Thanks, Eli! This seems great to me and I'm glad to have things like this out there.

I wanted to provide another perspective on a couple of points. 

(For context, I've recruited for a junior ops role once, and for a senior ops role once. Unsure how much the below applies to other hiring managers.) 

On writing skills and quality of work tests: 

• I agree that people probably underrate how important writing skills are for success in an ops role.  However, that said, when recruiting I only pay attention to writing quality in some contexts, mainly because there are times when I’m more interested in candidates being able to spend their time/effort on other parts of the application, or on minimising time. 
• In application form answers, I usually don’t pay attention to the writing quality ~at all, since I expect candidates will vary a lot in how much time they had available to do the form, and at the first stage I much prefer a sketchy application to no application at all. (I’ll usually include a note in the form to say that.) 
• In work tests, I’ve usually tried to indicate cases where writing or polished-ness is something I’m looking at or not. 
  • E.g. in a recent senior ops hiring test, I had a strategy task which was to sketch out a plan for a major organisational decision. I was most interested in testing good judgement – like seeing how candidates generate and prioritise relevant considerations for a complex decision like this – and didn’t want them to spend time making the writing pretty rather than producing more/better content. So I said something about how I’m interested in the content and clarity-to-me over style and polish.
  • Whereas for test components that, e.g. to write an email, message or policy; then I definitely will be looking at the writing quality and polishedness.
  • (That said, I do agree that spending 10-20% of time checking seems widely good.)

On quality of application materials, I agree that a CV/LinkedIn etc. that clearly aims at the role requirements is likely to be strongest; however I'd also add that a non-personalised CV is a lot better than no application at all! At stage 1 ensuring that as many good people apply as possible is one of my top goals.

On unclearly relevant experience, one tangential point. Here is an extract from the generalised feedback I sent to applicants rejected at stage 1 of my junior ops hiring round in 2022.^[1] 

Among very early-career candidates, e.g. those just out of university, the strongest candidates were those who could show some signal of their operations ability. For example, organisational work for student projects/societies or local charities, or personal-life things like setting up a task management system, organising a group trip or helping a friend with a visa application.

Relatedly, among people with work experience that is not closely related to this role, at times I felt it would be beneficial for them to put less emphasis on their most impressive but less related experience, and more emphasis on their most relevant experience, even if it seems less impressive. There was a group of candidates with substantial experience in roles such as communications, consulting or people management, whose application concentrated on how that experience transfers to this role.^[2] If these candidates had more directly relevant, but less impressive experience, such as those I mentioned for recent graduates in the previous point, I think they would have benefited from mentioning it, even if it was a long time ago.

(This role was more about fairly “nitty gritty” logistics, finance, HR, things like that; rather than e.g. a lot of project management or comms where I’d probably weight broader kinds of experience higher.)

1. ^{^}

   I.e. a document outlining the most common reasons I did/didn't advance people to the second stage; I didn't give personalised feedback at this stage. (I planned to give personalised feedback for later stages, but unfortunately didn't get around to it. If you're one of the applicants from this 2022 hiring round who asked for feedback but I didn't get back to, my apologies for that.)

2. ^{^}

   To be clear I do think broader experience adds something! But it only speaks to certain parts of what I'm looking for. 

This is a great article. It is really unfortunate when a good candidate puts a lot of work into an application and it is rejected for a reason that doesn't reflect their ability to do the job. 

That said, we all need to accept that we live in a bizarre world in which we say we want engaged, motivated, qualified people working on impactful areas, but then, when they choose to do so, it can be extremely difficult for those engaged, motivated people to actually find impactful roles. 

It seems like many EA roles get 100's of applications (literally). And because hirers are open-minded, they encourage everyone to apply, even if they're not sure they're a good fit. 

One result of this is that a vast amount of the energy and commitment of EA's is invested into the task of searching for work (on one side) or in evaluating and selecting applicants on the other side. 

It just feels unfortunate, in the sense that if this energy could be invested in something impactful, it would be better. Ultimately a great CV and cover-letter doesn't help any humans or animals. 

I don't have a solution. Obviously there are just not so many roles out there, and we can't just create roles without funding and organisations and managers and so on. And we don't want to discourage people from applying for roles they think they could do well. 

This has been a pet peeve of mine since my pre-EA days. I wrote about it from the perspective of a recruiter on Quora, and more than 1000 people upvoted my answer. So it's definitely not an EA-specific problem. 

In fact, I would go further and say that EA organisations do a lot of things far better than most organisations:

1. They often put a lot of emphasis on work-tests, which are far better than interviews at assessing a person's fit for a role - and which are also a great learning experience even for the people who don't get hired. 
2. Many recruiters do give feedback. Useful, tangible feedback. Often this only happens after the initial screening. 
3. Some recruiters even go out of their way to help applicants find an impactful role, because, unlike corporations, we're all rooting for each other to succeed. 

But even still, it would be great if there were a better way to get more people into roles (even if initially low-paid roles, with the potential for upgrading) in which they learn and get experience they can put on their CV's, rather than have them desperately trying to find a role.

I kind of imagine that in some EA-hub locations, this is what happens. That lots of people know each other and can recommend roles for each other. I see something like this in the Brussels EU bubble, where once you're part of the community, it seems like there are always roles opening up for people who need to or want to move. So maybe what I'm writing refers more to people living away from EA hubs, who would like to switch to more impactful roles, but struggle to find one. Unfortunately, if we don't find a way to include these people, the potential growth of EA will be limited. 

For now, all I can do is strongly encourage any recruiter to provide any critical feedback they can. Maybe not to everyone, but if there is someone who is clearly doing something wrong (several typos on their CV for example), please tell them. I've reviewed a lot of CV's and job applications, and I can say that I've never had a negative reaction when I sent someone a quick note to explain how they could improve their chances to get other roles (always phrased this way to avoid suggesting that was the reason they weren't hired by us). 

I am also very curiously and closely following the new Moral Circles created by Rutger Bregman in the Netherlands to try to convince highly experienced professionals to move to more impactful roles, to see if they have a good solution to this. There seems to be a lot of people hearing his message, I want to see how they manage the challenge of making sure that all the very capable people who want to do something more impactful actually find a role where they can do so. 

 

Could you say more about what counts as high quality for writing or a work test? 

I thought this was great. Thank you for writing this, Eli!

make sure your CV, LinkedIn, and cover letters are as polished as possible and clearly outline experience that’s relevant for the role you’re applying for

AskAManager has a great guide to writing resumes. The most useful thing I got from it is how to write specific accomplishments, not just list job duties.

Eli, can you say more about what counts as relevant experience, for junior generalist roles? 

Executive summary: There are several common reasons why candidates may be rejected from junior operations jobs, including poor writing quality, subpar work tests, inadequate application materials, unclear relevant experience or interests, and weak references or reputation.

Key points:

1. Writing quality in application materials should be extremely high, as it signals important traits and is often a key part of ops roles.
2. Work tests should be completed to a very high standard, as they demonstrate the ability to present polished work to stakeholders.
3. Application materials (CV, LinkedIn, cover letters) should be polished, clearly outline relevant experience, and provide specific details rather than vague statements.
4. Candidates need to clearly demonstrate their fit and excitement for the role, especially if their experience is not directly relevant.
5. Reputation and references matter; performing well in previous roles (even short-term or volunteer positions) can help, while dropping the ball can hurt chances.

This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.