Talent and Recruitment
Manager
(or Director)

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Application Details

Application Deadline: 14.06.2024 (Applications are now closed)
Expected hours: Full-time
Location: London (preferred - we can sponsor a UK work visa) or Remote
We are looking to hire a Manager or Director, depending on the candidate’s experience and fit for the role.

Join us for a Q&A Session on June 7th

with our Vetting Director, Judith Rensing.

ABOUT AIM

Ambitious Impact (AIM), formerly Charity Entrepreneurship (CE), is an organization running training and incubation programs for high-impact career paths. Since 2018, our main Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program has helped 72 talented individuals from all over the world launch 5-10 high-impact nonprofits every year. These charities work on a diverse range of issues, from childhood lead poisoning to farmed fish welfare, and are currently improving the lives of 35 million people worldwide.

More recently, we have been scaling our work. AIM has recently developed new programs supporting talented individuals to take up other impactful careers, including grantmaking, nonprofit research, and for-profit entrepreneurship. We are now looking for a Recruitment Manager (or Director) to enable us to find and select the most talented people for these programs, helping outstanding individuals put their skills to better use for the world.

The Recruitment Manager (or Director’s) role is flexible, as reflected in this job description. It is likely to be either 100% on vetting applicants to our programs, 50% on vetting and 50% on outreach and marketing for new applicants, or 50% on vetting and 50% on team management. The level of seniority will depend on the successful candidate’s skills, fit, and interests. The Director would be responsible for managing team members and setting strategy for the department. The manager-level role would be focused more on the implementation and systems improvement of our recruitment process.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

How This Role Is Causing Impact

In the past five years of running our Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program, we have found that the best predictor of which incubated charities will end up causing the highest impact is the quality of the co-founding team. As we scale up, one of our biggest bottlenecks is identifying highly talented, value-aligned people out of the thousands of candidates from all over the world who apply to our programs. The difference in outcomes between a bad and a 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 for the long-term. We estimate the impact of each average alumna/alumnus of our Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program to be equivalent to donating $200,000-350,000 USD / year to effective charities. Finding 20-30 of these gems each year is difficult but is incredibly impactful. As such, the Recruitment Manager/Director is one of the most important roles we are hiring for.

Furthermore, as we scale, we need to identify outstanding candidates for our new programs, including researchers and for-profit entrepreneurs. While these programs are newer, we believe that they can produce outstanding levels of impact in their own right. The Recruitment Manager/Director will work closely with our outreach and programs teams, as well as senior management at AIM. They will develop models and a deep sense of what it takes to excel in these career paths, and then figure out the processes which may be able to select the right talent for them. Top talent identified by us has historically gone on not only to found GiveWell-supported charities, but also work at grantmaking foundations, as charity staff in LMIC, and at leading organizations in the impactful nonprofit space. Our process is also often picked up and adopted by other charities and foundations, so improving our application processes has broader impacts on the high-impact ecosystem we are a part of as a whole.

Role Responsibilities

For each of our programs, we receive hundreds to thousands of applications each year, and candidates vary significantly in terms of background, talent, experience, skills, and interests. We need to narrow down this pool to the top few (less than 1%) for each program, taking into account a significant number of both hard and soft factors. Our Recruitment Manager/Director would become an expert in this field over time, refining our unconventional but highly predictive processes to find the best people for our programs.

The Recruitment Manager/Director will focus on:

Vetting multi-stage application processes (application forms, test tasks, interviews and psychometrics)
Improving and adjusting our processes (e.g. coming up with predictive interview questions for new job roles; improving existing questions and tasks on the basis of data collected)
Developing and formalizing a deep understanding of what traits, motivations, and personality types will be successful in different kinds of career paths and roles
(if interested and a strong fit) Working with our outreach team to develop and execute marketing strategies that speak to the right people, inform them about our supported career paths, and help them apply
(if interested and a strong fit) Managing or co-managing the recruitment team

The kinds of tasks involved in this look something like this:

Evaluating hundreds of application forms and test tasks to figure out which are the most promising, using a wide range of information, formal and informal clues, and heuristics
Evaluating and conducting candidate interviews to help identify and select the most promising candidates to join our programs
Formalizing informal hiring heuristics into rubrics and learning algorithms (no programming required)
Project managing each application round to ensure each candidate gets useful, timely, and relevant test tasks and information on next steps
Analyzing historical data to pull out findings for future rounds (here’s an older public example)
Conducting interviews with successful applicants to create feedback loops for improving our processes
Automating aspects of the process to increase scalability and reduce staff time
Conducting interviews with experts in vetting and hiring to determine cross-applicable lessons that we can apply
Building models and character profiles of ideal candidates and talking to alumni from our programs to refine and improve these
Running analysis and back correlations on historically successful founders to identify traits that may define the most promising applicants

ABOUT YOU

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 both understanding and interest in human motivations. We have found that the people best-suited to this role tend to be comfortable holding a lot of (sometimes contradictory) pieces of evidence in their head at the same time while being able to make a sane “overall” judgment.

You might be a good fit at this if you enjoy learning about other people and their interests and motivations. You might often be able to predict what a friend or co-worker would do or say without asking them, or have an easy time thinking about what characters in books or TV shows might do next. You have probably interacted with a range of people from different backgrounds - perhaps through travel, studying internationally, or working with people from a different background from the one you grew up in. You probably find psychometric, psychological, or personality tests fascinating (think “the big five”) and like talking to people about what’s important in life. These are just a few examples.

What We Need

We expect excellent candidates will meet many (but not all) of the criteria below. We encourage you to apply even if you do not feel that you meet enough of the listed characteristics. In the past, we have offered positions to applicants who had strong overall potential and trained them up where there are gaps in their skills. We are looking for high general ability, strong work ethic, and value/methods-aligned mindset more than prior work experience or a specific background.

The ideal candidate is:

Interested in human performance evaluation
Passionate about quickly learning new skills
Highly impact-driven with a very strong work ethic
Able to work in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment
Has an intuitive understanding of how different people work and what makes them tick
Strong psychological understanding of people
Able to evaluate people critically
A natural at reading people and understanding them
Excited and willing to work across the cause areas (animal advocacy, global health, effective altruism, mental health, and family planning) and career paths (nonprofit entrepreneurship, research, effective giving fundraising, and for-profit entrepreneurship) our program focuses on
Able to move to and work from our London office at least 2 days per week (exceptions may be made for excellent applicants who do not meet this criterion)
Able to work flexibly and collaboratively in a small team and have a positive influence on the teams they work in and around
Results-oriented, with a consequentialist mindset, and a love of high levels of intellectual challenge
Comfortable with prioritization, numerical quantification, and simple spreadsheet calculations - or excited to learn these
Able to work both autonomously and in a small team
Excited to work in this role and feels as though it could be a great fit
Interested in growing at and with AIM long-term

Bonus Criteria:

Background in fast moving and/or quantitative workplaces (e.g. tech startups, consulting, finance)
Psychology, HR, or other vetting-focused backgrounds
Experience with hiring processes
Experience working in effective altruism (volunteering, independent projects, internships, and jobs all count)
Experience founding nonprofits or for-profits
Background with a GiveWell-recommended or Charity Entrepreneurship-incubated charity
Experience or interest in founding nonprofits or for-profits

WHAT WE OFFER

Most of all: a job that has a huge, tangible impact on the world - the candidates you select will become high-impact charity founders within months
High levels of intellectual challenge and learning on the job
True start-up culture, including flat hierarchies and low bureaucracy
(If combined with outreach responsibilities) Opportunities to attend events and conferences to represent AIM
Build your network in the EA community, various nonprofit communities, and among AIMs vibrant community of highly talented and singularly dedicated alunmi, including the 32 charities we have launched so far
An informal, fun, and supportive work environment
Become a part of a diverse, dedicated, close-knit team of 25
Additional opportunities for learning, growth, and connection across departments

Perks And Benefits

Flexible working schedule and 30 paid days off per year
5-10% of work time and dedicated budget of £500 for personal development and learning (plus lots of learning on the job)
50% reimbursement of IT and costs of strategies you find useful for increasing your productivity up to £500 a year
Salary and moving costs are flexible depending on employee needs and cost of living in their location and typically fall between £37-49k GBP gross per annum (most AIM salaries are within this range, including the Executive Director’s)
Support with moving costs if relocating to London
Visa sponsorship, if needed
A desk in our vibrant central London office which is a hub for high-impact organizations and our program alumni
For an outstanding candidate, more perks and benefits could be included

MORE ABOUT AIM

Our Track Record

Our original Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program is our most established and thus has the most detailed track record.

Since our first research cycle and incubation program in 2019, we have:

Launched 32 new charities across six cause areas
Published 30+ research reports
Grown to a close-knit team of 25
Released two handbooks, “How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit” and “How to Launch a High-Impact Foundation”

To date, our launched charities have:

Fundraised over $30M USD, including from Mulago, GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, EA Funds, Founders Pledge, Animal Charity Evaluators, Schmidt Futures, and D-Prize.
Reached over 35 million humans and have the potential to improve the lives of over 1 billion animals with their interventions.
Effected policy changes that may decrease lead poisoning in ~322,000 children in Malawi (averting 87,000 DALY-equivalents, or saving 2,900 lives)
Changed farm conditions for upwards of ~420,000 farmed fish and ~1,200,000,000 shrimp
Reached 5,000,000 listeners with family planning content in Nigeria, on track to potentially averting ~600 maternal deaths by 2025
Launched a digital program to prevent postnatal depression in the U.S. that has proven to decrease depressive symptoms in 62% of participants
Sent SMS reminders about vaccinations to 350,000 caregivers in India
… and so much more. Read more about our charities and their achievements here.

In the last 24 months, we have also run three foundation incubation programs, three research training programs, and have recently launched an effective giving incubation program pilot.

Our Future Plans

We have big, ambitious plans. After our successful first five years, we are now scaling up across all departments with the ultimate goals of:

Launching 10+ new high-impact charities per year through two Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Programs annually
Running two yearly iterations of our Research, Impactful Grantmaking, and Founding to Give programs
Doubling our impact as an organization and ecosystem each year

Will you join us?

Our Culture

AIM is a highly dedicated but informal and flexible working environment. We believe that friendliness and teamwork, a focus on impact and evidence, critical thinking, and warm connections are key workplace values. Our team of 25 are close-knit and we have built an active and connected community of charity entrepreneurs and impactful professionals around this. Our office in central London is a lively and vibrant hub where recent developments from our charities are as likely to be discussed over lunch as what the 80/20 of dental hygiene looks like, or what the effects of different sleep habits on productivity are. We are united by our relentless pursuit of counterfactual impact and a perhaps slightly excessive love of spreadsheets.

Learn more about what it is like to work at AIM in this video.

APPLY NOW

Our goal is to make our application process both time-effective and interesting for you. The application process involves the following stages, and you will only receive an invite to the next stage if we think you have a good chance of passing it:

Submitting our general application form (30 minutes to 1 hour),
A general test task (2-3 hours),
An initial interview (15 minutes),
A test task simulating the work you would do in your role (2-3 hours), and
A final, more in-depth interview (~60 minutes)

We will also conduct a reference check before making an offer. Each stage typically takes between 1-2 weeks from the end of the application deadline, and we hope to make an offer within ~6 weeks of the application deadline. Ideally, the candidate will begin onboarding as soon afterwards as possible.

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 as well as neurodivergent humans who are excited about contributing to our mission. AIM 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 candidates@charityentrepreneurship.com

A final word

If you are excited about working with AIM but are uncertain whether you are qualified enough for this role, please do apply nonetheless. We care deeply about mindset and value-alignment with our approach and are skilled at finding people with high potential whose growth we are happy to facilitate. Don’t hesitate to make the content of your CV for AIM a little unconventional (e.g. by mentioning personal projects, courses, or experiences that are not strictly professional) if that better demonstrates that you can have the mindset, values, and approach that we need to improve the world.

Thank you for taking the time to consider applying for this role. If you do not think this specific role is a good fit for you, please consider signing up for our newsletter to be notified of future vacancies and sharing this job description within your network to other potential applicants.

Talent and Recruitment Manager (or Director)