80,000 Hours is hiring!

By Michelle_Hutchinson @ 2022-01-20T16:12 (+59)

My team at 80,000 Hours is hiring for advisors. In the past I've found this a difficult role to hire for, because it isn't at traditional path for people to take. I love the role though: It's just lovely to spend every day talking to smart, like minded people and helping them problem solve about how to really do the most good with their career. I enjoy the breadth of the problems I get to think about, and that it keeps me constantly wanting to learn more about all the possible ways of having an impact and how to compare between them. If you think you might enjoy that too, please consider applying to work with me!

If you're interested, there are more details below. Please do comment or DM me if you have questions about the role or whether you might be suitable for it. 

• Our advisors talk one-on-one to talented and altruistic applicants in order to help them find the highest impact career they can.
• We’ve found that experience with coaching is not necessary – everything from management consulting to global priorities research has helped someone be a good fit.
• London-based role with starting salary around £65,000.

Please apply here by February 20th.

80,000 Hours’ mission

The EA community is growing in reach and now includes funding bodies with over $40 billion to allocate in total. How to turn those resources into long-term impact is the problem 80,000 Hours is trying to solve.

We’ve had over 8 million visitors to our website, and more than 3,000 people have now told us that they’ve significantly changed their career plans due to our work. 80,000 Hours is the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Survey.

The 1on1 team

The 1on1 team at 80,000 Hours takes people from “interested in the ideas and want to help” to “actually working to solve pressing world problems.” For example, Sophie Rose applied for advising in 2019. I chatted to her and helped her decide to focus on biosecurity and start working in the field. She co-founded One Day Sooner and is now working at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security – doing research to help prevent catastrophic pandemics. In 2021 we had more than 2,000 applications to speak with us from talented and altruistic people who aren’t sure how to use their skills to help the world.

Some of the most important ways our conversations help people increase their impact are:

• Introductions to experts in relevant fields, hiring managers and other members of the EA community.
• Talking through and reframing decisions in order to pin down people’s key uncertainties.
• Suggesting new ideas — whether that’s specific jobs, new paths to explore, or ways of getting funding.

We also help with recruitment for high impact organisations, sending them lists of people we think might be a great fit for them.

While our impact per call is high, the world needs far more people in total working on the world’s most pressing problems. We therefore want to greatly increase the number of calls we have by doubling our team of advisors over the next year. Our aim is to build out an excellent system for finding the best candidates for the most impactful jobs as they are created.

What we’re looking for

It’s a great sign you’d enjoy being an 80,000 Hours advisor if you’ve enjoyed managing, mentoring or teaching. For example, Habiba Islam joined us from being a manager at the Future of Humanity Institute, Alex Lawsen was a Maths teacher, and Matt Reardon was previously a corporate lawyer.

But it’s also particularly useful for us to have a broad range of experience on the team for comparing different types of roles, so we’re excited to hear about people with all kinds of backgrounds.

The core of this role is having one-on-one conversations with people to help them plan their careers. We have a tight-knit, fast-paced team, though, so people take on a variety of things. They include, for example, reviewing applications to speak with us, pieces of analysis to improve the service, and writing articles for the 80,000 Hours site or the EA Forum.

We’re looking for someone who has:

• A strong interest in EA and longtermism, ideally with some experience in EA strategy.
• Strong analytical skills and enjoys puzzling to figure out the key considerations in complex problems.
• A deep interest in understanding people, and who would enjoy having large numbers of one on one conversations via video call.

Previous experience in one of our priority areas would be a significant advantage in the role, but we encourage you to apply even without that.

We’re aware that factors like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can affect people’s willingness to apply for roles for which they meet many but not all the suggested attributes. We’d especially like to encourage people from under-represented backgrounds to apply.

Details of the job

We expect this to be a full-time, in-person role, based in London. You can work remotely for up to three months of the year if needed. If that won’t work for you, please let us know in your application.

The salary will vary based on your skills and experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with five years of relevant experience would be approximately £65,000 per year.

Start date of the role is flexible, but we would expect you to start during 2022 and prefer you to start as soon as you’re able to.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your work time for self development
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
• Standard U.K. pension, with 3% contribution from employer
• Private medical insurance and long-term disability insurance
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office

Where to from here?

To apply, please fill in this application form. If you have any problems submitting the form, please send your CV to michelle@80000hours.org.

If you’re not interested in the Advisor role, but would be interested to join the 1on1 team in some other capacity (for example technical support), please do get in touch.

Candidates will progress through the following:

• Interview
• ~2 hour work test
• 2-5 day in-person (if possible) trial
• Job offer

The work test and trial will be paid.