How to have an impact when the job market is not cooperating

Have you considered using your career to have an impact?

Yes! But the job market won’t let me!

What’s your biggest job hunting frustration?

Shameless self-promotion

Caveat 1

This is general advice. For tailored advice, come to my office hours or apply for a 1on1 call on the 80,000 Hours website.

Caveat 2

Not representing The One and Only View of 80,000 Hours as a whole (which is not a thing)

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1. Market inefficiencies

It is simultaneously true that

1. Job seekers often struggle to land jobs.
2. Orgs sometimes struggle to hire.

What’s going on here?

Some tentative hypotheses

• There are some genuine talent gaps in the community.
• People are not applying for jobs they should, because:
• They don’t know about them.
• They know about them, but (wrongly) assume it’s not worth it.

What are orgs looking for?

• Relevant experience + high context on their cause area (AI, Bio, meta-EA…)
• Some skill sets that orgs find particularly difficult to hire for:
• Managers
• Experienced researchers
• Founders
• Generalists who can get a lot of sh$@t done
• Comms
• “Amplifiers” (particularly in the AI space)
• I.e. people who are happy to amplify others' impact rather than being the primary actors themselves: program managers, most ops-y roles, (80k advisors!...)

Are you already decent at some of the aforementioned skills?

Could you become decent with 6-12 months of focused upskilling?

• Consider applying for roles that require those skills. Even it they are not your absolute advantage, they might be your comparative advantage.
• If you’re not getting any jobs, consider that your relative weakness might be cause-area knowledge. BlueDot courses are great for Bio and AI. Regularly read relevant newsletters.

• Consider focusing on upskilling, even if that means de-prioritising direct-impact jobs in the immediate future in favour of jobs/projects where you can learn useful skills.

2. Consider you might be deferring too much

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• Impactful job =/= “EA” job or job at an EA org

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• Impactful job =/= job on the 80,000 Hours Job Board

Keep in mind:

• Non-public hiring rounds
• Founding your own org/ starting a project
• Other independent work (funded by a grant): comms, research…
• Roles that are not immediately impactful but could lead to impact.

Coming up with alternatives you might be missing

Work in pairs.

2min: one of you explains:

1. The problem you want to work on
2. What you think it needs to happen in the world to make progress with that problem (NOT what jobs/ careers you’re considering specifically).

2min: your partner brainstorms jobs and orgs that could be a good fit for making 2) happen. You can search online or use an LLM if you get stuck.

Switch!

2min: one of you explains:

1. The problem you want to work on
2. What you think it needs to happen in the world to make progress with that problem (NOT what jobs/ careers you’re considering specifically).

2min: partner brainstorms skills, jobs and orgs that could be a good fit for making 2) happen. You can search online or use an LLM if you get stuck.

2min: swap roles.

1. Explain the problem you want to work on
2. What you think it needs to happen in the world to make progress with that problem (NOT what jobs/ careers you’re considering specifically).

2min: partner brainstorms skills, jobs and orgs that could be a good fit for making 2) happen. You can search online or use an LLM if you get stuck.

3. We need to make different bets as a community.

• Important to be at the right place at the right time
• But it’s hard to predict what these would be, beyond some basic heuristics!
• Consider taking it on you to make a neglected bet, instead of the “highly impactful” (not always true), high-status bet.
• E.g. US federal policy is important, but the effort put in everything else shouldn’t be ~zero.
• US state policy
• EU policy
• Policy in individual countries (including Global South, non-English speaking)

But the obvious bets are obvious for a reason, I don’t want waste my time doing something that will likely not be impactful!

• Expected value over “guaranteed” outcomes.
• There are no jobs that 100% guarantee that you will have a positive impact. We need to make peace with the uncertainty.
• Counterfactuals matter: you can make more of a difference in neglected areas.

So I can just do whatever, as long as I can tell myself a story for how it might be impactful, even if unlikely?

• No! Identify opportunities where the importance: neglectedness: tractability ratio is off.
• “Importance” is the most visible part, so many people overindex on that.
• Some areas are rightly neglected. Do not work on something for the sake of doing what no one else is doing!

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What are your hot takes on what types of work, skills, roles or orgs are underrated?

4. Be prepared to pivot

• Can be difficult to wait when a problem seems pressing (e.g. if you have short AI timelines).
• But windows of opportunity come and go.
• Even adjusting for pressingness, it might be better to invest in being able to have a big impact in a couple of years (e.g. gaining useful experience, or building up your savings so that you can make a more aggressive move) compared to having an ok impact asap.

Some practical advice

Aiming for impact almost always involves doing “work” no one is asking you or paying you to do.

• Where “work” = reading, thinking for yourself, building important skills, connecting with others.
• What problems matter the most? How does the world make progress with them? You need to clarify your thoughts on this in order to have a theory for how you can have an impact.
• Once you (temporarily) settle on a problem and an approach, you need to become the sort of person who can contribute. You’re unlikely to achieve this by only relying on formal education or jobs.

• Focus on direct value creation over credentials.
• You don’t need permission to start working on what matters today.
• If you want to be a writer, write.
• If you want to work on governance, start reading, thinking and summarising your thoughts on promising interventions.
• If you’re interested in e.g. technical AI safety, pick a small problem to work on. Try to replicate a paper. Reflect on the promisingness of different research agendas.
• If you wish something existed (could be as simple as “a reading group in your city”), consider making it happen yourself.

Finding an accountability partner is easier than you think

Finding an accountability partner is easier than you think

1min; Individually, think about:

• What 1-3 things do you think you should be doing, but find hard to get motivated (applying for 5 jobs, take the bluedot course, write an article, approach 3 experts in your area).
• By when would you like to get them done?

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Finding an accountability partner is easier than you think

3min; in pairs:

• Discuss whether your respective goals are both realistic + ambitious enough
• Schedule an email on the deadline to ask your partner whether they did the thing.
• Congratulations: You now have a (at least a one-off!) accountability partner!

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Maximise your luck surface area

Speak with lots of people. You will learn from them. A conversation might turn into a collaboration. They will have you on their radar for job openings.

• Go to conferences
• Create/join the right community (can be online), be an active participant.
• If you find something you wish you'd done, email the person responsible with a compliment and ask for a 30min call to ask questions.
• Give yourself the opportunity to be surprised. Upside is limited when you already know how a chat is going to be relevant. You don’t know what you don’t know.

• Say “yes” to things.
• Collaborate part-time on projects.
• Offer your help, and make it concrete:
• “I think you’d benefit from X, I can provide that for you” ✅
• “I’d like to help, let me know how I can help!” ❌

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Who and how can you concretely help?

Job applications

• Think of job applications as a communication protocol, not an evaluation.
• A common mistake: making the job application about your being great.
• Orgs don't care about your being great, they care about themselves, they have problems and needs and they want to know if you will be able to help them. Show them that:
• You understand their needs
• You can help them, because you’ve already done the things the job requires under other job titles (or through side projects, volunteering…)
• If you don’t get a job, that’s just information that:
• You may not understand the org needs as well as you thought → Prompt to learn more about the space.
• You might not be able to help them as much as you thought. → Prompt to upskill.

• Apply for jobs even when you don’t think you’d be an ideal candidate. Sometimes orgs struggle to find a good candidate at all! Most people don’t apply for enough jobs.
• The application process itself is useful!
• Get yourself in a position where employers will reach out to you asking if you want to apply for a job because someone has suggested you might be a good fit.
• Again: make connections! Chat! Be on people’s radars!
• Consider building a (small) public profile: start a Substack, post on the EA Forum, LW, the Alignment Forum…
• Shameless self-promotion 2: this is an underappreciated reason why you could benefit from a 1on1 80k advising call.

Re-evaluating unsuccessful applications

Most people (it’s me, I’m people) find it’s too painful to revisit unsuccessful job applications.

It’s hard to get better at something when you’re pretending your previous attempts never happened,“starting from scratch” every time!

3 min; individually:

• Pick a job you applied for and didn’t get (better if you can find it on your laptop/phone, but also fine to rely on memory).
• What is the most likely reason why you didn’t get it?
• How could you improve for the next time?
• Is there anyone you know who could give you feedback on your application materials?

3 min; individually:

• Pick a job you applied for and didn’t get (better if you can find it on your laptop/phone, but also fine to rely on memory).
• What is the most likely reason why you didn’t get it?
• How could you improve for the next time?
• Is there anyone you know who could give you feedback on your application materials?

Finally…

• Having a job that’s not optimised for direct impact, and donating continues to be a very solid way of contributing and plausibly the best way to help in some cases (e.g. funding-constrained areas).
• It’s difficult to internalise this, but it’s true!
• Connecting with other people who donate can help you “feel” the impact
• Consider joining a GWWC group (virtually, or locally, if there’s one in your city).
• You can have an impact outside of your career!
• Helping communicate important ideas
• Advocacy
• Supporting others in their journey: as a mentor, a helping hand, organising small events in your city…

Good luck!