I'm not on the podcast team but just quickly jumping in to say we do release highlights on the 80k After Hours feed! Not sure if they're planning one for this episode but it'd be a good candidate, I agree!

Edit: sorry, we actually release highlights episodes for every main feed episode — my bad for the misinfo!

Hey Emily, I'm sorry to hear you've had trouble figuring out how your broad skill set fits in.

For the roles I'm hiring for right now, specific experience is less relevant than evidence of the most important skills for the role. Copying directly from the job description for the Head of Marketing role, for example:

• A strong interest in effective altruism, longtermism, and/or having a big, positive impact in the world — ideally with experience in applying EA principles in real-world decisions
• Strong judgement; the ability to consider complex strategic questions evenhandedly, communicate them clearly, and get others on board

(This is just the first two from a longer list!)

When I'm evaluating candidates, I expect these traits to show up in various different ways at different stages of the application. To give some sense, here's what I've written in some of my own documents about how those two traits will show up in the initial application form:

• Excitement about the role; they seem EA / longtermist (or say that they are).
  Mention interest in EA on the application form (with evidence).
• Their answers seem thoughtful. Clear communication; lucid, easy-to-engage-with writing.

Does that help give you a sense of the kinds of things I'm looking for that aren't specific experience?

I'm not sure if this really answers your question, but I hope it's helpful & let me know if there's anything else I could share!

Hi Pranshul,

Thanks for your comment, and I'm really glad to hear you'd be excited about working at 80k!

I think being a new high school graduate is not a dealbreaker for us / doesn't directly rule you out, so you'd be very welcome to put in an application on our website!

However, for full transparency's sake, I do think I should say that I'd guess it will be a fairly significant downside compared to candidates with more experience, and I'd be somewhat surprised if ended up hiring someone with no prior work experience or tertiary education.

Hey Batur,

Thanks for your detailed & thoughtful questions!

I'll answer in order:

1. For the rounds I'm running, I'll reach out to candidates we're moving forward with either just before or shortly after applications close on the 18th and 25th August.

2. I haven't yet confirmed precisely what all the stages of the application will look like — it'll probably depend on the applications I get, and might vary a bit from person to person. But to give you a sense, for the last hiring round I ran, we had the initial application (3 substantive questions), then a paid 4 hour work test (doing work similar to what you'd do in the role), then a 30min-1hr interview, then a 3-day in-person work trial (which was also paid, where we could do so legally).

3. I hope to be able to make offers for the roles I'm hiring for by mid-late September, but it might take longer or shorter than that (depending in part on scheduling for the trial).

4. Hiring rounds are run by individual hiring managers, and a hiring committee of (usually) 3 people. We do coordinate somewhat (such as by doing this post together!) and if candidates are applying to multiple rounds, we might share details of their application with one another. However, the rounds are mostly quite independent, and e.g. it's possible we could offer multiple positions to the same person (& it'd be up to the candidate to decide between them). There is an organisation-wide people ops function, but they're low on capacity at the moment, so this round is mostly being run by the individual teams we're hiring to.

5. Teams at 80k are quite independent, but do have some interaction, and it varies quite a bit by team. For example, the marketing team goes to fortnightly web team meetings and weekly web team standups; plus, our work is often completed in collaboration with team leads whose product we are advertising!

6. The current marketing team is myself and Nik Mastroddi (so, it's two right now). We'd most like to be able to hire both a new head of marketing and a new marketer, but that might not be possible, so the final team size will depend on how many hires we make and for which roles.

7. The short-term vision for the team is...hiring! (while maintaining our current channels.) The medium-term vision should be set by whoever is head of marketing, so I can't say for sure what they would decide. If we don't hire a new head and I stay in the role, I would likely recommend keeping the team at a size of 3, or perhaps 2 or 4.

8. I'll leave the two questions about advising to Huon! :)

Hey Vincent! Thanks for your question :)

I think that there are lots of diffuse and hard-to-directly-measure benefits of having employees work from our London office. The main one that I'm especially excited about is the person in this role absorbing — and contributing to — our team culture, which I think is really helpful for keeping us as an organisation aimed at producing the most impactful outcomes.

I'm somewhat unsure this is the right attitude overall, and we are open to remote applicants (& many of the applications we've gotten so far are from remote candidates).

Thanks so much for your questions! I'll answer them in order:

For me, the precise wording of your CV is not at all important. I mostly look at CVs to get a sense of the candidate’s prior experience, so if you wanted to highlight parts of your work experience which seemed relevant, that’d be cool, but it doesn’t seem necessary.

In general, titles at 80k are very much up for negotiation, with a couple of constraints:

1. We have some words that we use in titles which refer to specific groups, such as ‘director’ or ‘head of’ — and you can’t use them if you’re not a director or a programme lead!
2. We generally want the title to give a reasonable impression about the kind of work done in the role (so, the head of video couldn’t have the title ‘head of podcast’ or something).

The salary formula has lots of inputs, so it’s not easy to say ‘you’d be paid £x more per year of experience.’ However, to give you a sense, for the ‘marketer’ role, someone with no relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £58,000 per year; someone with four years of relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £65,000 per year; and someone with ten years of relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £76,000 per year.

Here's another anonymous question I got:

How do you like people to approach their CVs? (Particularly in terms of successful candidates, or even just what gets people through to the next round at least)
e.g. Using the same words as you did in the JD, or different ones? With the I did X by doing Y which led to Z impact formula? And does the latter have to be numbers
Also, is the Head of Video title negotiable?
Lastly, how does the salary scale work e.g. 1y of exp vs 10 years

I'll respond in a comment!

Thanks for your question and for giving some detail on your situation!

It's not a hard requirement that the Head of Video be able to spend time in London (though we do prefer it for the same reason we prefer all our staff to be in London — so that they can both absorb and contribute to team culture!).

There is an additional complication about videos, which is that if we're making videos, we'll likely need to film them and/or record audio in some particular location. So, it is a requirement that the Head of Video would be able to arrange that happening...somehow!

I'd guess that a Head of Video would want to be physically present for filming, at least some of the time, which would mean that they'd need to arrange it to happen in a location that is accessible to them and to whoever else would be involved in the filming.

I guess it might be hard to do that in the Cotswolds (?) since you might need to arrange travel to the Cotswolds for a bunch of people, but definitely not impossible!

I hope that gives you some more context on how location might constrain applicants to the role, & please feel free to ask followups on Admonymous if anything is unclear!

An anonymous user submitted the following question to me via my Admonymous:

Hey,

I see for the Head of Video role there is a need for significant time to be spent in London. I am disabled and a wheelchair user that is exceptionally interested in the position, but wondered how much time would be needed and what support would possible be available? I live in the Cotswolds currently, and I love the area and lifestyle that offers so would prefer not to move away from here if at all possible. My biggest issue is I do not currently have a wheelchair that makes me entirely independent, I am unable to get it in and out of my car, and public transport is very hit and miss when it comes to accessibility (even when pre-booking!).

Thanks for answering as best you can (I know without specifics and detailed discussion it is hard to give a firm response.)

I'll leave my response in a reply to this comment.

Hey Helena — thanks for your question!

I'm happy for generalists to apply to the marketer position — I don't think prior marketing experience is required to excel in the role, so long as you're excited to learn the relevant skills!

You're certainly welcome to apply to both! We'll typically share application materials internally where it seems decision-relevant, but otherwise, the applications are progressed separately.

If I were you, I might spend some time thinking about if one of the roles seems better suited to you based on your skills & the type of work you're excited about doing. I think they're quite different ways of working — for example, advisors do a lot of talking to people! Marketers at 80k don't do nearly as much. Which sounds more energising to you?