The Nonlinear Library EA - Hiring non-EA Talent: Pros & Cons by Tatiana K. Nesic Skuratova
May 15, 2024
09:14
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Hiring non-EA Talent: Pros & Cons, published by Tatiana K. Nesic Skuratova on May 15, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
TLDR: Asking for hires to be acquainted with EA ideas or to demonstrate how EA they are limits the talent pool where it is already scarce. Looking outside of EA has challenges but can be a net positive in some circumstances.
Intro
Throughout my involvement in the EA world, I see that one of the biggest challenges facing effective altruism is attracting the right people with the right skills to execute its many promising projects. I've witnessed firsthand in my work in both China and Serbia how a lack of skilled personnel can hinder an organization's progress.
Take
EA Serbia as an example. As the EA movement is relatively new in Serbia, it's been hard to attract members and move them inward through the
concentric circles. We decided to hire two part-time employees (one focused on marketing & social media, the second focused on outreach and developing external relations) who were completely outside of EA but who had relevant professional experience with the charity world. We asked them to take the
EA Serbia Introductory Course (our own version of the
Introductory EA Program) during their first month at work as part of their onboarding. These people brought their expertise in their professional fields, which made a huge difference in our outreach efforts, and which also established a solid foundation for future EA efforts in Serbia.
I am not the first one to write
about this. There have been a variety of posts on the EA forum regarding outreach to mid-career professionals with relevant skills, attempts at
EA-specialized hiring agencies, and the like. Also,
see here for AI Policy talent gaps. People with both relevant skills and a passion for making a difference can be crucial assets. Moreover, by getting involved in EA, they serve as a vector to spread EA ideas to professional networks that otherwise would remain unconnected to EA, allowing us to reach new groups of people (we've seen this with one of our hires now spreading EA Ideas in their professional circles).
While there are certainly some roles in which high levels of EA context and knowledge is necessary, I'd encourage us all to question the impulse to say "every hire must be at least 9 out of 10 on the metric of EAness." For some roles, maybe 6 out of 10 is enough. For some roles, maybe 3 out of 10 is enough.
The person designing the programming for EAG probably needs to have a strong understanding of the EA community in order to do their work well, and the translator definitely needs to understand the concepts in order to translate them well. But the person who designs your payroll system or makes reservations for your team offsite probably doesn't.
Do you need your office manager to be an EA, or would it work out fine to simply hire a skilled office manager who gets familiar with EA during their first few months on the job? That will, of course, depend on your organization's specific circumstances, but you should at least consider that for many roles, a competent professional with several years of experience who is neutral about EA will be able to perform very well on the job.
Key Takeaways
Pros:
Expertise is important, and it gets things done:
Certain roles demand specific expertise or experience. Sometimes, you really do want an experienced project manager with a PMP certification rather than an organized person who can write well, who ran the EA club at their school, and who has never had a job before. Some skills are easier or harder for a person with no experience to learn and pick up. Consider accounting, marketing, web design, or recruitment; some of these have
positive and some of these have negative learning curves. Between candidates Alice and Bob, if Alice has expertise and Bo...
TLDR: Asking for hires to be acquainted with EA ideas or to demonstrate how EA they are limits the talent pool where it is already scarce. Looking outside of EA has challenges but can be a net positive in some circumstances.
Intro
Throughout my involvement in the EA world, I see that one of the biggest challenges facing effective altruism is attracting the right people with the right skills to execute its many promising projects. I've witnessed firsthand in my work in both China and Serbia how a lack of skilled personnel can hinder an organization's progress.
Take
EA Serbia as an example. As the EA movement is relatively new in Serbia, it's been hard to attract members and move them inward through the
concentric circles. We decided to hire two part-time employees (one focused on marketing & social media, the second focused on outreach and developing external relations) who were completely outside of EA but who had relevant professional experience with the charity world. We asked them to take the
EA Serbia Introductory Course (our own version of the
Introductory EA Program) during their first month at work as part of their onboarding. These people brought their expertise in their professional fields, which made a huge difference in our outreach efforts, and which also established a solid foundation for future EA efforts in Serbia.
I am not the first one to write
about this. There have been a variety of posts on the EA forum regarding outreach to mid-career professionals with relevant skills, attempts at
EA-specialized hiring agencies, and the like. Also,
see here for AI Policy talent gaps. People with both relevant skills and a passion for making a difference can be crucial assets. Moreover, by getting involved in EA, they serve as a vector to spread EA ideas to professional networks that otherwise would remain unconnected to EA, allowing us to reach new groups of people (we've seen this with one of our hires now spreading EA Ideas in their professional circles).
While there are certainly some roles in which high levels of EA context and knowledge is necessary, I'd encourage us all to question the impulse to say "every hire must be at least 9 out of 10 on the metric of EAness." For some roles, maybe 6 out of 10 is enough. For some roles, maybe 3 out of 10 is enough.
The person designing the programming for EAG probably needs to have a strong understanding of the EA community in order to do their work well, and the translator definitely needs to understand the concepts in order to translate them well. But the person who designs your payroll system or makes reservations for your team offsite probably doesn't.
Do you need your office manager to be an EA, or would it work out fine to simply hire a skilled office manager who gets familiar with EA during their first few months on the job? That will, of course, depend on your organization's specific circumstances, but you should at least consider that for many roles, a competent professional with several years of experience who is neutral about EA will be able to perform very well on the job.
Key Takeaways
Pros:
Expertise is important, and it gets things done:
Certain roles demand specific expertise or experience. Sometimes, you really do want an experienced project manager with a PMP certification rather than an organized person who can write well, who ran the EA club at their school, and who has never had a job before. Some skills are easier or harder for a person with no experience to learn and pick up. Consider accounting, marketing, web design, or recruitment; some of these have
positive and some of these have negative learning curves. Between candidates Alice and Bob, if Alice has expertise and Bo...