Hi everyone! Vaidehi Agarwalla and I (Benjamin Skubi), are collaborating on a project to develop career resources for the EA movement. We believe that a pressing issue is enhancing the resources for people newer to the movement and in the earlier stages of a career change. Existing EA resources focus on job placement for already-qualified individuals, and on broadcasting the results of cause prioritization research. While these are extremely useful projects, the movement as a whole struggles in some regards with coordination of other efforts, providing user-friendly and up-to-date resources, and integrating interested people into pre-existing communities. For many people whose involvement with EA might be mutually beneficial to them, the movement, and the world, the challenge of making sense of all the information (if there are relevant resources) may be a significant barrier to taking the next step.
Our plan is to conduct exploratory (video) interviews, lasting perhaps 30-40 minutes, with EAs who are in the early stages of exploring a career change. We hope that we can benefit interviewees by helping connect them with relevant people and resources, and better understand the challenges they face.
If you would like to be interviewed, please fill out our contact form. We hope to interview as many people as possible, although we will begin with only a few interviews for the initial round. We will also be providing updates as the project advances. We look forward to hearing from you!
Could you say more about yours and Vaidehi's history in the EA movement? What experience are you both bringing to this project that will help you make these connections?
(If you answer here, you may also want to update your Forum bio!)
I came into the movement already sharing the basic philosophy and in the midst of exploring career change, and I’ve been involved for perhaps 6 months both through my local meetup and exploring online resources. I believe that two of the ways this project will help our communities by validating individual struggles and through creation of new online resources. My writing, conversation, tech, and project management skills will all be helpful in that effort.
I (Vaidehi) have been involved with EA for the past few years as a group organiser, organising Haverford EA where I ran a few semesters of an EA career fellowship. I am now helping to organise EA Philly. I am a sociology major, and will bring my knowledge of qualitative research methods and pre-existing EA resources to understanding career advice, which is an area I have been interested for a while.
Could you explain how this relates to 80k's content? My impression was that a lot of material was aimed at college students, which seems like 'the earlier stages of a career change'.
Hi Larks, Apologies for the confusing terminology - by earlier stages of a career change we meant people (of any age/career stage) deciding to switch careers and being in the initial stages of that career change.