Project Timeline

Note: Grey text indicates completion.

1. Project Proposal (1 week, 15-30 hours) October 2019
1. Write proposal
2. Get feedback from other group organisers, 80K, CEA on risks, desired end-products, approaches
2. Collaboration (5-10 hours) October 2019
1. Do an initial collaborators call and figure out what backgrounds and expertise is present, as well as time availability
2. Decide on the team structure. Vaidehi will be the main coordinator and collaborate with others as and when they are available.
3. Literature Review (10 hours) November 2019
1. Do a literature review of previous efforts to provide career advice services and career advice theory
2. First draft literature review
3. Literature review revealed major information gaps and a lack of clarity around what the current bottlenecks are and how widespread they are. There was also a lack of clarity on group organisers’ current efforts and knowledge.
4. Preliminary Research (30-60 hours) December 2019 - Feb 2019
1. Get feedback on our thinking and our constraints categories from group organisers who have done work on career advising
2. Present initial work at EAANZ group leaders’ retreat
3. Conduct a survey of group organisers
5. Share Research Findings of Career Advice Bottlenecks Survey (10-30 hours) March 2020
1. Write up and share survey results with group organisers
1. Publish a forum post on advice on running career events
2. Host group calls to discuss findings from the survey
2. Share the full survey results with relevant stakeholders (CEA, 80K)
6. Prioritize projects based on survey results (10-20 hours) April 2020
1. Based on the people dedicated to this project, only a few options are both high in expected value and tractable. (See prioritisation criteria for variables that were considered)
7. Apply for funding (10-30 hours) May-June 2020
8. Plan and conduct career 1-1 trainings workshop (100-150 hours) May-August 2020
9. Workshop feedback (4-6 hours) August 2020
1. Collect feedback from group organisers about all work to date
2. Collect more in-depth feedback from the working group

Evaluate next projects (10-20 hours) August 2020

Project Structure

Project Collaboration

• Organising & facilitating regular conversations on various topics
• Connecting people to those with more experience to give feedback
• Sharing and raising awareness of best practices and written resources
• Accountability, regular check-ins and general support
• Work collaboratively with CEA groups team and EA Hub to provide careers advice knowledge

Resources & Research

• Creating collaborative resources
• Compiling existing resources and making them accessible to all group organisers across regions and languages (e.g. some organisers have translated resources into English to share upon request)
• I also conduct additional research if organisers face information bottlenecks that I believe others may face as well.
• Research on current impact tracking for events and how to improve it, especially for career events
• (Eventually) Tracking project progress and success
• Goals: forms should be quick, convenient but informative. Ideally, some core data is systematically collected for careers events.
• Challenges: getting group organisers to consistently fill these out. Perhaps better to send out a monthly reminder (check survey for frequencies)

Career Advising Learning

• Accountability partners (doesn’t need to be career advice specific)
• Providing training to group organisers
• Career 1-1s
• On existing resources
• Metrics: Document views, comments, engagements
• Follow up survey with organisers who join the call on how useful they found these resources
• And how accurately they can recall resources/information
• Note: something like this will be done by EA Hub on general group resources.
• On 80K’s most recent priority paths
• Metrics: test their knowledge before, after and 1 month after
• Survey them on the kind of advice they’d give hypothetical candidates before and after

Foundational Research

Foundational research was conducted from Oct 2019 - March 2020.

No systematic or representative research has been done on group members’ main bottlenecks to pursuing high impact careers or challenges group organisers face. Given the lack of information, we feel we cannot adequately figure out the most impactful projects to work on without developing a more robust set of metrics to evaluate, get an accurate picture of career bottlenecks in the movement currently, and evaluate different career products.Therefore, we have dedicated significant time to establish a solid foundation on which to make our recommendations and to direct our work.

We conducted a career advice bottlenecks survey for group organisers in Feb 2020. We expect this research will be valuable for anyone in the community looking to develop EA career advice. We also expect that this external perspective may act as a check and balance to existing career advice, and evaluate commonly held beliefs in the movement.

The results of the survey are forthcoming, but preliminary analysis has been completed.

Presentation