“Some surprising hiring practices I follow (as a hiring manager and grantmaker in EA)” by Michelle_Hutchinson
Description
The best approach to take to hiring differs by industry.
This means that best practice differs across startups, think tank, a video production, non-profits, academia, and news outlets will all have different practices. The practices that work best in the EA ecosystem will be different again – but unfortunately the effective altruism organisation landscape is much smaller than all of those, and so people haven't written books on how to do it.
I have been working as a hiring manager and sometimes grant maker in this space for over ten years, and I have developed some views on which practices work well in this industry. And I’ve noticed that others have (semi-)independently converged on these!
Below I've written out a few of the ones which I follow. I’ve especially tried to list those which might seem most surprising to people coming from industries like the ones listed above.
I’m trying to do a pretty quick job of this so that it actually gets out there. [Having written that sentence, I proceeded not to publish the post for 2 years. So if you’re wondering why there are errors in it, it's because this time round I’m actually going [...]
---
Outline:
(01:45 ) Run unstructured interviews
(03:18 ) Work tests can be feasible and useful even for high-skill roles
(05:24 ) Informal references are useful
(08:07 ) Get information from people with conflicts of interest
(09:43 ) You can put numbers on things (but don't trust them too much)
(10:51 ) Bonus suggestion for applicants: Ask about the people you'll be working with
(11:59 ) Getting advice
---
First published:
October 30th, 2025
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
United States
