A recent post on this forum made it common knowledge that it is really hard to get employed at an EA organisation. This has kickstarted discussion of what people should do (see also discussion on Cause Y). I thought it might be useful to gather various suggestions together and add a few of my own:
Broadening the Range of Jobs Considered: Perhaps people are being too narrow in the range of jobs that they are considering? Aaron points out that the 80,000 hours job board contains hundreds of jobs, many outside of the traditional EA orgs. Beyond that he suggests looking Tom Wein's collection of job boards. He notes that even jobs that might not be the most effective in and of themselves still adds expertise into our community.
Niche Skillsets: Khorton suggests that there are many skills that 1-5 EAs should develop skill in.
Starting your own project: You might want to consider applying for the EA Hotel, EA Grants or Charity Entrepreneurship.
Joining early stage projects: Raemon argues that the major constraint on EA is being network-constrained. Early stage orgs have to work with people that they know because they don't have the time to engage in an extensive search and they tend to be limited in their ability to provide compensation. They often need to rely on volunteer or part-time labour; and pay low salaries when they finally can afford to bring you on full time. He argues that the barrier to joining an early stage project tends to be lower than when they are less established.
Volunteering: Aaron lists some suggestions for where to volunteer. You may also want to look at EA Work Club. Some people mightn't find some of the simpler tasks like editing engaging, but I imagine that there are plenty of opportunities for web development, marketing and graphical design.
Hierarchial Networks: Jan suggests that we might be able to achieve more with volunteers if we were able to increase the level of co-ordination. Instead of projects being limited in size to what one person can achieve, someone could be responsible for co-ordinating and dividing up an area into sub-problems. If enough people want to join, the area could be further sub-divided. I would love to be proven wrong, but I worry about our community's ability to achieve this (see the challenges Givewell has had with volunteers and the shift of .IMPACT/Rethink Charity from volunteers to paid staff).
Earn to Save: Even if you aren't immediately able to find a position that is highly impactful, you can build up runaway so that you can take advantage of any opportunities that arise in the future.
Thanks for making this list!
An additional set of suggestions I've just made, a year and a day after your post, are to:
I suggest this particularly for people who are just learning about or researching a topic anyway, and happen to spot a gap. Collections in particular can be very quick to do, in that case. And I think that both summaries and collections can make the road easier for those who follow.
Posting such summaries and collections is more like an incidental extra thing people can do than like a thing people could primarily focus on. But it could perhaps serve a similar role to something like occasional volunteering.