<<Additionally, and worth noting, this career path is also accessible to people in well-paid careers who are not ready to take a significant salary cut.>>
My understanding is that it’s quite uncommon to get a role directly in the EC and the most common route is through the bluebook which would require a significant salary cut at least in the short term. So I’m not sure this narrative is a correct one to make. Could you clarifyÂ
Thanks Nina! I love this holistic approach, I would say that at least for AAC we take the approach of understanding the highest leverage roles in our space and try to nudge people towards them.Â
I do think there is an ecosystem gap in the career advising space on mapping out these higher leverage positions outside of non profits and if possible designing programmes to help people concretely land these roles. I’m not sure if this is outside the scope of HIP but I’m not sure how one can advise people on what paths are most impactful without this concrete understanding first, unless it’s more coaching and less advising.Â
Thanks for this write up and highlighting AACs work.Â
I do believe career advising is one of our most successful programmes but I just want to clarify a few things, and apologies if these were not clear in the 2024 review.Â
1. Last year career advising only led to 8 career changes that we know of so far. Although they were quite high impact transitions with a noteable role from AAC.Â
2. <<Other notable achievements as a result of the advising:
100 1:1 calls achieved, with a goal of 200 for 2025>>Â
The pledges were not as a result of the advising calls, they were achieved through a specific ad campaign and were a seperate programme completely. It would be great if you could update this in the original post to avoid confusion.Â
Â
I agree this is an overlooked career path, and one that many advising orgs (including historically my own) haven’t given consistent treatment.
My impression is that more EAs are working in government than we realise, and that many advising organisations do consider it highly impactful. The challenge is that government roles come with expectations of impartiality, so there’s a real limit to how openly funders or career groups can promote specific pathways without undermining credibility.
That said, I think we could do much more to bring policy conversations into spaces like EAGs. The community would benefit from normalising government service as a long-term route to influence, not just as an “adjacent” option.
For those interested, Impactful Policy Careers has done excellent work in the European context, though even we face restrictions on how openly they can be promoted.
I don't have anything to add beyond the below and my anecdotal evidence that campaigning roles (particularly more senior ones) outside of (ICAW- who just seem to get everyone!) are hard to hire for, curious to hear what Kieran thinks:Â
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/talent-survey-2024/Â
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2022/
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2021/
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2020/
Thank you!!Â
We have already published the NGO bottlenecks for 2024 here: https://animaladvocacycareers.org/talent-survey-2024/Â
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2022/
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2021/
https://animaladvocacycareers.org/post/animal-advocacy-bottleneck-survey-2020/
<< Cleaning the cups: Can be difficult where water is scarce or dirty>>
This seems quite important? How would you plan on solving this problem otherwise it could lead to more infections and could potentially create more harm than good.Â
As someone that uses these products I do believe it requires quite alot of maintenance to ensure they are sterile every month once using them and that you can wash them out a few times a day, so Im curious on how you think this would work in countries with lower access to water who may not be able to steralise them?Â