HIRING AND VETTING SPECIALIST
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Deadline: February 15, 2022
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Expected hours: Full-time
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Location: London or remote
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Fill out this form to apply
Charity Entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and looking to take on a Hiring and Vetting Specialist to work with our leadership team. This a senior role and would involve the design of scalable, methodologically sound vetting processes. These processes would ensure that the right people are hired to the CE team and recruited to our yearly Incubation Program. Given the importance of finding and vetting excellent candidates to CE’s outcomes, this is a key role. Moreover, it is envisaged that once developed, these vetting processes could be made available to other high-impact charities and foundations, thereby multiplying the impact of this role’s work. In short, we want to solve the vetting bottleneck in Effective Altruism.
ABOUT CHARITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Charity Entrepreneurship (CE) is a research and training program that launches multiple high-impact charities annually in a number of rotating cause areas. These include animal advocacy, mental health, global health and development, effective altruism, and policy.
Last year, we received 2,000+ applications to our Incubation Program. We are focused on increasing both the quality and quantity of applications, and as we do, we need more sophisticated vetting processes in place. See our last year's participants to get a sense of what draws people to the program.
ABOUT THE ROLE
The biggest predictor of which incubated charity will end up high-impact is the quality of the co-founding team. We receive a large volume of applications each year, and candidates vary significantly in terms of talent, experience, skills, and interests. We need to narrow down this pool to the top few (less than 1%), taking into account a significant number of both hard and soft factors. Our hiring and vetting specialist would, over time, become an expert in this field and build a sophisticated and functional process. They will work:
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To automate aspects of the process to increase scale and reduce staff time
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Using cutting-edge predictive software
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To run back correlations on historically successful founders
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To conduct interviews and analyses on successful applicants to create feedback loops and ensure the process is working and improving.
This is more than a technical role. The ideal candidate will be person-focused with a strong and practical understanding of human psychology and a keen eye for getting a sense of people quickly. They will be trained to become even better at these skills, but it helps to start with a strong level of understanding and an interest in human motivations and capacities.
The difference in expected value between a bad and good hire can be huge, but this variation is even more extreme when it comes to co-founders. The initial staff of an organization set the pace, tone, and culture long-term. As such, the Hiring and Vetting Specialist is one of the most important roles we are hiring for. This hire will work closely with other senior staff and historically successful candidates to get a deep sense of what it takes to excel as a charity entrepreneur.
Responsibilities include:
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Coming up with highly predictive interview questions for each job role
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Analyzing historical data to pull out findings for future rounds (Example)
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Building models and character profiles of ideal candidates
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Conducting interviews and developing an understanding of top candidates
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Conducting interviews with experts in vetting and hiring to determine cross-applicable lessons
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Formalizing informal hiring heustrics into learning algorithms (no programming required)
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Project managing each application round to ensure each candidate gets useful, timely, and relevant test tasks, feedback, and information on next steps
We are transparent regarding the process we currently use. It has strong predictive power relative to other systems that we are aware of. However, we believe that with a full-time staff member working on this process we could create a world-class vetting system. In time, we plan that it could be rolled out across a wide range of foundations and charities, thereby improving their processes and their organizational agility.
Our culture
CE is a welcoming and scientific working environment. We believe that friendliness, a focus on evidence base, critical thinking, and kindness are key workplace values. We offer a lot of team socials, both in-person (in London) and online, and have a connected community.
CE has a start-up culture. This means creativity, casual attire, hard work, flexibility, and task diversity. You will be expected to have a strong work ethic, but we offer a flexible working schedule. 10% of your time can be devoted to personal development and learning, including fairly extensive internal and external training.
Our employees tend to learn a lot and wear many hats. Our team is obsessed with spreadsheets, often has long psychological chats at lunch, and is highly EA-aligned. We have managed to maintain an entrepreneurial spirit despite our growing team size (10 → ~15). We have a vibrant office in London, but also consider talented remote applicants.
What we offer
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A time-effective and cross-applicably useful job application process (even if you are not hired)
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A job that has a huge impact on the world
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The chance to shape the direction, goals, and achievement of the organization
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Huge opportunity for learning and growth and a heavy focus on training in cross-applicable communication skills.
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Flexible working schedule and 30 paid days off per year
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Experience working at an early-stage nonprofit start-up
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Community of talented, dedicated, and like-minded EAs
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High levels of intellectual challenges
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For the right employee, more perks and benefits could be included
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Salary and moving costs are flexible depending on employee needs
ABOUT YOU
Excellent candidates will meet many (but not all) of the criteria below. We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet all of the listed characteristics. In the past, we have offered positions to applicants who did not meet all the criteria and trained them up in the needed skills. We have also seen great applicants nearly rule themselves out before applying. We are looking for baseline abilities and mindset more so than specific backgrounds.
What we need
A candidate who is:
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Passionate about quickly learning new skills
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Excited and willing to work across the cause areas our program focuses on (animal advocacy, global health, effective altruism, mental health, and family planning)
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Able to move to and work in London (exceptions may be made for excellent applicants who do not meet this criterion, and we do have an option for coworking out of Berlin)
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Able to work flexibly in a small team and have a positive influence on the teams they work in and around
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Excited about psychometrics and human performance evaluation
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Highly impact-driven with a very strong work ethic as well as able to work in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment
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Results oriented, utilitarian minded, and loves high levels of intellectual challenge
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Comfortable with numerical quantification and simple spreadsheet calculations
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Strong psychological understanding of people
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A natural at reading people and understanding them
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Excited to work in this role and feels as though it is a great fit
Bonus points for:
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Experience working in effective altruism (volunteering, independent projects, internships, and jobs all count)
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Experience founding nonprofits or for-profits
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Background in fast moving and/or quantitative workplaces (e.g., tech startups, consulting, finance)
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Background with a GiveWell-recommended or CE-incubated charity
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Psychology, HR, or other vetting-focused backgrounds
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Experience with hiring processes
APPLICATION PROCESS
We aim to make our application process time effective and beneficial to the applicant in thinking through career options. We are able to give feedback to candidates who get relatively far in the process.
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The application deadline is February 15, 2022
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Expected hours: Full-time
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Location: London or remote
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Fill out this form to apply
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The top candidates will be contacted for the first-stage interview
The application process will involve 4 stages: submitting the application form, initial interview, test task, final interview, and sometimes a reference check. We hope to have the application process completed by mid March. Ideally, the candidate will begin onboarding as soon afterwards as possible. If you are interested in multiple roles within CE, please use the application form for your first choice. You will later have the option to indicate interest in other roles.
Commitment to diversity and equal employment opportunities
We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from women and people of color who are excited about contributing to our mission. Charity Entrepreneurship is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other related questions about applying, please contact joey@charityentrepreneurship.com