Animal Advocacy Careers (AAC) is seeking a part-time Researcher and M&E Manager to join our remote team, starting on a 12-month contract. As Researcher and M&E Manager, you will play an integral role in AAC’s internal strategic decision-making by evaluating and modelling the impact of our services, proactively researching movement bottlenecks, as well as surveying and interviewing stakeholders. The successful candidate will set the direction of AAC’s research activities, so we are flexible on the seniority of the role. You can state your preferred title in the application.

​We will be hosting an optional Q&A session about this role on Wednesday, 16th November, 6 pm GMT. To join the Q&A, click this link on the 16th of November, 2022. (Meeting ID: 839 1905 1755, Passcode: 995960)

If the role is not for you, we'll appreciate it if you could forward it to anyone who you think may be interested or posting on your social media.

ABOUT ANIMAL ADVOCACY CAREERS

Animal Advocacy Careers is an organisation that seeks to address the career and talent bottlenecks in the animal advocacy movement, especially the farmed animal movement. There are many billions of animals kept in appalling conditions; we provide careers services for individuals and organisations seeking to help them.

Services that we offer include an introductory online course, a job board, and a work placement programme. We are optimistic that many of these services are highly impactful. What’s more, our audience is growing rapidly, and we have more than doubled the number of participants in our online course in 2022 compared to 2021.

BENEFITS TO YOU

• An opportunity to contribute to the development of an exciting early stage nonprofit startup that works to help animals as effectively as possible.
• Have a large influence on the direction, goals, and achievement of the project.
• Fully remote work environment and team.
• Flexible working hours.
• Generous and flexible paid time off policy.
• Encouragement and support to spend at least 5% of paid time on training and development.
• Opportunities for progression.

HOW YOU WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Your highest priority tasks will be focused on evaluating our impact and helping gather information to inform AAC’s strategic decision-making:

• Conducting surveys and interviews to help AAC improve its services and better understand our impact to date:
• With stakeholders such as staff at effective animal advocacy nonprofits (see past examples here and here).
• With participants in our online course, job seekers reviewing our job board, and other users of our services.
• Maintaining and improving our impact evaluation processes, such as our “Importance- and Counterfactuals-Adjusted Placements” (ICAPs) metric.
• Identifying, designing, and conducting additional research projects and analyses that would be useful to AAC’s decision-making (e.g.s here and here).
• Contributing to AAC’s strategic decision-making directly to help AAC’s time be spent as effectively as possible, through discussions with the CEO and Head of Programs.
• Writing reports and summaries for donors and other stakeholders.

Although the above will be the highest priority tasks, with the remainder of your time (perhaps half or more your paid AAC hours) we would like you to write well-researched, high-quality content that will be read by hundreds or thousands of people, such as careers advice, blog posts and content for AAC’s online course.

You will have substantial input into which tasks you prioritise, including contributing to other areas of AAC’s work or suggesting research projects beyond those listed above. AAC is a rapidly evolving organisation, so the scope of this role may change over time.

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WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

You will:

• Have strong analytical skills and a problem-solving, and optimising mindset.
• Be able to quickly grasp the meaning and implications of evidence and ideas.
• Agree with the four “core principles” of effective altruism listed here, e.g. “scout mindset” (truth-seeking) and the need to prioritise between different ways to improve the world.
• Be able to employ (not necessarily have experience with) the “other principles and tools” on the same list, e.g. expected value reasoning and Fermi estimates.
• Have the ability to prioritise well and focus on the projects that are most needed to achieve the organisation’s goals.
• Be able to write clearly, concisely, and engagingly.
• Be motivated to do work that helps animals.
• Have decent interpersonal skills (e.g. for when interviewing stakeholders).
• Have decent computer literacy.

You don’t need to have any particular kind of experience. That said, we can imagine a wide array of experience types that might increase our confidence in your ability to perform the role to a high standard, e.g.:

• Survey or experimental design.
• Statistics.
• Cost effectiveness analyses.
• Fermi estimates and modelling.
• Monitoring and evaluation procedures.
• Systematic literature reviews.
• Scouring the internet for informal data collection.
• Animal advocacy.
• Hiring or recruiting.
• Writing blog or news content.
• SEO.
• Teaching or writing course content.

We don’t expect any candidate to have had experience with all of these things, and none of them are requirements. Additionally, it is sometimes said that men tend to apply for jobs when they meet only some of a job’s criteria, while women and other marginalised groups are less likely to apply if they are not a 100% match. If you are passionate about AAC’s mission and think you have what it takes to be successful in this, please apply even if you don’t check all the boxes. We’d appreciate the opportunity to consider your application.

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PRACTICALITIES

• Location: Remote. Most countries and time zones are workable (though you will need to be available for a couple of monthly and weekly meetings convenient for American or European team members and stakeholders, usually between 12 and 5pm GMT).
• Terms of Employment: Part-time, 12 month fixed-term contract.
• Our preference is for 50% FTE (2.5 days per week), though we’re flexible on this for the right candidate.
• We expect to renew the contract if the role meets your needs and ours and you perform well.
• Salary: $35,000 to $65,000 pro rata (i.e. $17,500 to $32,500 if working 50% full-time equivalent).
• Reports to: Lauren Mee (CEO)
• Start: As soon as possible after the hiring process is complete. We expect to make an offer to the successful candidate before 23rd December, and we’ll let you know if this changes.
• Deadline: Sunday, 20th November 2022 23:59 GMT.

HOW TO APPLY

Thanks for your interest in working with us to help animals! We will be hosting an optional Q&A session about this role on Wednesday 16th November, 6pm GMT. To join the Q&A, click this link on the 16th November 2022. (Meeting ID: 839 1905 1755, Passcode: 995960)

To apply:

• Please complete our application form. It consists of a few question prompts and a single short exercise. We expect that the application shouldn’t take you more than 1 hour. After the deadline, if we have received a completed form from you, we will send you an email letting you know whether we will proceed with your application or not.
• If we proceed, you will be asked to complete 2-3 hours’ worth of paid test tasks. We will then send you another email letting you know whether we will proceed with your application or not.
• If we proceed, you will have a paid structured interview to discuss your application and the role. We will then send you another email letting you know whether we will proceed with your application or not.
• There will be one final call (less formal and structured) to resolve any uncertainties and discuss any practical questions.
• We expect to make an offer to the successful candidate before 23rd December and we’ll let you know if this changes.

Application deadline: Sunday, 20th November 23:59 GMT.

We recognise that this application process is more time-consuming than some. We offer compensation of $20 per hour spent on test tasks (up to a maximum of 3 hours), as well as $50 per interview. (Note that this payment might be taxable in your country and you are responsible for reporting it to your tax authority.)

Any questions: Please contact jamie@animaladvocacycareers.org