Cillian Crosson's Quick takes

Cillian_

Cillian Crosson's Quick takes

Cillian_

1 min readJul 18, 2023

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Cillian_

What's the forum etiquette on advertising jobs?

Context: Training for Good is hiring for two exciting roles. I expect a bunch of great applicants to be here, right now, on this forum.

BUT I suspect that top level posts advertising jobs decreases the average user's experience. Maybe that's outweighed by the possibility of TFG reaching a top candidate (but I'm motivated to believe that so don't really trust it). Plus, it feels like a tragedy of the commons type scenario. So I've decided to post it as a ~~short form~~ quick take instead.

___________

Training for Good is hiring for two exciting roles. Come join us as a founding employee :rocket:

AI Programme Lead
- Compensation: $40-60k, depending on location and experience.
- Location: Remote, with 3+ hours of overlap with UK working hours
- Closing date: 13th August 2023, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (we'll be reviewing applications on a rolling basis until then)
- Responsibilities: You'll be responsible for designing and delivering AI training programs to early-career journalists and EU policymakers. Within 3-6 months, we expect you will transition to leading one of our fellowship programmes.
Operations Associate
- Compensation: $30-45k, depending on location and experience.
- Location: Remote, with 3+ hours of overlap with UK working hours
- Closing date: 13th August 2023, 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (we'll be reviewing applications on a rolling basis until then)
- Responsibilities: You'll be responsible for leading, implementing, and innovating on Training for Good's operational and administrative processes. The work is varied and includes organising in-person training weeks, managing financial operations, optimising vetting processes, and overseeing HR and legal procedures

Lorenzo Buonanno🔸

What's the forum etiquette on advertising jobs?

I think job listings are one of the most valuable things on the forum, I'm surprised you're even asking!

There's even a Job listing (open) tag, that you've used in the past with wild success. It was the success story for the forum from the past 6 months.

I personally would heavily encourage people to post more job advertisements on the Forum, and let users vote on them, especially roles at extremely impact-oriented orgs like Training for Good.

Is your experience as a user decreased by the current top-level posts advertising jobs?

Lizka

I mostly agree with Lorenzo, with caveats.

We've got an official policy on this. From that:

We do not allow spam or commercial messaging not related to EA. We also don’t allow clickbait or other things that interfere with good discourse. However, you may want to advertise an impactful job or opportunity on the EA Forum, which is fine — people have found good applicants on the Forum before, and we’re here to ultimately take action. But you should follow some guidelines:
Don’t try to sell it. Try to inform people about the opportunity instead of persuading them to join. It’s nice to mention the weaknesses and downsides of the opportunity, although this doesn’t mean that you should downplay its strengths.
Make the connection to effective altruism clear, even if it seems obvious to you (unless your organization is a household name in EA). Consider making a case for why this sort of work is particularly impactful (is it neglected?), or why it might be a useful experience for people interested in effective altruism. Alternatively, you can prominently link to other sources that explain these connections.
If you share a job ad that also has interesting content — an explanation of your work and its theory of change, some interesting and relevant news, etc. — more people are likely to see it.

If we end up with a bunch of job listings and/or we start hearing that there are issues due to the job listings, we could change our approach — e.g. by limiting or discouraging listings, limiting where they're shown (more likely), creating separate spaces for them (something I think we should explore), or something else.

The other thing I'd note is that I think job ~advertisements go better (get more engagement, bring value to people not looking for the job) when they're combined with other content/information, like some explanation of why you're hiring, what your strategy is, an update on what you do, etc. This means that people who aren't interested in the jobs could also get something out of the post, and you might also get more applicants because the post gets more karma (so more people will see it) and because some people who come for the content are also interested in the jobs (this is probably truer for some jobs than for others).

(I should caveat that I wrote the above quickly (besides the policy excerpt), and without input from others.)

Amber Dawn

Just echoing the others that I like job listings - I've often applied for things because I saw them advertized on the Forum (or sent them to others who were looking)

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Lizka

I mostly agree with Lorenzo, with caveats.

We've got an official policy on this. From that:

We do not allow spam or commercial messaging not related to EA. We also don’t allow clickbait or other things that interfere with good discourse. However, you may want to advertise an impactful job or opportunity on the EA Forum, which is fine — people have found good applicants on the Forum before, and we’re here to ultimately take action. But you should follow some guidelines:
Don’t try to sell it. Try to inform people about the opportunity instead of persuading them to join. It’s nice to mention the weaknesses and downsides of the opportunity, although this doesn’t mean that you should downplay its strengths.
Make the connection to effective altruism clear, even if it seems obvious to you (unless your organization is a household name in EA). Consider making a case for why this sort of work is particularly impactful (is it neglected?), or why it might be a useful experience for people interested in effective altruism. Alternatively, you can prominently link to other sources that explain these connections.
If you share a job ad that also has interesting content — an explanation of your work and its theory of change, some interesting and relevant news, etc. — more people are likely to see it.

(I should caveat that I wrote the above quickly (besides the policy excerpt), and without input from others.)