“Some surprising hiring practices I follow (as a hiring manager and grantmaker in EA)” by Michelle_Hutchinson

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 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/iZDQ4yJcWY8NB2A84/some-surprising-hiring-practices-i-follow-as-a-hiring --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.