high-impact roles across cause areas) and would love to collaborate. Sending you a message now.
Also, an open offer to others: If you also have a relevant audience (of professionals interested in high-impact roles) and want us to add them to our headhunting dataset, please get in touch!
I second this - I think that whether it is in impactful circles or not, everyone has frustrations with the way recruitment is done nowadays.
See this post from 2022 which in my view summarises all the main complaints: siloed processes, no ability to build a holistic picture of each applicant over time and share insights from potential recruiters / career advisers on how each individual could best serve the movement, stale talent databases leading nowhere, and most high absorption opportunities being poorly integrated into the recruitment process + generally excluding lots of useful demographics / skillsets (mid career professionals, Humanities background people, etc.)
However, I see a huge potential for a centralised, pooled recruitment system amongst an ecosystem of EA orgs, emulating what we already see in other context where a group of organisation seeks to recruit within a highly qualified group of people (UK civil service, Oxbridge admissions, Ambitious Impact Charity Entrepreneurship Incubator etc.)
I've been drafting a post about my ideas for reforming the talent acquisition system. I'm currently seeking feedback on it from a small group of people before posting (I'm shy like that!) but watch this space as it should come out quite soon.
This strongly resonates. There’s a real gap for mid-career professionals who want to do more good but can’t clearly see how their existing skills translate into high-impact roles. While 80,000 Hours and others offer great guidance, practical role-level matching for experienced operators still feels underserved. An infrastructure tool that clearly connects real-world experience to meaningful impact could be genuinely valuable. This article also highlights why experienced talent is often a bottleneck
As a mid career professional, I strongly agree this segment is underserved
I have been trying to move into more impact focused work for the past year and a half, without success. Not because I lack experience or motivation, but because there is a real disconnect between people like us and the roles that claim to need experienced operators.
The point about mid career professionals lacking “EA capital” resonates. We are not embedded in the networks, we do not always speak the language fluently, and we are often treated like early career switchers rather than people who have led teams, managed huge budgets and delivered complex programmes.
I have also experienced personally how misunderstood this group can be. In a 1:1 consultation, I was told that if I really wanted a nonprofit role in the AI space, I should lower my salary expectations and seek support from my family.
I am a 40 year old woman with 2 children, a mortgage and a nanny payment. I AM the family. There is no safety net. People rely on me, not viceversa.
Advice like that may work for someone in their twenties. It does not reflect the reality of many mid career professionals, especially women with both financial and caregiving responsibilities.
So I do not just think this is a good idea. I think it is needed.
If the goal is to bring real commercial experience and delivery capability into high impact organisations, then we need infrastructure that understands both our skills and our constraints.
Just adding a me-as-well, Ana! To all of this.
(I even asked at a program info presentation about how adults with care-giving responsibilities could be included in the described activities where one seemingly had no other needs to take care of during the day but my question went unacknowledged lol!)
Hi Dom, thanks so much for this post and thinking carefully about this! I just sent you a direct message about potentially collaborating and/or me sharing feedback on your questions here on a call. Thanks!
Hi Dom
I really like your idea. I'm also an outsider looking in and until now - not feeling equipped to comment. Your post is different!
I'm 30 years into my career. I've worked in several roles and successfully scaled up a couple of small businesses before selling them. I've made plenty of mistakes along the way but learned a lot.
I have taken different career steps during the past 5 years and have looked at several roles in various EA orgs because I would love to make the next 10 years of my career really count for something much more than anything I've done so far.
If I've broadly understood your post, you want to match candidate's skills, experience and a rationale to support the recruiting organisation's mission alongside their interest in the candidate?
As the sites you've mentioned already have the 500k sign ups - I'm thinking this level of functionality would be a better addition to those sites as opposed to a 'stand-alone' product.
There are other factors, but on the surface - considering the traction the sites already have; potential investment time/costs - I believe a collaboration would provide the best outcome based on your Honest Questions.
I can't speak for the EA orgs but as someone who who is keen to make a personal change, I would really value your idea becoming reality.
Good luck and warm regards
Jeremy
Hi Dom, I'm familiar with Escape the City as well as EA. I think this is a wonderful idea.
My feedback is that yet another website/airtable/tool of sorts collecting offers or serving as a candidate pipeline provides zero value to the community. The feeling I have is that there’s a glut in the market caused by lack of opportunities, I.e. budgeted permanent positions for mid-careers and above (not to be mistaken with needs — of course there’s demand for experience and seniority.)
What I‘d like to see instead, as someone trying to pivot to a meaningful career, is curated honest and periodically refreshed intel on the ask side, including:
Armed with such knowledge you’re starting to see the big picture and can make decisions about how to position yourself and where to aim.
And for the love of all that’s holy, with each new AI-powered recruitment nonsense you’d just be building an additional layer of walls of impersonality, and I’d take cold email spam over the „solution” any day of the week.