Free, personalised, and impact-focused career advising

We aim to work with the people we can most help to have a great impact. This means we look for people who:

• Make social impact one of their main career goals.
• Take an analytical approach to social impact and career choice.
• Are already somewhat familiar with the basic principles of social impact career choice as presented in our career guide.
• Are interested in working on our pressing problems.
• Have the ability to excel in a challenging career.

We’re aware that factors like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can affect people’s willingness to call attention to their own achievements. We’d especially encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

We’ve developed review criteria based on over 20,000 applications and 5,000 calls. To manage the volume of applications we receive each month, we use an AI system that applies our criteria for an initial review. Rigorous testing ensures the AI meets our high standards for consistent and informed decision-making.

In cases where the AI system’s decisions are consistently highly aligned with staff review, its decisions may be implemented directly. We do periodic checks to ensure continued alignment with staff decisions in these cases. For many applications, staff review follows. While they may consider the AI’s recommendation, staff members use their judgement to make the final decision. If you have questions about this or want to request an application re-review, email [email protected].

Our donors cover the cost of this service because they see it as an opportunity for impact — many people we advise go on to have a greater impact over the course of their career than they would have otherwise.

To get the most out of the call, it’s helpful for you to have some familiarity with some of 80,000 Hours’ content or the wider effective altruism movement. We find that it’s best for people to absorb these ideas at their own pace before talking. But we know there’s so much you could read and want to emphasise that you don’t need to have thought about everything before applying. There’s a list of resources you might have read in the application form — but don’t worry, we don’t expect you to have read all of those.

If you aren’t that familiar with 80,000 Hours’ content, we recommend you learn more before applying. For example, you can:

• Read our career guide, which covers all our key ideas on how to have a high-impact career.
• Listen to our 10-part podcast series Effective Altruism: An Introduction. Together these give you the most essential information you need about some of the world’s most pressing problems, and how to work out how to do the most good.
• Check out a book like The Precipice by philosopher Toby Ord, which discusses the catastrophic risks that threaten the future of humanity and the reasons for taking those issues really seriously.
• Sign up for a free online introductory or in-depth EA programme. The programmes run regularly and they are a great way to learn more about the ideas alongside others.

As a rule of thumb, if you’ve done at least one of the above and the ideas have resonated with you, then it might be worth applying to speak with our team now.

You do not need to have a worked out career plan before applying. In fact, talking with us earlier in the process of planning might be better, so that we can help you answer some key uncertainties and work out where to focus your efforts.

If you have already done a lot of career planning, we’ll be happy to talk through your thoughts. But as long as you can write a couple of paragraphs in the application form setting out your current thinking (even if you have a lot of uncertainties) then that is enough for applying.

We speak with people at a wide range of different points in their career, including people who are mid- or late-career. We work closely with many organisations that are working on the problems we think are most pressing. They are often keen to find people with significant experience, and we might be able to flag particularly relevant roles — especially if you’re willing to be flexible.

We understand that it can seem intimidating to apply, but we’d encourage you to give it a try if you think it might be helpful for you. If it helps, you can check out this Twitter thread from one of our former advisors, Habiba, about the range of people she talks to in advising.

In particular, we know that things like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can often make people less willing to put themselves forward or call attention to their achievements. We really encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply — we want our service to help people as much as possible.

We usually get back to people within about two weeks of applying. If you have an urgent decision to make, we encourage you to put that in your application, and email [email protected].

We sincerely regret that we can’t advise everyone who applies. We read every application individually and are thankful that you took the time to apply. It’s really touching to read about people who have come across 80,000 Hours and are excited about using their careers to help others.

We aim to talk to the people we think we can help the most. But even if we can’t talk to you, we often suggest someone else you can talk to or provide more resources (such as a free book!).

If we can’t speak with you, that does not mean we think you won’t have a highly impactful career. Whether we can be helpful to you sometimes depends on contingent factors like whether one of our advisers happens to know of a role or introduction right now that might be a good fit for you. Also, unfortunately, it’s impossible for us to know everyone’s situation well enough to be completely sure we’re speaking to the right people. We try to do the best with the information we have from the application form but we might still make mistakes that aren’t a reflection on you at all.

You’re very welcome to re-apply, particularly if your situation changes. In the meantime, it might be worth reading our career guide. If you’re trying to plan your career, you can use our career planning worksheet. And if you have an upcoming career decision, take a look at our career decision tool.

You can also get involved in our community to get help from other people trying to do good with their careers.

You can choose which advisor to book a call with when we send you the details for the call.

We speak with people at a wide range of different points in their career, including students. We can often be useful even if you don’t yet have a firm idea of what career seems like a good fit for you.

For example, we might be able to help you think about what directions seem most promising to try out first, talk through what subjects to study, suggest promising opportunities you can do during your vacations, and connect you with more people to build your network.

Working out what problem to work on is an important factor in our approach to planning an impactful career, but we know it is a difficult question to form a view on. Talking this through with people is one of the most helpful things we can do on our calls. So if you’re unsure about which problem to work on, don’t let that stop you applying.

If you think you’d find it useful, yes! While we don’t guarantee additional calls to people we’ve already spoken to, and often speak to people only once, we think multiple calls can be really valuable in the right circumstances.

In general, we’re most excited to speak to people a second time when something about their situation has changed. For example:

• You might have changed your mind about which cause is most important for you to work on, so the plan from the first call no longer applies.
• You might have planned to do some exploring after the first call, and now, having narrowed down your options, be struggling to choose between the final few.
• You might have started a programme of study after speaking to us, and now be about to finish it.
• It could be something else entirely!

As with an initial application, even if we don’t think we’ll be especially helpful a second time, we might still be able to connect you with someone else to speak to, or highlight other resources or opportunities.

Even if you’re very involved in the effective altruism community, you may find it useful to spend some focused time talking to an advisor about your career questions. We have helped people who are already highly engaged with the community by talking through their uncertainties about their career plans as well as introducing them to potential new employers, funders, and mentors. We can also double check you haven’t missed any of our relevant research.

Please email us at [email protected].