EA - What happens on an 80,000 Hours call? by Abby Hoskin

Welcome 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: What happens on an 80,000 Hours call?, published by Abby Hoskin on September 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.A lot of people aren't sure what to expect when they apply for 80,000 Hours coaching calls. We thought it might be helpful to give you some context.Who can we help?We love when people form inside views on issues, and question ideas that don't make sense to them. So we encourage you to apply for advising even if you don't agree with everything on the 80k website.However, we're most able to help people who are open to working on some of the top problems we list on our site, or something in a related area. We think most of our impact comes from helping people who end up working in these areas, and since they're the topics we focus on, our advice is best for applicants who could potentially take relevant career paths.We're best able to help people who are mid or early career, with some idea of what they want to do, but open to changing directions and building new skills. These people are often between the ages of 20 and 40. But we definitely also talk to people who are outside of this range, and can offer them valuable guidance and point them to great opportunities.Ways you can get value from an 80k callSetting aside time to reflect deeply on your career trajectory is really valuable.Running your ideas by somebody else with reasonable judgement is helpful.If you already have a great plan, checking it over with somebody else can make you feel a lot better.We can tell potential collaborators and mentors what you're doing in case they want to be involved or help you out.Advisors tend to know a lot about the people and orgs working on important problems and can point you to resources/orgs/causes you might not know about.Advisors have different backgrounds and can give expert advice in specific sectors (more on this below).Speaking with an 80k advisor can help you grow your professional network (though this isn't always possible in all cases).You can opt into being recommended for roles that are a match for your plans and skills. We are often asked to recommend candidates for roles at high impact organisations, and you can give us permission to recommend you for roles we think would suit you.After your call, you will be invited to join the 80,000 Hours Alumni Slack. This is a great place to network with other people focused on doing good via their careers. The 80,000 Hours team also periodically updates our alumni about opportunities and resources they may find helpful.Before the callWe ask you to fill out a call prep document that prompts you to reflect on how you define positive impact, which areas you want to work on, and which careers seem most appealing or attractive to you.Filling out the call prep document has been consistently identified as one of the most valuable parts of advising. In other words, you can gain a lot of clarity on your career just by setting aside an hour to write down your answers to these questions, even without speaking to an advisor!You can make a copy of our call prep doc and fill it out now if you'd like. (We won't be able to see your answers, this would be for your personal reflection.)During the callFor people early in their career, we usually cover these topics:What is your current situation and default career path?Let's take your skills/experience out of the picture completely and think about what the world needs.How do you think about choosing which pressing world problem to work on?What qualities make these things problems?What are your values, and how can your career align with them?Which of these problems would you be able to make progress on based on your personal aptitudes, existing skill sets, and interests?Options?Long-run pathsWhich skills/experiences/career capital will help you do impa...