Hey Tristan, thanks for this! Glad you’ve found the posts useful:)

1. To your point about references: ideally references should be just a tick box exercise of fact checking and should testify to your character and ability to do great work. Which means that all your good references should do for all future jobs (keep in mind that most employers want two most recent places of work). Some organisations still ask questions about your ability to do that particular job which I don’t agree with as all jobs are different. To help with that I’d advise to cultivate references who believe in you and will testify to your ability to do completely new tasks. This is easier if you demonstrate in the job that you can handle new things and be good at them quickly. I personally really struggled with going from management to leadership, and if not for people who believed in me, encouraged me and saw my potential, I’d probably still be in my old role.
2. I think that while EA jobs and adjacent roles are preferable, remember that they are not the only options. My first three roles weren’t EA - very entry level work, but without it I’d never have gotten my subsequent animal roles. Id certainly continue job hunting in EA if I were you but I’d also be open to non EA roles simply to get experience. In the end EA roles are mostly usual roles like HR, Ops, Strategy etc, all these skills you can get outside and then come back when a role comes up. The movement is very competitive, not going to lie, but it’s definitely possible to get a role, especially if you spend time building your network from now on, and maybe have a volunteer side project. Let me know if you have any more questions, I feel like I should try and write a more suitable post for entry level folks:)

Thanks a lot for reading and for your comment Tristan! I’ve described a couple of techniques here and I think the majority can certainly be done even if you haven’t got the experience. The wishlist works well for people who already know a bit about what they like doing and have some experience of doing something, that’s true. One thing you could do is start building your wishlist. Maybe you could put what work you enjoyed at university/school, any particular projects that you found fun, and what you definitely didn’t enjoy. The purpose of the wishlist is not just to get attention but also get input into what roles might be suitable, and that’s relevant to you especially because you’re starting out.

Hey Nathan, here is some more info on the first workshop: 

How bias can prevent you from hiring the best candidate:

A poorly written job description can put off diverse candidates.

A lack of universal criteria can lead to the best candidates being overlooked due to bias.

Lack of provision for inclusion during test task can miss out on some of the best performers

A process that's not inclusive can lead to candidates dropping off

And many more!

​

We can't afford to be biased when hiring, especially considering our movement's limited resources.

​

Together we will look at the following:

The FAIR model of hiring

How to create a job ad that attracts the most diverse audiences

Hidden ways we can introduce bias in hiring unknowingly

How not to introduce bias via reference checks

How to remove bias from test tasks

Design the most and the least biased hiring process and spot the differences

​

We are confident that everyone, experienced and new hiring managers alike will come out with actionable takeaways from this important workshop.

Thanks Nathan that's a great idea, we may publish something like this:) 

Thanks a lot HIP for this great initiative, if any of the grantees affected would like to do work in animal advocacy in particular please email us to see if we can advise on next steps at [sofia at animaladvocacycareers.org] or via PM on the forum.

Thanks a lot Michel, a great addition to the post!

This is so exciting! I’m really happy that OP is investing in this. Very much looking forward to seeing all the translated content and the new community members that it will bring ☺️ Thanks so much for your work on this.

That makes sense, thanks. I wonder if the results they got were also influenced by some other practices, for example already looking in a place where there was less diversity, or advertising the job in a way that put a lot of more diverse candidates off, such as not including salary in the JD.

Hey Richard, thanks a lot for reading and for your valuable comment. 
Interesting note about the DEI vs equality of opportunity point, I haven't thought about it.

I still think that we should continue in-person conferences, all I'm saying is that we need to improve the quality of online conferences and also help people to travel to offline conferences and events more easily (this is not just an EA issue, all industries who host offline events have this problem due to COVID visa application delays - we don't know how long they will last).

I'm grateful that you pointed out the lack of evidence that removing IQ and maths tests won't affect the quality of hire. There is certainly a lot of debate about this issue and I think that significantly more research needs to be done into this. I quite like this article that looks like past and most recent studies and summarises the conclusion whether or not we should use IQ to predict job performance: 

There remains great uncertainty about the interpretation of IQ-job performance correlations and great caution needs to be exercised in using them as a basis for the validity of IQ tests and associated concepts.

Perhaps I should have been clearer when I argued this, as my main point is that due to the lack of high quality research and solid conclusions, we don't know if IQ is really a good predictor of high job performance or not. Some still use IQ-like tests anyway and it will have a flow-through effect of poorer decision making due to everyone in the team with the same background and way of thinking.

Hey Matti, thanks so much for reading and for your kind comment. Glad you enjoyed it!