Career Conversations Week on the Forum (8-15 September)

By Lizka @ 2023-08-25T18:44 (+64)

TL;DR: September 8 - 15 will feature more career-related discussions on the EA Forum: a “Career Conversations Week.”^[1] This is an invitation to participate and a pre-announcement of some posts that will be published during the event. You can follow posts under this tag.

A wide range of topics would fit the theme; consider writing about what you actually do in your job (and how you got there), sharing advice about how to choose a path, etc. (some more ideas below). 

You can always write about these topics on the EA Forum, but if you want someone to provide extra encouragement — or if you want to post about it when others are talking about it, too — this event is your chance. 

What this actually is and why we’re running it

Much like EA Strategy Fortnight, this event is ultimately a push for discussions of a particular kind — in this case, everything about (impact-oriented) careers. We have a tag for the event, we’ll put up a banner on the Frontpage (so that people know that this is happening), and some folks have already agreed to participate. We’ll also feature more career-related opportunities and we might resurface some classic posts on these topics. 

Goals for the event include: 

• Prompting more people to take useful career-related actions (like applying to open opportunities)
• Improving how we make career and hiring decisions 
• Developing a better sense for what different roles actually look like
• Sharing useful resources

Posts that people expect to share for the event (let me know in the comments if you have something that you'd like to add!):

• Lizka — about my job (and why you should write about yours, too)
• Lorenzo Buonanno — new Who wants to be hired? and Who’s hiring? threads, and a reflection on last year’s threads
• JP Addison — The cost of leaving your role is probably higher than you think
• Ben West — Placeholder
• Will H — Placeholder
• Vaidehi Agarwalla — "Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers"
• 2ndRichter — about my job (and advice for people who want to get into communications
• Probably Good — "What each member of Probably Good wishes they knew earlier in their careers"
• Abby Hoskin — "What happens on an 80k career advising call"
• 80,000 Hours 1:1 Advising team — AMA
• Charity Entrepreneurship — at least one of "Who is nonprofit entrepreneurship a good fit for?" (an updated version of our classic question), how to signal competence without uni credentials, and/or "nonprofit entrepreneurs on their unexpected career change"
• Sofia Balderson — "Writing about my job: Co-founder of a new charity" and "What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy"
• New program announcements

How you can participate

• Write relevant posts and quick takes
  • If you know you’ll write something, please feel free to comment on this post, and I’ll try to add it to the list above
• Read and comment on posts written for the event
  • You can follow posts by subscribing to the tag
• Run related events, apply to useful opportunities, etc., and mention these things on the EA Forum so that the actions aren't invisible to others

If you write a post

• Tag it with the relevant tag
• Add the following to the bottom of your post: 

This post is part of the September 2023 Career Conversations Week. You can see other Career Conversations Week posts here.

Example topics you could write about (you can add more in the comments!)

• What you do in your job, how you got here, etc. 
• Advice — what you wish you knew when you were 20, how to test fit for different roles, pitfalls of certain types of work (part-time, remote, independent, grant-funded, etc.), questions to ask potential employers, etc.
• Thoughts on network-level things like hiring bottlenecks, issues with how we advertise roles, and more

Or whatever else you have thoughts about! 

This event is clearly inspired by EA Strategy Fortnight — thanks to all of you who helped make that happen and participated in it!  :)

1. ^{^}

   This isn't the most creative title, but we went with it over options like 
   "The September JobFest," "Visionary Vocations Week" and the "Optimal Occupations Odyssey" for the sake of clarity.