EA - Perhaps the highest leverage meta-skill: an EA guide to hiring by Kat Woods

Link to original articleWelcome 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: Perhaps the highest leverage meta-skill: an EA guide to hiring, published by Kat Woods on August 22, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Imagine you could have any skill in the world with just a few dozen hours of effort. This is what hiring allows you to do and it's a neglected skill in the EA movement. I don’t know how to code, yet “I’ve” built the Nonlinear Library and Superlinear (an x-risk prize platform). I had no experience in Indian politics but “I” was able to help Indian states update their policies to increase vaccination rates. Because you don’t have to learn how to code or develop decades of experience in a particular political arena. You can just hire people who already have those skills or experiences, and in fact, are probably better than you’d ever have gotten. It’s one of the highest leverage meta-skills you can develop, especially when combined with fundraising. This is why it was a top contender for my most important “lesson learned” in my last decade in EA and we’re incubating an EA hiring agency to make it so it takes even less time to hire people (they’re accepting clients now!) It is also one of the things I get asked for advice on the most frequently, so perfect for a blog post. So, without further ado, read on for a very practical guide to hiring. Designing the right job You can’t hire the right person unless you have a clear idea of who the right person is. Don’t just pick a job title and work from there; instead, brainstorm a list of the specific tasks that you want your new hire to do, and then choose a job title that fits. This also makes it clearer to you what you’re looking for. If you think that you want to hire an executive assistant but find yourself listing mostly research tasks, maybe you really want to hire a research assistant instead. Or perhaps you actually want to hire for two or three different roles. Getting great applicants Write an enticing job ad Job advertisements are neglected relative to other aspects of hiring. Everyone knows that interviews are important, but you won’t get lots of good candidates to interview unless they see and respond to your job ad. The more people who apply, the more likely you are to find a great fit. Your job ad should have: A fantastic title The title is the most important part of any piece of writing. This is doubly true for job ads since they’re posted alongside hundreds of other jobs on job boards, or (worse) on social media, where they have to compete against Oscar drama, apocalyptic news stories, and cute red pandas for your would-be applicants’ fractured attention. This means that your title needs to be interesting. (The writers of the Guardian Experience column have nailed this skill, we can only bow down in wonder and awe.) Here’s a great resource for writing intriguing and useful headlines. A gripping first sentence The second most important part of any piece of writing is the first sentence. A good template for your first sentence is: ‘If your dream job is to ____, _____, and ____, then you might be the perfect fit for [job].’ You should fill in the blanks with things that will attract people who would be a great fit for the role, while repelling people who wouldn’t. For example, in my ad for the EA hiring agency, I wrote: ‘If your dream job is to work in longtermism, be your own boss, and talk to EAs all day, then you might be the perfect fit for starting an EA recruitment agency through Nonlinear’s incubation program.’ I know lots of EAs who would get excited at ‘work in longtermism’ (‘improving the long term future! Sign me up!’) but recoil in terror at ‘talk to EAs all day’ (‘talking?! To people??! Ugh!’) And that’s great! People who don’t love talking would not be a great fit for this particular job. Your first sentence should reel in candidates who’d be perfect for the job, ...